Nothing is more remarkable in the literature of our time than the endless procession of Lives of Jesus. They come to us in all languages, from Christians and unbelievers, from historians, theologians, social reformers, poets and romancers. In their number and variety they bear impressive witness to the perennial interest in Jesus, and the significance which men still find in him after two thousand years. Yet there is another side to this widespread curiosity about the history of Jesus. M. Goguel, in the book which will form the main subject of this paper, makes a suggestive comment on Renan's famous work. “There are questions, and the life of Jesus is one of them, which gain by being debated at leisure by specialists and brought in some degree to a focus, before they are exposed to the full daylight. The Vie de Jésus, by the very natural sensation which it provoked, perhaps thwarted, or at least retarded, the critical education of the French public.”

It is no longer possible for any serious researcher on the religion of ancient Rome, and especially on what may be called its proto-history (the regal period and the beginning of the Republic) to ignore the work of Franz Altheim and the little group of colleagues who, with him, form what may perhaps be called the Frankfurt school. The present writer has seen no full-length criticism of his work as a whole, though more than one article has appeared dealing with particular points on his or his colleagues' theories. This essay is an attempt to describe and evaluate his attitude, avoiding, save for the sake of illustration, discussion of details which may be right or wrong without seriously affecting the estimate of his work in general.

The Roman garrison town of Talmis, now called Kalabsha, lies in Nubia a little South of the Lesser Cataracts of the Nile and was the seat of a god called Merul or Melul, a name hellenized as Mandulis. He was worshipped elsewhere in this region, as for instance in a temple of his own at Ajuala and in the temple of Petêsi and Pihor at Dendûr, and again further North at Philae, where a figure of him was in A.D. 394 sculptured on the North wall of the ‘Hadrian passage,’ but he is at Dendûr described as ‘great god, lord of Talmis,’ and Talmis was certainly the center of his cult. The first religious edifice known there was built by Amenophis IV, but Professor Griffith informs me that there is no likelihood that Mandulis was worshipped in it, his name being unknown in Pharaonic Egypt and apparently non-Egyptian.