If one can trust the testimony of modern biblical scholarship, the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 is leading a double life. According to some, Deuteronomy 32 represents a lawsuit in which God summons witnesses to the stand (Deut 32:1), issues a formal indictment (Deut 32:15–18), takes an oath (Deut 32:40), and, finally, pronounces punishment (Deut 32:19–29). For others, Deuteronomy 32 represents a wisdom text that identifies itself as a teaching (Deut 32:2), chastises Israel for its intellectual shortcomings (Deut 32:6, 28), and repeatedly exhorts Israel to remember and understand (Deut 32:7, 29). Thus Deuteronomy 32 seems to have two literary identities: one as an act of indictment drawing on legal language; the other as an act of instruction belonging to the sphere of wisdom.

In histories of the formation of the Christian biblical canon, the thirty-ninth Festal Letter of Athanasius of Alexandria, written for Easter 367, holds a justifiably prominent place. Not only is this letter the earliest extant Christian document to list precisely the twenty-seven books that eventually formed the generally accepted canon of the New Testament, but Athanasius is also the first Christian author known to have applied the term “canonized” (κανονιςόμενα) specifically to the books that made up his Old and New Testaments. Athanasius's canon is explicitly closed: “In these books alone,” the bishop declares, “the teaching of piety is proclaimed. ‘Let no one add to or subtract from them’ (LXX Deut 12:32).” The significance of this document goes beyond these formal and terminological issues, however, for the extant fragments of the letter provide a glimpse into the social and political factors that accompanied the attempted formation of a closed canon of the Bible in one ancient Christian setting. Christianity in fourthcentury Egypt was characterized by diverse and conflicting modes of social identity and spiritual formation: study groups led by charismatic teachers, Melitian communities centered around the veneration of martyrs, and the emerging structure of imperial orthodoxy headed by Athanasius all presented themselves as legitimate expressions of Christian piety. Within this complex setting, the formation of a biblical canon with a proper mode of interpretation was an important step in the formation of an official catholic church in Egypt with its parish-centered spirituality.

Lactantius, in his shrill polemical pamphlet De mortibus persecutorum, made the following observation while attacking his principal adversary, the emperor Galerius: “There was no mild punishment with him, not islands, not mines, not prisons; but fire, the cross, and wild beasts were daily and ready at hand.” More than a sign of the times, it is also a measure of his fury that Galerius could make exile, hard labor, and imprisonment seem to be lenient sentences. While one must resist succumbing immediately to credulity, one also must admit that even such hyperbole may have a kernel of truth in it. Lactantius probably assumed—as did many others—that the myriad adjustments to the complex relations between the church and the empire, which were in the process of being engineered by Constantine and his associates, would eliminate the need to inflict such punishments on Christians for religious reasons.

Within the large collection of ancient manuscripts at the University of Michigan there is a group of Coptic papyri which appears to have been a hoard or library of ancient magical texts. Produced by five copyists sometime in the fourth through seventh centuries and originating from a now unknown location in Egypt, the collection was brought to the British Museum by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge in February 1921 for restoration by C. T. Lamacraft; in August of that year, it underwent philological examination by the Coptic lexicographer Walter E. Crum, and was later forwarded to the University of Michigan.

In his introductory essay on the philosophical sources of The Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines points out a well-known contradiction between two conceptions of God in Maimonides' theology. On the one hand, Maimonides borrowed the Aristotelian definition of God as the intellect that cognizes itself; on the other, in line with Avicenna's Neoplatonic theory of attributes, Maimonides denied the possibility of saying anything positive about God. Pines proposes two possible solutions; first, that Maimonides was well aware of the contradiction, or, second, that he fell into the contradiction inadvertently. As Pines himself admits, however, neither solution is satisfactory.

The illustration on p. 483 was regrettably printed in incomplete form in issue 87:2 (p. 229). We apologize to the author and the readers for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused.