A common uncritical criticism claims that dogma robs humans of the freedom to think and act. This dogmatic pronouncement reflects a sad misunderstanding con-cerning the function and meaning of dogma. When countering the negative effects of this attack, a systematic theology cannot be coerced into a defensive position. Rather, theology must clearly and creatively think of how a precise determination of dogma can remain principally open to a plurality of both experiences and inter-pretations of those experiences. Fixed by the dogma, the referent of a religion is the subject that is experienced in each successive generation of a living religion; the life of the religion is constituted by the varied experiences of its referent. If the religion is to have flexible permanence, then the referent must be presented anew to each new generation in a way grounding the diverse possibilities of experienc-ing that same referent. Dogma should be formulated not to repress and suppress, but to make possible both true activity as the “concretion of freedom,”This term is rephrased from the title of an article by Christof Landmesser, “Freiheit als Konkretion von Wahrheit: Eine exegetische Skizze zum Lebensbezug des Evangeliums in der paulinischen Theologie,” in Befreiende Wahrheit: Festschrift für Eilert Herms (ed. Wilfried Härle, Matthias Heesch, and Reiner Preul; MThSt 60; Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000) 39–56. and true thinking that can only take place in freedom.

No sooner does the Abraham of Genesis arrive in Canaan than the narrator informs us that “the Canaanite was then in the land” (Gen 12:6). Yet immediately God an-nounces his intention to give this land to Abraham's descendants (v. 7). From the outset of the Abraham narrative, the divine promise of nationhood and territory is haunted by the presence of the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan. Though mostly a silent feature of the landscape, they emerge from time to time to encounter and threaten the first family.

In 1974 I published a paper arguing that behind the pseudepigraphic presenta-tions of the religious experiences attributed to apocalyptic seers by the Jewish apocalypses of the Second Temple period, there lay a kernel of actual visionary activity or analogous religious experience.Michael E. Stone, “Apocalyptic, Vision, or Hallucination?” Milla Wa Milla 14 (1974) 47–56; repr. in Selected Studies in Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha with Special Reference to the Armenian Tradition (SVTP 9; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991) 419–28. This was not the regnant view then. Indeed, it had long been a prevalent opinion of scholarship that pseudepigraphic apocalypses are in some sense forgeries and that they present completely fictitious narratives about their claimed authors, with no roots in reality. The actual course of historical happenings might be presented in a symbolic vision, often culminating in prediction, but the framework, the seer, and his doings or feelings (there are no women among the supposed authors) are fictional. At most, the pseudepigraphic framework may hint at the general circumstances in which the work was composed. A Baruch or Jeremiah work about the destruction of the First Temple might well have been written after the destruction of the Second, but that had to be proved on other grounds than correspondence between the fictional situation and that of the author. (Indeed, the book of Baruch was not written in the context of the destruction of the Temple, nor the Qumran Jeremiah Apocryphon.) Scholars regarded words and actions ascribed to the pseudepigraphic author as fiction.In fact, this is an oversimplification. 4 Ezra was written after the destruction, but despite the overall temporal congruity, the framework is not a full one-for-one equivalence. Though the temporal framework can be shown, on various grounds, to be roughly accurate, we hesitate to say the book was written in Rome because the author says he was writing in Babylon; see 4 Ezra3:1 and Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia; Min-neapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 1990) 10. Moreover, they often maintained that pseudepigraphic apocalypses were forwarding one or another particular and partisan viewpoint, and using a literary fiction to do so.

In the chapter on “Shaftesbury and Spinoza” in his monumental biography of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey makes a puzzling claim. Not only does he identify the Earl of Shaftesbury, along with Spinoza, as one of Schleiermacher's most significant influences, he does this in a way that suggests that Shaftesbury may actually have had the greater weight. This assertion is surprising enough. More perplexing still is that Dilthey offers almost nothing by way of concrete evidence to back it up. Instead, he presents only a general account of Shaftesbury as the leading representative in eighteenth-century German thought of what he calls “pantheistic monism.” According to Dilthey, it was in this manner that Shaftesbury “everywhere prepared the way” for what would eventually become the widespread acceptance of Spinoza later in the century and would lead ultimately to Schleiermacher's own enterprise.Wilhelm Dilthey, Leben Schleiermachers (ed. Hermann Mulert; 2d ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1922) 1:174.

Scholarly treatments of the Christian Socialist movement, which gained a modest notoriety in the United Kingdom from 1848 to 1854, invariably draw attention to the resolute political conservatism of its spiritual leader, Frederick Denison Maurice.See, for example, Gilbert Clive Binyon, The Christian Socialist Movement in England: An Introduction to the Study of Its History (London: SPCK, 1931); Olive J. Brose, Frederick Deni-son Maurice: Rebellious Conformist (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1971); Torben Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism 1848–1854 (Universitetsforlaget I Aarhus, 1962); Frank Maudlin McClain, Maurice: Man and Moralist (London: SPCK, 1972); Edward Norman, The Victorian Christian Socialists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) esp. 1–34; Charles E. Raven, Christian Socialism 1848–1854 (London: MacMillan and Co., 1920); and David Young, F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Maurice's self-confessed “anti-democratical heresies,”The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice Chiefly Told in His Own Letters (ed. Frederick Maurice; 4th ed.; London: Macmillan and Co., 1885) 2:136. his unflagging concern to defend the institutions of monarchy and aristocracy, and his near pathological dread of social programs are taken to be indicative of a “monumental conservatism”Brose, Rebellious Conformist, xv. that ruined his close relationship with his key colleague John LudlowJohn Ludlow (1821–1911) was arguably the initial political inspiration for Christian Socialist movement. He equipped Maurice with an understanding of cooperative groups. Though less theo-logically-minded than Maurice, Ludlow was the other major public voice of Christian Socialism from 1848 to 1854. and thereby ensured the movement's rapid demise. This paper does not attempt to overturn entirely such an assessment of Maurice, but it does seek to complicate matters significantly by way of a critical analysis of Politics for the PeoplePolitics for the People, Nos. 1–17 (London: John W. Parker, 1848). (1848) and Tracts on Christian SocialismTracts on Christian Socialism, Nos. 1–7 (London: George Bell, 1850); Tracts on Christian Socialism, No. 8 (London: John James Bezer, 1850). (1850–1851)—two populist journals that attempted to spread the gospel of Christian socialism to both the English working classes and Anglican clergy. I argue that while often endorsing conservative political values“Conservative” is, of course, a term with meanings relative to context. To call Maurice politi-cally “conservative” is to acknowledge his basic unwillingness to countenance a large-scale political reorganization of English society. Maurice showed little interest in a redistribution of wealth or government ownership of the means of production; nor did he believe that the basic socio-economic structures of English society—such as class—should undergo change. there was also a subversive dimension to Maurice's thought that recent commentators have not appreciated. This subversiveness proceeded from a theological basis: a powerful and imaginative anthropology that conceived of all human beings as sharing in the infinite goodness of Christ, not the corruptive sin of Adam. Cast in political terms, this anthropology enabled Maurice to propose that radical changes to English society might begin in unexpected ways, animated by agency of the marginalized, the downcast, and the disenfranchised. In light of the solidarity of all in Christ, church affiliation, class status, gender, and the like were no barriers to an individual inaugurating the transformation of English society. Anyone could challenge the competitive principle of political economy and promote the Christian ideal of cooperation.

Newly discovered ancient manuscripts of previously unknown texts found in a fragmentary, disordered, and incomplete state present challenges to modern scholars seeking to restore, conserve, and study them. The first order of business is the ordering of the disordered pages, if possible. Restoring page sequence is, in effect, reconstructing their original order in the ancient codex, from which sheets and leaves were detached, by accident or by design. Restoring page sequence cannot be accomplished apart from making a provisional transcrip-tion and translation of the fragments. A final critical transcription of the ancient text and its translation into a modern language, however, await the codicological reconstruction of the manuscript, for page sequence affects how a text is understood and hence translated. The process might popularly be described as trying to reconstruct a multilayered multisided jigsaw puzzle, lacking most of its pieces. The recently published Gospel of the Savior (P. Berol. inv. 22220, hereafter GSav) is one such previously unknown text, and its reconstruc-tion proceeded in precisely the manner described above.

The Tosefta reads: “If a person found a ring on which was the image of the sun, the image of the moon, the image of a dragon (snake), he should bring it to the Dead Sea. And also a nursing female image () and Sarapis.”tos. ‘Abod. Zar. 5(6):1 (ed. Moshe Shemouel Zuckermandel, 468). The term follows MS Erfurt, while the version in MS Vienna is . The latter is preferable. This passage in the Tosefta almost certainly belongs to the second century C.E. Although this dictum is unattributed in the Tosefta, b. [Abod. Zar. states that R. Judah taught the baraita concerning the nursing female image or Sarapis (see b. ‘Abod. Zar. 43a, and Shraga Abramson, Tractate ‘Abodah Zarah of the Babylonian Talmud [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America] 77). “R. Judah” is R. Judah bar Ilai, a fourth-generation Tanna, who was active in the Land of Israel in the Usha genera-tion (second century C.E.). Each component of this intriguing passage in the Tosefta deserves close examination; the current article will reexamine the phrase a “nursing female image,” and attempt to identify the two pagan characters repre-sented by this cryptic wording. Saul Lieberman, one of the leading scholars who attempted to answer this question, was of the opinion that this phrase refers to Isis nursing her son Horus (“Harpocrates” in Greek).Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962) 136. Actually, he was not the first to note the connection between the nursing female image and Isis. See Isidore Lévy, “Nébo, Hadaran et Sérapis dans l'apologie du Pseudo-Meliton,” RHR 20 (1899) 373 n. 6; Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (London: Luzac, 1903; repr., Jerusalem: Horev, 1985) 103, s.v. “ ,”; Heinrich Blaufuss, Götter, Bilder und Symbole nach den Traktaken über fremden Dienst (Nuremberg: Buchdruckerei von J. L. Stich, 1910) 19; Jacob Levy, Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim (vol. 3; Berlin: Harz, 1924) col. 107a. Because the pair Isis-Sarapis was extremely common during the time of the Roman empire and especially in the second century C.E., the listing of Sarapis after the “nursing female image” probably led Lieberman to conclude that this character can be none other than Isis.Plutarch, De Isi. et Osi. 28.361 and many more. For the affinity between Isis and Sarapis, already in the Hellenistic period, see Robert Turcan, Les cultes orientaux dans le monde romain (2d rev. ed.; Paris: Les belles lettres, 1992) 78–79. Furthermore, Isis nursing Horus (Isis Lactans) is a quite well-known motif in Hellenistic-Roman sculpture.Roger Packman Hinks, “Isis Suckling Horus,” The British Museum Quarterly 12 (1937–1938) 74–75; John Ducey Cooney, “Harpocrates, the Dutiful Son,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (1972) 284–90; Vincent Tran Tam Tinh, Isis Lactans—Corpus des monuments gréco-romains d'Isis allaitant Harpocrate (EPRO 37; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); idem, “De nouveau Isis Lactans,” in Hommages à M. J. Vermaseren (EPRO 68; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978) 3:1231–68, pls. 226–49, figs. 1–56. The expression, the “nursing female image,” usually refers to Isis nursing her son Horus; however, on occasion we see Isis nursing the bull Apis. See G. J. F. Kater-Sibbes and Marteen J. Vermaseren, Apis I (EPRO 48; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975) no. 106; no. 141, pl. 81. According to the BT interpretation of the baraita, it is proven that the nursing female image to which R. Judah bar Ilai referred is that of a woman nursing her son. See ‘Abod. Zar. 43a; Rashi ad loc., s.v. meniqah: “A woman nursing a son.” It may also be noted that in the first century C.E., men commonly wore rings bearing depictions of Harpocrates and Egyptian gods. See Shua Amorai-Stark, “Isis in the Art of Gems of the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” Ph.D. diss. (Hebrew), Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988, 13 (primary sources). Lieberman concluded from this that Isis, like Sarapis, is “specifically mentioned” in Rabbinic literature.Lieberman, Hellenism, 136. Although this assertion would be correct regarding Sarapis, who is mentioned by name both in the Tosefta and in the Babylonian Talmud,b. ‘Abod. Zar. 43a. In this source, the tradition regarding the nursing female image and Sarapis is transmitted by R. Judah bar Ilai (see above, n.1). The fact that R. Judah taught this exegesis is apparently a further proof that the tradition of the nursing female image originated in the Egyp-tian cults, since R. Judah bar Ilai was known to be a sage who possessed a number of traditions pertaining to Egypt and its religions. See Gen. Rab. 87 (ed. Judah Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, 1071–72); Cant. Rab. 1:1 (ed. Shimshon Dunsky, 1). For a theoretical and historical interpretation of this tradition, see Samuel Tobias Lachs, “An Egyptian Festival in Canticles Rabba,” JQR 46 (1960) 47–54. For other traditions relating to Egypt that were transmitted by R. Judah, see tos. Kip-purim 2:5 (ed. Lieberman, 231–32); y. Yoma 6:6, 43(d); tos. Sukkah 4:6 (ed. Lieberman, 273–74). It is our opinion that R. Judah's frame of reference for the nursing female image is not Egypt, but rather the Land of Israel. R. Judah's halakhic stance on this issue almost certainly derives from the fact that the nursing female image comprised a quite common and widespread religious-ritual phenomenon in the second century C.E. Gentile community in the Land of Israel, as reflected in Rabbinic literature. We will show (below) that the cult of Isis Lactans did not exist in the Land of Israel in the Roman period. the name “Isis” and similar theophoric names, such as ’ and ’, are absent from Rabbinic literature.