In the first volume of A History of Greek Philosophy W. K. C. Guthrie points out that “the promulgators of teletai in the name of Orpheus were concerned in the religious sphere with the same problem of the relation between the One and the Many which in a different form was the problem of the Milesian philosophers.” Elsewhere Guthrie provides a more detailed explanation of the similarities and differences between the Orphic and the Milesian treatment of the One-Many problem:

Sixth-century religious and philosophical thought … was dominated by one central problem, the problem of the One and the Many. This appeared in two forms, one referring to the macrocosm, the other to the microcosm. In its first form it was the problem of the Milesian natural philosophers, who asked: “What is the relation between the manifold variety of the world in which we live and the one primary substance out of which, as we are convinced, it must in the first place have arisen?” In its second form it was the problem of the religious minds of the age. Their question was: “What is the relation of each individual man to the divine, to which we feel we are akin, and how can we best realize and actualize the potential unity which underlies the two?”

“‘… for I will pass through the midst of you,’ says Yahweh”

In commenting on this verse, most scholars have understood Amos's image of Yahweh passing through the midst of the people Israel as an allusion to his passing through Egypt. They make reference in this regard to Exod 12:12:

For I will pass through (we ʿābarû) the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am Yahweh.

The publication of any work from Qumran is a great event for anyone who is interested in the DSS; far more is this the case when the work is a long and important one. Shirot Olat HaShabbath (ShirShabb) is such a long and important work, being preserved in no less than eight MSS from Qumran cave 4, one MS from Qumran cave 11, and one MS from Masada. Before the discoveries in the Judaean Desert this work was completely unknown.

We should like to have Josephus's history of the Jews from the great revolt to the thirteenth year of Domitian (Ant. 20.267), if he ever managed to write such a work. Since we do not have it, we are compelled to depend on a few scattered references in Josephus and other writers, and on our ingenuity, for our knowledge of Jewish political history after August 70. Nonetheless, the first few years of the period after 70 are slightly less obscure than the succeeding years because we possess, in book 7 of Josephus's Bellum Iudaicum, an account, albeit sketchy, of the aftermath of the revolt. It is therefore somewhat surprising that book 7, with the exception of the Masada episode (252–406), has been neglected by modern scholarship. Those scholars who have discussed the book at all have limited their comments to general statements on the book's poor style, unusual in Bell., or its date of composition. In fact, Bell. 7 is problematic throughout. In the first part of the book, until Titus's return to Rome (119), Josephus introduces extraneous material into its main account with exceptional crudeness.

The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) has long been recognized as an exponent of a new science of society. However, scholars of his thought have given scant attention to at least one important aspect of that science: the relationship between the metaphysical presuppositions of his social science and his view on religion. Rarely is it considered that Bentham's aspiration to create a science of society in emulation of physical science was fundamental to his critique of religion just as it was to all other areas of his thought. This critique of religion was set out principally in a series of works written between the years 1809 and 1823. Swear Not at All was published in 1817, and followed a year later, after earlier efforts were aborted in 1809 and 1813, by Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined. The Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind appeared in 1822 and Not Paul, but Jesus in 1823. It was not merely a coincidence that in the very period when Bentham devoted so much of his time to religion his work on metaphysics and logic substantially reached fruition. The “Book on Logic,” on which Bentham worked at intervals between 1811 and 1821, was intended to give a full description of his “method.” The work was never completed but was eventually edited and included in several fragments in John Bowring's edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay on “Nomography” with an appendix on “Logical Arrangements, or Instruments of Invention and Discovery Employed by Jeremy Bentham” is included in the third volume, and in the eighth volume is to be found the “Essay on Logic,” “A Fragment on Ontology,” the “Essay on Language,” and the “Fragments on Universal Grammar.” The metaphysics described in these essays by Bentham was initially developed by him during the formative years of his intellectual life in the early 1770s, and he was always aware of its particular consequences in the field of religion.

In December 1916 David Goldstein, Catholic convert and former Jewish socialist cigarmaker, approached Boston's Cardinal William Henry O'Connell with a novel plan. Goldstein wanted to deliver lectures on Catholicism from a custom-built Model-T Ford on Boston Common. A little over a year later, across the Atlantic, Vernon Redwood, a transplanted tenor from New Zealand, asked Francis Cardinal Bourne of Westminster for permission to speak on behalf of the church in Hyde Park. Both Goldstein and Redwood received episcopal approval and Boston's Catholic Truth Guild and London's Catholic Evidence Guild were born. The emergence of these two movements marked a new epoch in the history of the Roman Catholic laity in the English-speaking world. The fact that the lay evangelist appeared on the scene during the First World War and in the aftermath of the Vatican condemnations of Americanism (1899) and Modernism (1907), actions generally assumed to have dampened the spirit of individual initiative in the church, renders them all the more illuminating to scholars of modern Catholicism. Goldstein and Redwood both exemplified and encouraged the new assertiveness which began to characterize a growing number of the American and English laity by the First World War. They call our attention to a significant shift in the self-identity of the lay population which came to fruition during the period between the World Wars, a shift which prompted even tenors and cigarmakers to mount the public pulpit.

The current disarray within the field of theology is readily apparent to anyone having even a cursory acquaintance with the issues and problems that have generated the most intense discussions during the past decade. Although substantive issues continue to elicit divergent perspectives, problems of method have increasingly come to the fore in theological discussion. The historical roots of this methodological crisis in theology have been long in the making. Whether one calls it the “eclipse of biblical narrative” with Hans Frei, the collapse of the “house of authority” as Edward Farley does, or the emergence of “theology as imaginative construction” as Gordon Kaufman does, theology is experiencing a radical revolution in the criteria and warrants which characterize persuasive argumentation. Put briefly, there is a growing sentiment that theology can no longer invoke authorities to buttress its claims but must make its case in a public forum without privileged warrants. Appeals to Scripture, tradition, or institutional decrees lack the sanction once accorded them.