In 1907, Édouard Dhorme first associated the term 'ēd in Gen. 2:6 with Sumerian id, “the cosmic river.” This identification accords well with the presumed Mesopotamian background to the Yahwistic creation account, and so has enjoyed wide acceptance. The term, as was quickly recognized, also occurs in Job 36:27 with similar force. That this name for the cosmic river was normally pronounced id in Akkadian as well as Sumerian is shown from syllabic spellings, so that the loan into Hebrew offers no linguistic difficulties. In the Mesopotamian materials, a primary function of id, the (divine) River, was, as is well known, to serve as judge in certain legal cases. Trial by river ordeal was a widespread phenomenon, in which the accused was plunged into the river, where his success in withstanding the rushing waters was supposed to determine his guilt or innocence.

Leo XIII's letter Testem Benevolentiae was the culmination of a tumultuous period in American Catholic history which may be designated as beginning with the deliberations of Baltimore III in 1884. The issues which tore at the spirit of episcopal fraternity during this period were varied and complex. Although certain groups of prelates might be labeled as conservative and others as progressive, e.g., Bishops McQuaid and Corrigan as opposed to Bishops Ireland, Gibbons, and Keane, John Lancaster Spalding had a foot sometimes in one camp and sometimes in the other, but rarely both feet in either camp at the same time.

There have been two principal ways of comparing Paul with Judaism, each of which has suffered from characteristic defects. One has been holistic in a certain sense. Taking “Paul” to be essentially represented by the doctrine of justification by faith and “Judaism” to be essentially represented by works righteousness, many Christian scholars have understood Paul and Judaism as antithetical. The characteristic weakness of this sort of comparison is that Paul is oversimplified, Judaism is both oversimplified and misrepresented, and the comparison is made in order to show the superiority of Paul to Judaism. That is, such comparisons have generally been pejorative and biased. The other principal method has resulted in more of a genuine comparison. Instead of dealing with generalized essences, this approach concentrates on individual motifs. It may properly be called atomistic, although the term Motivsgeschichte might better describe the method. Those who have followed this approach have generally answered the question of whether or not there is a positive relationship between Paul and Judaism affirmatively. The characteristic weakness of this approach — and this is a much less serious weakness than that of the other approach — is that a conclusion about some of the parts may lead too quickly to a conclusion about the whole. One may, for example, learn a great deal about the relation of what Paul says about Adam to Adamic speculation in Judaism without being able to determine whether or not Paul's religion was basically Jewish. As David Flusser has seen, building blocks from one edifice may be used to put together quite a different construction. Seeing the similarity, or even the identity, of some of the stones should not lead one to conclude that the building is the same. Thus a comparison of the two wholes as represented by their generalized essences generally goes awry, but the same may also be true of a comparison of any number of parts. Is there any way around this difficulty?

There is a good deal of very interesting material preserved in the Armenian tradition belonging to the general category of Canon Lists. Some of this has been published and some not; very little of it has been translated into European languages. The series of studies of which the present note is the first will make available in a single place some of the most interesting of those lists which have been published in Armenian, as well as certain new materials recently discovered in the manuscript traditions. The translations and notes, it is hoped, will make this material readily accessible to scholars concerned with Canon Lists and the Biblical Canon.

There has never been a form-critical study of 2 Clement. Because of this, conclusions concerning its Gattung have varied considerably. Harnack and Goodspeed, for example, have argued that 2 Clement is in the form of a letter, and beyond that, that it was sent by Bishop Soter of Rome (c. 166–74) to Corinth. Contrary to this position, Lightfoot, Knopf, and Windisch, among others, have argued that it is either a sermon or a homily. Although in recent years this latter position has been readily accepted, it always appears as an assertion without support, form-critical or otherwise.