Adorno's late work has often been compared to negative theology, yet there is little serious discussion of this comparison in the secondary literature.1 In most of the existing discussions virtually nothing is said about negative theology, as if it is obvious what it is and what the parallels with Adorno's ideas are. The truth is that negative theology is not self-evident, and neither are the parallels with Adorno at all obvious. To find out what they are would require a detailed account of both. In this article I shall make a start in this direction.

In his recent book, Seth Schwartz explores “[t]he tension between egalitarian solidarity and competitive reciprocity” in the late Second Temple period and in rabbinic Judaism.1 As Schwartz's characterization of reciprocity implies, it stands at odds with egalitarianism because exchange, outside the boundaries of the market, is ordinarily structured by asymmetry, and thus by the hierarchical relationships of patronage and dependence.2 For Schwartz, Judaism's “natural” proclivity, at least as enshrined in the Torah, is toward egalitarian solidarity. To obviate the need for the “dependence-generating gift,” the Torah mandates wealth transfer to the poor through charitable donation (leaving unharvested the corner of one's field, etc.). Charity, unlike the gift, does not generate the obligation to reciprocate: “[t]he pauper, like the priest, is meant to feel no gratitude—at least not toward the donor.”3 Given this innate preference for solidarity, the problem for late antique Judaism in a patronage-dominated Mediterranean society lay specifically in “how to come to terms, Jewishly, with the practical inevitability of social institutions founded on reciprocal exchange.”4

The question of how much apocryphal Gospels were rebutted, suppressed or even destroyed in antiquity is a question of perennial interest, both popular and scholarly. The present article makes no attempt at any sort of complete answer to this question, but has the rather more modest aim of analyzing the various testimonia—from antiquity into the middle ages—that make explicit reference to a “Gospel of Thomas.” This article will not touch on the numerous allusions to, or quotations of, the contents of this Gospel, but will be confined to treatments of the title (hence “named testimonia”). The impetus for this particular investigation is of course the presence, at the end of the second tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex II, of a colophon reading “The Gospel according to Thomas.”1 Given the controversial contents of this Gospel, and the equally controversial place that it occupies in scholarly reconstructions of Christian origins, Thomas's reception in antiquity has been widely discussed since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices (see n. 2 below).

The Apologies of Justin Martyr are among our most important sources for the state and development of early Christianity in the second century. In the Apologies, Justin, who is often said to have initiated the first serious dialogue between Christianity and Greco-Roman philosophy, attempts to define and explain to the outside world what the Christian teaching and way of life are, and what they are not. Because of this normative tenor of the writings, modern readers sometimes tend to approach their content as more-or-less timeless articulations that are only vaguely connected to the historical circumstances in which they were written. But as with most writings from antiquity, the content of Justin's Apologies, including questions of theology, philosophy, and ethics, is intimately bound to their historical context, as recent scholarship on Justin has shown very well. However, the historical questions of the literary genre, intended audience, occasion, and purpose of the Apologies are still debated among scholars, including the question of the exact relationship between the First and the Second Apology. To critically deal with these questions, all of which are interrelated, is of utmost importance for our understanding of Justin Martyr and his writings, and thus of second-century Christianity in general.

Hubert Wolf's subtle and understated book shows that the writing of good history requires access to good sources. In 2006 Benedict XVI opened to researchers all files in the Vatican Secret Archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XI (February 1922 to February 1939). This is a vast cache: by Wolf's estimate, it includes about 100,000 “archival units, each containing up to a thousand pages” (17). Of course Wolf could not examine all or even much of this enormous collection, but he saw enough to present what he calls a “double perspective” on relations between the Vatican and Germany in the prewar years of National Socialist rule: “the view from Rome and the consultations within the Vatican about German affairs” (18). By sticking close to his sources Wolf uncovers many surprises and reveals that the devil in its modern, totalitarian guise is, as ever, in the details.