On 31 October 2001, Professor Michael Welker delivered the Horace De Y. Lentz Memorial Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School. The founding bequest of the triennial lectureship specifies that “some outstanding Christian priest, minister or layman” should speak “upon the inspiring things he may discern in the words: ‘Christo et Ecclesiae’ which appear upon the Harvard Seal.” An edited transcript of Professor Welker's lecture follows.*The author is grateful to Dr. John Hoffmeyer for translating this lecture, and to Dr. Gene McGarry for his editorial assistance.

While it is de rigueur for commentators to contrast the epistle of James with the epistles of Paul on matters of faith and works,E.g., Martin Dibelius, James (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 174–80; Ralph P. Martin, James (WBC 48; Waco: Word, 1988) 82–84; cf. Richard Bauckham, James (New Testament Readings; London: Routledge, 1999) 113–40. it is often overlooked that both writers also found occasion to delve into the mysteries of “the human problem,” of how it is that sin corrupts human existence. In fact, comparison of the two reveals a number of basic similarities.For the latter, see, e.g., David E. Aune, “Two Pauline Models of the Person,” in The Whole and Divided Self (ed. David E. Aune and John McCarthy; New York: Crossroad, 1997) 89–114. They agree, for instance, that the failure of human moral experience is attributable to a struggle between competing elements of the human personality, a struggle understood to be in some fashion continuous with a more pervasive conflict between antithetical metaphysical realities, conceived in terms familiar from Jewish apocalypticism. Given this mutual impingement of the psychological and the cosmological, it follows for both authors that the inner structure of the human personality is susceptible to the deceiving, destructive power of certain quasi-personal entities (sin, flesh, desire) associated with supernatural evil, while the solution to this predicament resides in the possibility of participation in a reality that is determined by a divine victory over evil, again conceived in apocalyptic terms.

The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (TA) is an anonymous, Jewish and Christian dialogue situated in Alexandria during Cyril's episcopacy (412–444 C.E.). It is preserved in eight Greek manuscripts, the earliest of which is an eighth- or ninth-century C.E. palimpsest,manuscript R, whose underwriting is sparse and difficult to decipher. The remaining manuscripts fall into two groups: those preserving the longer form of TA, manuscripts P and O from the eleventh century and manuscript V from the twelfth, and a group of three shorter recensions: manuscript Z from the twelfth century, and manuscripts M and E from the fifteenth century. Robert Robertson identified an eighth witness to TA, manuscript A from the twelfth century, which preserves unacknowledged excerpts of TA previously believed to be a corrupt witness to Epiphanius's Weights and Measures. While Angelo Mai published the first excerpts of TA in 1843,Angelo Mai, “Praefatio: De Quodam Dialogo,” in Spicilegium Romanum 9 (Rome: Typis Collegii Urbani, 1843) xi–xiii. Mai described TA as “aetatis ambiguitas” and did not identify his manuscript source. He printed only a title, the first half of verse 1.1a, and the last 16 verses (57.4–20). Reprinted in PG 86.1.l.251–54. and F. C. Conybeare presented the first unabridged edition in 1898,F. C. Conybeare, The Dialogues of Athanasius and Zacchaeus and Timothy and Aquila (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Classical Series 8; Oxford: Clarendon, 1898). it was not until 1986 that Robertson established a critical edition.Robert G. Robertson, “The Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila: A Critical Text, Introduction to the Manuscript Evidence, and an Inquiry into the Sources and Literary Relationships” (Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986) 1–49, provides a text-critical analysis of TA's manuscripts. Sigla (except Z) and versification follow Robertson's edition. See Pastis, “Representations,” 29–67, for additional discussion of the manuscripts and for a description of manuscript Z (not included by Robertson). He identified two principal manuscript families in his stemma of manuscripts.Robertson, “A Critical Text,” 47. In the AOM family, A, O share an exemplar that is prior to and directly related to the exemplar of manuscript M. In the PVE family the exemplar of E is also prior to and directly related to the exemplar of P, V.Ibid., 19: “There is no question … that in many places the text of O is definitely superior to that of PV.” Further (p. 48), “In a substantial number of readings,however, E agrees with O (M) against PV, thus demonstrating that E's archetype had not yet suffered the corruptions exhibited by the exemplar of PV.” He tentatively placed manuscript R “near the center of the textual tradition, between the archetype of O(M) and PVE, probably no more than one step removed from (a) [the archetype of all manuscripts].”Ibid., 48. Thus according to Robertson, the most trustworthy witnesses to TA are R, O, and E.

In India the term “minorities” refers to religious communities present in much smaller numbers than Hindus—Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and Parsis/Zoroastrians. According to a 1991 census of India, out of the total Indian population of 846 million, there are 687.6 million Hindus of various sects, 101.6 million Muslims, 19.6 million Christians, 6.3 million Buddhists, 3.3 million Jains and 3.1 million adherents of other traditions. Christians are thus less than 3 percent of the total population whereas Hindus number about 83 percent. “Minorities” may also allude to those communities that have traditionally been kept outside the Hindu-based caste system—Dalits and Adivasis (or Tribals). Dalits number between 180 and 200 million and Adivasis number between 85 and 90 million in a population that has now crossed the one billion mark. While they are now included into the general category of Hinduism, these groups have been treated with overt hostility and repression, and have been the target of concerted and calculated attacks from the majority community. Christianity is also targeted violently and systematically in contemporary India, especially Christians who have been identified as Dalits and Adivasis. An analysis of the ideology and agenda of Hindu nationalism in an historical perspective will reveal the way in which the Dalits and Adivasis are perceived to present a threat to the fulfilment of this nationalist agenda. The Hinduization of India manifests itself with a propensity to eradicate all forms of variant plurality.

In two earlier articles published in Harvard Theological Review,“Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Justification,” HTR 74 (1981) 211–20, and “Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Repentance,” HTR 84 (1991) 59–74. I argued the thesis that the thought of Richard Hooker (1544–1600) represents a distinctive via media way of doing theology that immeasurably influenced what would later become known as “Anglicanism.” This thesis has recently been vigorously challenged by a certain group of scholars who constitute what may now well be regarded as a “new school” of Hooker interpretation.The leader of this new school is W. J. Torrance Kirby, whose revisionist interpretation is clearly set forth in Richard Hooker's Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1990) 33–37, 126–27; “Richard Hooker as an Apologist of the Magisterial Reformation in England,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (ed. Arthur Stephen McGrade; Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997) 220–23; and “Richard Hooker's Theory of Natural Law in the Context of Reformation Theology,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999) 681–703. See also Nigel Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason: Reformed Theologian of the Church of England (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster, 1997); and “Hooker's Theological Method and Modern Anglicanism,” Churchman 114 (2000) 40–70. These scholars argue that the via media understanding of Hooker's thought, along with his anachronistic association with what only much later became known as “Anglicanism,” were largely creations of “Catholicizing” leaders of the nineteenth-century High Church Oxford Movement—including Hooker's editor, John Keble, and most notably John Henry Newman in his pre-conversion Anglo-Catholic guise. These scholars then set forth their counterthesis that Hooker is to all intents and purposes a faithful English exponent of all the basic “orthodox” doctrines of the Magisterial Reformers, namely, Luther and especially Calvin.

A visit in November 1999 to libraries in Boston and Cambridge in order to view Greek manuscripts of the New Testament yielded two groups comprising a total of six manuscripts not—so far as we are aware—widely known. The purpose of this article is to offer a description of the manuscripts, with an account of what we have been able to discover about them.