“‘The fashion nowadays is to speak of the God in the heart and the God in the Universe.’ ‘Is it the same God?’ ‘Leave it at that,’ said Peter. ‘We don't know. All the waste and muddle in religion is due to people arguing and asserting that they are the same, that they are different but related, or that they are different but opposed. And so on and so on.’ & But the name of God was to Oswald a name battered out of all value and meaning.” So Mr. H. G. Wells, in “Joan and Peter,” muses over the present floating theology, where everybody talks about God, and nobody knows what anybody else is talking about. Mr. Wells himself has done his share of the battering, too. If scrupulous scholars of today have difficulty in determining the meaning of ‘Messiah’ and ‘Lord’ in the beginnings of Christianity, what will the twenty-fifth-century scholars think of the term ‘God’ as used in the twentieth? It is curious, though, that along with this confusion of meaning — in fact the thing which itself adds most to the confusion — is an assumption that ‘God’ is “a distinct and familiar kind of entity, like a dragon or centaur; its existence alone being problematical” (Perry, “Approach to Philosophy,” pp. 108 f.). As a matter of fact, what is now problematical, every time we read the word ‘God,’ is what that word means to the man who has written it. Of course it is a large concept, vague around the edges, and variable with varying moods; but what is central and constant in it? Supposing one says that God suffers, or that God cannot suffer, one needs to have some fairly clear idea what it primarily is that suffers or cannot suffer. We can argue indefinitely and disagree eternally about what qualities God has, unless at least we can agree on a primary definition of the subject — what we mean by God in the first place. Several such primary definitions are now current: it is our purpose here to suggest that Christian theology at any rate, and probably most of our theism, tends to a use of one of these, and that it would be well to use it more clearly, consciously, and consistently in the future.

In an article entitled “Recent Tendencies in Roman Catholic Theology,” in the number of this Review for July 1922, Dr. George La Piana has criticised my interpretation of the history of mediaeval philosophy.

My fundamental thesis is that in the thirteenth century there is a distinction between philosophy and theology, and that philosophy has an autonomous value. For Dr. La Piana, on the contrary, there is properly speaking no “consistent and independent philosophical system” (p. 251). Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, and a view such as mine is an artificial construction, abandoned by mediaevalists, and in process of disintegration.

The interpretation of these verses and the textual problem which they involve has long been disputed among critics. With the ordinary text the difficulty begins with the word ἐμβριμησάμενος in vs. 43. It means ‘scolding,’ or ‘rebuking,’ and no reason can be seen for Jesus' adopting this attitude towards the man whom he had just healed. The matter becomes even more complicated if the variant readings in verse 41 be considered. The ordinary texts read σπλαγχνισθείς, ‘having compassion on him,’ but one of the earliest, Codex Bezae, reads ὀργισθείς, ‘being angry with him,’ or perhaps more accurately, ‘being in a passion,’ although nothing in the story explains why Jesus should have been in a passion with the unfortunate leper. With this agree several old Latin codices. It seems probable that ὀργισθείς is the original reading; it certainly is “hard,” and there was no reason why σπλαγχνισθείς should be changed to it, though the reverse change is not difficult to understand. Perhaps the explanation can be found in the punctuation. I suggest that it should be punctuated and translated as follows: ‘And there came to him a leper beseeching him and kneeling and saying to him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean; and he [the leper] put out his hand in a passion of rage and touched him. And he [Jesus] said, I will, be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was clean. And he rebuked him and immediately drove him out.’

The Acts of Phileas and Philoromus are often cited among the more authentic documents which we possess for the persecution of Diocletian. As such they are included in Ruinart's “Acta martyrum sincera” and Knopf's “Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten.” Delehaye classes them with his third group of hagiographic sources, that is, with those accounts which are drawn either from the procès-verbaux or from the reports of eyewitnesses. Harnack, Tillemont, Allard, Le Blant, and Mason are likewise convinced of their historical credibility.

In the number of this Review for January 1921, Dr. George La Piana discussed, in the light of the most recent discoveries at Rome, the several hypotheses which have been put forward in regard to the ancient tradition connected with the church of San Sebastiano at Rome. He there controverts the view proposed in my Petrus und Paulus in Rom (1915) that a translation of the relics of Peter and Paul to the Catacumbae, that is to the site of the later basilica of San Sebastiano, took place on June 29, 258, and defends the opinion, held also by eminent archaeologists in Rome, that what took place ad Catacumbas in the year 258 was only the establishment of a memorial festival in honor of the two apostles. His acute argument skilfully detects the weak points of my position, and at the same time contains so much that is new as to give me a welcome opportunity for a reëxamination of the evidence.

Folio 504 of Codex Bezae, containing part of Acts, chap. 21, has suffered mutilation by an irregular tear, or cut, so that on the Latin side a part of verse 7, the whole of verses 8 and 9, and a part of verse 10 are now lacking; correspondingly, on the Greek side a part of verse 16, the whole of verse 17, and a part of verse 18 have been destroyed. Fortunately, however, the manuscript was examined at dates when the mutilation was less extensive than at present, and from the reports still preserved the contents of the lost portion of the Greek can be recovered with almost complete certainty. In the Latin lacuna the results are less satisfactory.

Kakuso Okakura died in Japan September 2, 1913. He was an “Admirable Crichton” in his way, a man of vast learning, which covered both sides of the world. He was graduated from the Tokio University in 1880 with honors in philosophy and English literature, to which he might have added honors in Oriental philosophy and literature had not the drift of education in Japan at that time been all in the direction of the Occident. He always kept in close touch with the Occidental world, and was for ten years the head of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1901–1906 the publishing office of Hubert Welter in Paris issued a new edition of the well-known “Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio,” edited in 1759–1798 by J. D. Mansi. This “new Mansi” is a mere reprint, which allowed no correction or enlargement of Mansi's text, the pages being reproduced almost photographically. Did the publisher of this reprinted Mansi and his advisers give a “testimonium paupertatis” to modern scholars, by thus reproducing a collection which appeared one hundred and fifty years ago? Not in the least. The modern manner of editing ancient texts was rather recognized than disregarded by assuming that a really new edition of Mansi's collection was impossible. It was indeed quite impossible; for while all scholars who have made use of Mansi's collection have perceived its defects, yet at the same time they have seen that to correct them would require more time than can be spent on a new edition.

In spite of the fact that Singer, Epstein, and, somewhat later, Charles, and Schechter have dealt with the Book of Jubilees, no apology is required for attempting to study it from a somewhat new angle. It is well known that much light can be thrown on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha by a comparison with rabbinic sources. It may be true that the Jewish traditions were not compiled till a comparatively late date, and that they were probably put in writing still later, yet much that is contained in them is of very ancient origin, and the authorities in whose names statements are quoted are a help, if not an infallible index, to fixing their date. Especially the Book of Jubilees must be viewed in the light thrown upon it by the Talmud and kindred sources, since it was doubtless written in Hebrew, contains numerous laws and allusions to Agadic statements, and presents generally the appearance of a targum or a midrash.

By the death, on November 22, 1921, of Émile Boutroux, France lost one of her most distinguished sons; the world, a mind of rare philosophic insight and power. Born, July 28, 1845, in a period of materialism and scientific dogmatism, Boutroux was a courageous and far-seeing leader, recalling men to the life of the spirit, and to a true estimate of the human soul.

In spite of all the volumes written about the Synod of Dort, one looks in vain for a comparison between the condemned Remonstrants and Calvin, either in doctrine or in those other distinguishing features of the Calvinism that flowed from Calvin and Geneva, and formed the working program among Huguenots, Dutch, Scotch, English, and the descendants of all four in the American colonies.

A new and not unfruitful stage in the literary criticism of the gospels seems to be marked by the recent publication in Germany of three important books. For nearly a century the Synoptic problem has absorbed the attention of scholars. The fascinating riddle of likeness and difference in our first three gospels challenged them to find a solution. It became clear that this was a question of written sources, and for many minds the “two-document hypothesis,” that Mark and some other common written Greek material (Q) are embodied independently in Matthew and in Luke, has come to provide a working basis of investigation, although the categorical denial of this view by the Papal Biblical Commission makes it impossible for Roman Catholic scholars to accept it in its current form. There remain, however, the question of other Greek sources, as, for example, the sources for Mark's and for Luke's special material, and the question of the possibility of Semitic originals, on which no conclusion has been attained and on which perhaps more light may soon be expected from further studies.

Jesus Of Nazareth. His Times, His Life, And His Teachings. By Joseph Klausner, Jerusalem, 1922.

The author of this Life of Jesus is a well-known scholar, who has written much, especially in Hebrew periodicals such as “Ha-Shiloh,” of which he became editor in 1903. To Christian scholars he is best known by “Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten” (Berlin, 1904), a work distinguished to its advantage from the ordinary literature on the subject by the limitation of its field to a definite period, the first two centuries of the Christian era, and to sources recognized as authoritative. In that volume he showed himself amply acquainted with the modern Christian literature on Jewish messianic beliefs and expectations. In his Life of Jesus the same familiarity with New Testament criticism and discussion, down to the most recent, and with writings that deal at large or incidentally with the life and teaching of Jesus, appears on every page. It is, as he says, the first time that a Jewish scholar, writing in Hebrew and primarily for Jewish readers, has attempted to present the life of Jesus in the light of historical criticism and with the methods of the modern historian; previous lives of Jesus in Hebrew having been written either for the purpose of converting Jews to Christianity or of combating this propaganda.

Baeck's “Wesen des Judentums” first appeared in 1905, in the notable series issued by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, a modest brochure of 167 pages. In the new edition it has grown to nearly double its original size. The conception of the task, general plan of the work, and method of treatment remain unchanged; but within this framework it is largely a new book. Especially the second part, on the Ideas of Judaism, has been completely rewritten and greatly expanded, giving evidence throughout of recurrent occupation with the subject and maturing reflection. The book is written primarily for Jewish readers, but I know of no book to which any one who seriously wants to know what Judaism is to those who know it best can more confidently be sent for an answer. The author gives neither a history nor a theology — still less an apology — but an exposition and an appreciation of the character of the religion, and of its constitutive ideas, under the heads, Faith in God, and Faith in Men (ourselves, others, mankind as a whole), concluding with a chapter on the Maintenance of Judaism. The treatment is marked by philosophic breadth and insight, combined with a fine art of presentation. One whose calling requires him to read many books, and who has suffered more than his due from authors who seem to think that their reputation or the importance of their matter licenses them to write in a prose that neither gods, men, nor publishers ought to tolerate, may be pardoned for emphasizing his appreciation of a volume which he has read not only with profit but with delight.