When William James launched into the Gifford Lectures of 1901, he admitted to his Edinburgh audience a certain feeling of trepidation. Those lectures, which he would later publish as The Varieties of Religious Experience, evoked in James a sense of consternation because, as he remarked on the occasion, he was neither a theologian, nor a historian of religion, nor an anthropologist. “Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed,” James pleaded.

In the history of Western Christianity — and hence, to a large extent, in the history of Western culture — the Apostle Paul has been hailed as a hero of the introspective conscience. Here was the man who grappled with the problem “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to do is what I do …” (Rom. 7:19). His insights as to a solution of this dilemma have recently been more or less identified, for example, with what Jung referred to as the Individuation Process; but this is only a contemporary twist to the traditional Western way of reading the Pauline letters as documents of human consciousness.

This Spring I received a long distance telephone call from Dean Samuel Miller, who invited me to give this year's Ingersoll Lecture on human immortality. Three days later, Dean Miller was dead. When I heard the sad news, I, as many of you no doubt, began to think about the way he had influenced me, especially during my theological training here at Harvard Divinity School. One of my most vivid memories was a point which he emphasized in his class on Religion and Literature. Sam Miller felt strongly that in our modern 20th century two of the most profound and important experiences of human life are becoming more and more insulated from everyday existence. These two experiences, birth and death, have the potential for affecting the character and quality of the rest of life. But in each instance, they are falling victim to modern technological efficiency and adding to the process of dehumanization rather than counteracting it.

In Aristotle there is no general term for those faculties of the soul which he treats of in the Third Book of De Anima and in De Memoria et Reminiscentia to differentiate them as a class from the five senses which he treats of in the Second Book of De Anima. In Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew philosophic texts, however, these post-sensationary faculties, or some of them, or sometimes only one of them, are designated by the term “internal senses,” in contradistinction to the five senses which are designated by the term “external senses.” Sometimes instead of “external” the terms “corporeal” and “passive” are used, and instead of “internal” the terms “spiritual,” “separable,” and “cerebral.” Sometimes, too, the term “faculties” or “apprehensions” is used instead of “senses.” The use of the terms “internal,” “spiritual,” and “cerebral” has been explained by the fact that the faculties to which they are applied reside within the brain and operate without bodily organs.

Nineteenth century students strongly tended to study mythology apart from associated rituals (and indeed apart from the life of the people generally). Myths were held to be symbolic descriptions of phenomena of nature. One prominent school, in fact, tried to find an astral basis for all mythic tales. Others, among whom Andrew Lang was prominent, saw in the myth a kind of primitive scientific theory. Mythology answered the insistent human How? and Why? How and why was the world made? How and why were living creatures brought into being? Why, if there was life must there be death? To early psychoanalysts such as Abraham and Rank myths were “group phantasies,” wish-fulfillments for a society strictly analogous to the dream and day-dream of individuals. Mythology for these psychoanalysts was also a symbolic structure par excellence, but the symbolism which required interpretation was primarily a sex symbolism which was postulated as universal and all-pervasive. Reik recognized a connection between rite and myth, and he, with Freud, verbally agreed to Robertson Smith's proposition that mythology was mainly a description of ritual. To the psychoanalysts, however, mythology was essentially (so far as what they did with it is concerned) societal phantasy material which reflected impulse repression. There was no attempt to discover the practical function of mythology in the daily behaviors of the members of a society nor to demonstrate specific interactions of mythology and ceremonials.

During the summer of 1938 an important discovery was made in Ostia. In the area at the west of the magnificent Horrea Epagathiana was excavated a temple dedicated to Hercules Invictus according to an altar set in its pronaos. Although inscriptions and works of art referring to Hercules had come to light in Ostia before, these findings in themselves were not sufficient evidence to indicate the existence of an important cult of Hercules in Ostia. So the discovery of a large temple of Hercules came as a complete surprise.

Jonathan Z. Smith, in discussing the transformation of the notion of sacred space in Judaism and the shift from a “locative” type of religious activity to one not limited to a fixed place, points to the necessity “to take history … seriously” and to examine closely how that transformation took place. We can take up this charge and illuminate the larger processes at work by focusing on the narrower problem of the proper protocol required when approaching sacred space. This will enable us to see how the postbiblical tradition revises, while at the same time it preserves, the biblical model of a sacred center.

For centuries, the so-called catechetical school in Alexandria has intrigued scholars and stimulated speculation on its origins and early practices. The relationship of this school to Jewish-Hellenistic antecedents has made the problem doubly fascinating. Hypotheses about the school, however, have sometimes far exceeded the limits of the scanty information surviving in ancient authors, who themselves had incomplete evidence for their reconstructions. Without presenting here yet another theory on the school's early configuration, one must offer some kind of assessment before drawing Philo into the discussion, since his relation to the school obviously presents an extra complication.

Modern scholars commonly regard the “Letter of Aristeas” as a work typical of Jewish apologetics, aiming at self-defense and propaganda, and directed to the Greeks. Here are some instances illustrating this general view. In 1903 Friedländer wrote that the glorification of Judaism in the Letter was no more than self-defense, though “the book does not mention the antagonists of Judaism by name, nor does it admit that its intention is to refute direct attacks.” Stein sees in the Letter “a special kind of defense which practices diplomatic tactics,” and Tramontano also speaks of “an apologetic and propagandist tendency.” Vincent characterizes it as “a small apologetic novel written for the Egyptians” (i.e. the Greeks in Egypt). Pfeiffer says: “This fanciful story of the origin of the Septuagint is merely a pretext for defending Judaism against its heathen denigrators, for extolling its nobility and reasonableness, and for striving to convert Greek speaking Gentiles to it.” Schürer classes the Letter with a special kind of literature, “Jewish propaganda in Pagan disguise,” whose works are “directed to the pagan reader, in order to make propaganda for Judaism among the Gentiles.” Andrews, too, believes that the role of a Greek was assumed by Aristeas in order “to strengthen the force of the argument and commend it to non-Jewish readers.” And even Gutman, who rightly recognizes that the Letter sprang “from an inner need of the educated Jew,” sees in it “a strong means for making Jewish propaganda in the Greek world.”

Christian interest in Jewish literature has always been apologetic or polemic rather than historical. The writers of the New Testament set themselves to demonstrate from the Scriptures that Jesus was the expected Messiah by showing that his nativity, his teaching and miracles, the rejection of him by his people, his death, resurrection, and ascension, were minutely foretold in prophecy, the exact fulfilment of which in so many particulars was conclusive proof of the truth of his claims, and left no room to doubt that his own prediction would be fulfilled in the speedy coming of the Son of Man to judgment, as Daniel had seen him in his vision. In the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews and in the Gospel according to John the aim is not so much to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish expectation as that the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom Christians believed that they had salvation from their sins and the assurance of a blessed immortality, was a divine being, the Son of God, the Word of God incarnate; and this higher faith also sought its evidence in the Scriptures. The apologetic of the following centuries, especially that which addresses itself to Jewish objections, has the same chief topics: Jesus was the Christ (Messiah), and Christ is a divine being. Others, which also have their antecedents in the New Testament, are accessory to these, particularly the emancipation of Christians from the Mosaic law, or the annulment of the dispensation of law altogether, or the substitution of the new law of Christ; the repudiation of the Jewish people by God for their rejection of Christ, and the succession of the church, the true Israel, the people of God, to all the prerogatives and promises once given to the Jews.

Mysteries of State as a concept of Absolutism has its mediaeval background. It is a late offshoot of that spiritual-secular hybridism which, as a result of the infinite cross-relations between Church and State, may be found in every century of the Middle Ages and has deservedly attracted the attention of historians for many years. After A. Alföldi's fundamental studies on ceremonial and insignia of Roman emperors, Theodor Klauser discussed more recently the origin of the episcopal insignia and rights of honor, and showed very clearly how, in and after the age of Constantine the Great, various privileges of vestment and rank of the highest officers of the Late Empire were passed on to the bishops of the victorious Church. At about the same time, Percy Ernst Schramm published his compendious article on the mutual exchange of rights of honor between sacerdotium and regnum, in which he demonstrated how the imitatio imperii on the part of the spiritual power was balanced by an imitatio sacerdotii on the part of the secular power. Schramm carried his study only to the threshold of the Hohenstaufen period, and he was right to stop where he did. For the mutual borrowings of which he speaks—insignia, titles, symbols, privileges, and prerogatives—affected in the earlier Middle Ages chiefly the ruling individuals, both spiritual and secular, the crown-wearing pontiff and the mitre-wearing emperor, until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance, and the regnum a clerical touch.

Dr. George H. Williams' recent study on The Norman Anonymous of 1100 A.D., published as an extra number of this Review, may be taken as an excuse for delving once more into the highly suggestive pamphlets of this anti-Gregorian royalist. In a paragraph headed Christus per naturam, Christus per gratiam Dr. Williams, able and stimulating, discusses the Christology — perhaps we should say: political Christology — of that courageous mediaeval publicist, thereby commendably calling attention to a hitherto somewhat neglected topic: the bearing of Christology on the relationship between Church and State. It is, however, not the christological aspect of the natura-gratia problem which will be dealt with in the following pages, but the historical and doxographic sides of it. Dr. Williams, it is true, has indicated the immediate, or possibly immediate, sources of his author's political theories, but it would have exceeded by far the proper tasks of his analysis to trace every theorem back to its origins. Although the building up of an unbroken catena philologica is not intended here either, it may yet prove not quite useless to spread out in the present paper some material, casually collected and perforce incomplete, which might elucidate the adaptation to Christian thought of an axiom of Hellenistic political theory.

In histories of the formation of the Christian biblical canon, the thirty-ninth Festal Letter of Athanasius of Alexandria, written for Easter 367, holds a justifiably prominent place. Not only is this letter the earliest extant Christian document to list precisely the twenty-seven books that eventually formed the generally accepted canon of the New Testament, but Athanasius is also the first Christian author known to have applied the term “canonized” (κανονιςόμενα) specifically to the books that made up his Old and New Testaments. Athanasius's canon is explicitly closed: “In these books alone,” the bishop declares, “the teaching of piety is proclaimed. ‘Let no one add to or subtract from them’ (LXX Deut 12:32).” The significance of this document goes beyond these formal and terminological issues, however, for the extant fragments of the letter provide a glimpse into the social and political factors that accompanied the attempted formation of a closed canon of the Bible in one ancient Christian setting. Christianity in fourthcentury Egypt was characterized by diverse and conflicting modes of social identity and spiritual formation: study groups led by charismatic teachers, Melitian communities centered around the veneration of martyrs, and the emerging structure of imperial orthodoxy headed by Athanasius all presented themselves as legitimate expressions of Christian piety. Within this complex setting, the formation of a biblical canon with a proper mode of interpretation was an important step in the formation of an official catholic church in Egypt with its parish-centered spirituality.

Dura-Europos on the Euphrates has given us many surprises, and not the least of them was that from this outpost we should acquire a Feriale, or list of days with prescribed offerings, and that these holy days should be exclusively Roman, Imperial, or military. After preliminary publications by Rostovtzeff, under whose guidance the whole work has proceeded, the text was edited by Robert O. Fink, Allan S. Hoey and Walter F. Snyder with a commentary indispensable to students of Roman religion and Imperial history.

In a handbook of 1607 for students of divinity and lightly learned clergymen, the puritan Richard Bernard gave pride of place to the works of continental theologians. For the best catechisms he cited Calvin and Ursinus; for “the definitions and distributions of the principal heads of theology,” Polanus; for commonplaces, Musculus, Martyr, and Szegedinus; for commentaries, Calvin, Martyr, and Musculus. These writers had each contributed to the systematizing of covenant exegesis and doctrine (though Bernard did not pick them for that reason), and it was no accident that this naming of great names did not include a single Englishman.

Under the Roman empire cremation went out of fashion and burial gained in popularity as the usual means of disposing of the dead. The cause of this change has been much discussed, and the explanation has often been given that it was due to religious influences and to a shift in ideas of the hereafter. The rising influence of Christianity has sometimes been suggested as a cause, but chronology and the distribution of the phenomena are fatal to that supposition. More recently an alternative has been sought in the growth of the mystery religions. If this could be established, it would form a new and important criterion for the division of the religious history of the empire into periods. Clearly the question deserves full consideration. For that and for many other reasons a full collection and sifting of the evidence for funerary customs throughout the Roman world in the first three centuries of our era is greatly to be desired. This paper does not pretend to fill such a need, and the archaeological data on which it is based are in the main drawn from Rome; the conclusions which can be drawn from these data are limited, but they seem to possess some degree of certainty and they have their bearing on the general nature of the mystery religions.

One of the most important questions to ask when one is beginning to reformulate the views of a historic author on the human body is the question of what role his discussion of the body plays in his theology. Does his theology require and depend on his evaluation of the meaning and value of the body? Do pressing polemical or cultural discussions demand the author's interest in describing the role of the body in human life? These questions are consistently useful in illuminating the author's intent in writing about the body. Placing ideas of the body in the theological and anthropological context in which they appear is essential if we are to avoid the inevitable distortion of an author's ideas, which is the result of “proof-texting” the author's statements about the body.

Introduction. Bloodless offerings of the most various kinds of food are a common and well-known feature of Greek sacrifice at all periods. The Greeks themselves thought of them as gifts for the gods (Plato, Euthyphr. 14c). The gift was delivered by simply putting it in a place, usually a shrine, where the god was present to receive it. This form of consecration has been given the appropriate technical name of “deposition,” to distinguish it from other methods of consecrating food-offerings to the gods — such as burning them or simply throwing them away.

The ‘Great’ Persecution, of the years 303 to 312/3, requires thorough reconsideration. This paper will discuss certain features of the persecution, and, without attempting to present a complete picture, will suggest some modifications in the received view.

In a recent article entitled “Le monachisme égyptien et les villes,” Ewa Wipszycka cataloged for the later Byzantine period the abundant evidence of monastic habitation in or adjacent to the towns and villages of Egypt as well as in or on the margins of the cultivated land. Her analysis, which begins after the late third- to fourth-century formative period of Antony, Pachomius, and the Lower Egyptian semi-anchoritic centers in Nitria, Scetis, and Cellia, supplies convincing evidence of the rhetorical selectivity employed in the portrayal of Egyptian monasticism by the authors of the literary sources. In the literary texts, the dominance of monastic sites located in places of solitude generates a monastic geography of physical isolation. While acknowledging this dominance in the literature, Wipszycka draws together the infrequent literary references and the more numerous documentary examples of less physically isolated and more socially integrated monastic centers. The resulting picture of Egyptian monasticism is spatially and socially more complex than that derived from the literary sources alone.