Juvenal in his First Satire (vv. 115, 116) remarks on the curious fact that Pecunia, though so devoutly worshipped, yet has no temple of her own

ut colitur Pax atque Fides, Victoria, Virtus, quaeque salutato crepitat Concordia nido.

She is not actually like them an object of cult. The modern reader, while relishing the bitterness of the gibe, is left vaguely wondering how the Romans could seriously worship such ‘personifications’ as Pax or Fides, and his wonder will only increase, if he follows up the subject and traces the cult of the ‘Virtues’ in literature, in inscriptions and, above all, in the imperial coinage. When we talk of ‘personifications,’ we feel ourselves at once in the realm of poetic or artistic imagery and fancy; the ancient Roman, when he spoke of similar figures, felt himself in the realm of religious fact.

In a recent, extensive article in this Journal, J. T. Milik made public some of the conclusions which he had drawn from his studies of the Qumran Enoch fragments, conclusions which have serious implications for the history of Jewish literature in the last centuries before the destruction of the Temple. Two of Milik's conclusions about the Enochic literature will be examined here: first, that there was at Qumran an Enochic Pentateuch, and second, that the Similitudes of Enoch (chaps. 37-71 of the Ethiopic Enoch book) are a late, Christian composition.

Within the last fifteen years, scholars have shown considerable interest in the ritual life of women in antiquity, and have been particularly successful in recognizing the traces of women's initiatory rituals in various Greek and Roman ceremonies and myths. With regard to the Greek materials, the Arrephoria and Brauronia festivals have been treated in this light, as have two ceremonies in which details of the Demeter-Persephone mythos were reenacted: the Thesmophoria and the Haloa.

In his influential work, Kyrios Christos, Wilhelm Bousset confessed that he had vacillated and was still vacillating on the question of whether the creation of the title υἱòς θɛo⋯ (“Son of God”) as an epithet for Jesus ought to be attributed to the earliest community of his followers in Palestine. He tentatively took the position that the oldest community of followers of Jesus described him as the παῖς θɛo⋯ (“Servant of God”) in a messianic interpretation of the servant-poems of Second Isaiah. This epithet, he thought, was in considerable tension with the notion of Jesus as the Son of God, making it unlikely that both epithets originated in the same context. He argued that the statement of the divine voice in the scenes of baptism and transfiguration, “You are my Son,” is a tradition that circulated in the earliest community but that this address is a far cry from the title “Son of God.” He was thus inclined to conclude that this title originated “on Greek ground, in the Greek language.” He argued that the confession of Jesus as the Son of God by the Gentile centurion in Mark 15:39 cannot be understood as a recognition of Jesus as the Jewish messiah. Rather, “Son of God” was the formula chosen by the evangelist to express the identity of Jesus Christ for the faith of the Gentile Christian community.

The theory that the background of Paul's rapture into paradise (2 Corinthians 12) is indicated by the rabbinic story of four men who entered a garden, park, or orchard (pardes), which is found in collections of traditions associated with “merkabah mysticism,” is by no means new. First proposed by Wilhelm Bousset, the theory was developed by Hans Windisch and Hans Bietenhard, but has come to be associated with Gershom G. Scholem. Although a few scholars have subsequently referred to Jewish mysticism in their interpretations of Paul, the subject on the whole has figured only at the periphery of the map of Pauline studies as a puzzling and little explored terra incognita of marginal or, at best, uncertain relevance to the whole. Growing recognition of the importance of apocalyptic for our understanding of Paul now makes it imperative that this unknown territory be explored. Following the publication of Alan F. Segal's recent book, it is clear that Jewish mysticism must occupy a more central place than has previously been the case in any reconstruction of the matrices of Paul's experience and thought.

A number of political theologies have emerged within modern Judaism, primarily as a reaction to the rise of Zionism but also, and to a lesser degree, to that of socialism, pacifism, and other ideological movements. Among the characteristics they shared are a “father”—i.e., an individual who fleshed out their tenets in more or less systematic fashion—and an attempt to deal with the nature and governance of a future Jewish state. The majority of these theologies failed to achieve significant influence in the wider public arena. Notably, however, there is one modern Jewish political theology that evolved by means of a different process, one that was gradual and decidedly unsystematic. It also lacks a single founder or figurehead, even though, like its counterparts, it developed and sought to remain within a particular social faction where it has long exercised significant influence and continues to do so to this day. I am referring to the doctrine of Daʿat Torah (literally “the Torah view,” “the opinion of the Torah,” “the knowledge of the Torah,” or “the Torah mind”), which arose in the first half of the twentieth century in Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) circles. It can be summarized in a single sentence: The great religious authorities hold the power to issue rulings not only in their specific areas of expertise but in all areas of life, including the political realm.

The story of Barabbas's release by Pilate appears in all four canonical gospels (Mark 15:6–15; Matt 27:15–26; Luke 23:18–25; John 18:39–40). Although the accounts differ in some details, a fairly consistent plot line emerges: The crowd before Pilate, allowed to choose one prisoner for release, demands the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. There are, however, a number of puzzling aspects to this deceptively simple story, the most significant of which is the contention of the authors that there existed a custom of the governor releasing a prisoner at the Passover festival. According to Mark and Matthew, this was a Roman custom (Mark 15:6; Matt 27:15); according to John, a Jewish custom (John 18:39). Yet, no evidence for such a custom in Judea has been found. Even more tellingly, Luke's omission of such a custom, as well as his statement in Acts 25:16, shows that he thought such a custom unbelievable. This custom is also considered by some to be at odds with the portrait of Pilate gathered from Jewish literature. Roger Aus states the case most strongly: “[Pilate] never would have allowed himself to be subject to the whims of a crowd, especially an uncontrollable one which bordered on a riot.” For these reasons many scholars have concluded that while a Barabbas may have been released by Pilate, the story as we have it in the gospels is a literary creation.

Tal Ilan, in her recent “Notes and Observations On a Newly Published Divorce Bill from the Judaean Desert,” attempts to turn the “old view of Jewish divorce on its head.” She suggest that, “Perhaps in ancient Jewish practice women could divorce their husbands, and it is an accident of our transmission history that this fact is not amply illustrated.” This suggestion rests on her reading of Papyrus Se'elim 13, published and identified by Jonas C. Greenfield and Ada Yardeni as a receipt for the payment of the requisite money (“kethuba money”) promised at the time of marriage to be paid in the event of divorce. Ilan argues that this document is in fact a bill of divorce, and that it was given by a woman to her husband.

In the curious collection of lapidary and magical lore known as the Kyranides directions are given for making a ring with certain special virtues. The stone is to be νεμεσίτης, which is explained as a name given to a stone chipped from an altar of Nemesis made of λίθος κραταιός. We can only translate those words as “hard stone,” but the expression seems to be a technical term for a particular stone which we cannot identify. Upon such a stone a figure of Nemesis is to be carved; she is represented as a maiden resting her foot upon a wheel, holding in her left hand a cubit-rule (πῆχυς), in her right a twig (ῥάβδος). The writer concludes, ἐὰν οὖν τὸν δακτύλιον τοῦτον προσενέγκῃς δαιμονιζομένῳ, παραῦτα ὁ δαίμων ἐξομολογήσας ἑαυτὸν φεύξεται. These words are the occasion for this paper; but before proceeding to discuss them, something should be said about the design prescribed in the passage.

One relates to existential reality through the lenses that one's culture supplies. The culture of each society, in turn, includes the way it relates to time and, as a result, to history. Time as a physical quantity would appear to be a neutral concept, but its measurement is arbitrary. Time is certainly not neutral in any culture. It assumes various qualities, depending on the symbolic meaning that persons attribute to it. One therefore finds different approaches to history or to the writing of history in different cultures. The Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic eras and the Romans in the ancient world attempted to write history for its own sake and to satisfy intellectual curiosity. On the other hand, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians wrote chronographies, but not history in the western sense. Ancient Israel lies between these: one finds historiography in the Bible, but not history for its own sake. The Bible presents a view of divine providence in history, with God's essence being visible through historical deeds. Great importance thus attaches to remembrance through various rituals, in prayers and in celebrations on the Shabbat, festive days, and mourning and fast days. These do not, however, require those remembering to be historians. On the contrary, a society that molds its members in accordance with unequivocal memory patterns does not permit them to examine its history in a critical fashion; it constructs in them a collective memory, which transmits a single incontestable message.

I like tennis—both to play and to watch it.1 Nothing is more pleasant than watching an exchange between Federer and Nadal. There is a similar kind of exchange that has been going on in this country in recent years. On one side, there are evangelical New Testament scholars; on the other, liberal scholars working on early Christianity. In the camp of the evangelicals, Ben Witherington,2 Craig A. Evans,3 and Darrell L. Bock4 are playing a defensive game, accusing the others of constituting a “new school,”5 one that prefers heresy over orthodoxy and promotes diversity where unity once was. In the camp of the critics, Elaine Pagels promotes the spirituality of the Gospel of Thomas; 6 Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities flies in the face of his opponents;7 and Marvin Meyer considers the Gospel of Judas a valuable work that reveals in the mind of the dark apostle knowledge of the divine realm.8

John Colet (1466–1519) resolved the bewildering tensions in the relation of man and God by attributing as much as possible to God and as little as possible to man. Spontaneously he destroys nature in order to exalt grace, feeling, as did St. Bonaventura, that pious souls, careful of the divine majesty, ascribe all things to God. He castigates the arrogance of those who imagine that they can know the true or will the good without the aid of grace. No reiteration of the radical insufficiency of man and nature is excessive. The core of his piety is a religious rejection of the world in which “all that belongs absolutely and essentially to man (who is nothing if not weak, foolish, evil, vain, lost and nought; whose power is weakness, his wisdom folly, his will malicious, his acting an undoing, his accomplishment destruction) all, I say, that goes to make up man is condemned with one voice and one judgement of the Spirit throughout the entire Holy Scriptures of God.”

With its clear-glass, brightly-lit, whitewashed interior, Harvard Divinity School's Andover Chapel reflects all the values of elite Protestant culture in New England history: quiet prayer, thoughtful sermons, an approach to God through the heart rather than the senses, and a minimum of iconic reminders that the space is Christian. And it was here, in April 2007, that this author beheld the Voudoun spirits Danbala and Ogoun arrive through several experienced mediums. The ceremony had not really been intended to call down the spirits, only to praise them in a kind of broad sampling of Haitian Voudoun songs.1 But the altar was full of their treats, the room was full, the drummers were good, the singing was loud, and the mediums were expert. So the spirits arrived: various Danbalas slithering across the floor and a very martial Ogoun huffing and puffing around the altar to get his rum. And they were greeted, with awed interest by the Harvard students, familiarity by the Haitians, and annoyed tolerance by one Adventist woman.

In this paper I shall explore how religion functioned as a signifier of identity for Emperor Julian, his friend and teacher, Libanius, and his jealous enemy, Gregory Nazianzus, during the bewildering period of Julian's short reign and sudden death. However, before discussing each man's case, it will be useful to clarify the conceptual boundaries of the discussion. Because the term “religion,” as used in the academic world, is problematic for analyzing fourth-century culture, it is first necessary to isolate the concept of religion from the process of universalization. Drawing on the analyses of several post-colonialist theorists, I shall show why the term requires this disengagement, and why its meaning is best understood in light of the complications of specific historical circumstances. Once this issue has been broached, I shall introduce a theoretical basis for viewing “culture” as a commodity that was used by Christianity and pagan religions from 314–365, when, for the most part, both sides enjoyed a rest from institutional persecution. shall also discuss how the concepts of religion and learning were brokered as cultural commodities by these same social groups. Having established this theoretical framework as the basis of my analysis, I shall turn to the investigation of what religion is for Julian, Libanius, and Gregory Nazianzus, how it fits into their own self-image, and what role each envisions for religion as corporate identity for civilized people of the oikoumene.

In the main stream of contemporary Luther scholarship, there is broad agreement that the emergence of “reformation theology” is organically related to, if not constituted by, a new biblical hermeneutic.

Furthermore, in the search for the “sources of Luther's theology,” historians have to be, and are, frequently reminded that Luther may have gotten some of his key ideas from the Bible — however important Augustine, Bernard, Occam, Biel or Staupitz may have been for his theological formation.

Accepting these two assertions, I wish to question the adequacy of the current interpretation of Luther's hermeneutical development, and to indicate the direction in which I believe the hermeneutical changes evident in Luther's earliest exegetical writing (the Dictata super psalterium, 1513–15) can help make better sense of the well-known theological innovations which appear in his writings of the 1520's.

By the time the Fathers of the Church began to offer negation as a solution of the problem of divine attributes, the theory of negative attributes had already been dealt with by Philo, Albinus, and Plotinus. All three of them, starting with the assumption that God is ineffable, found that one way of describing God was by means of negative attributes. In their treatment of this type of attributes, however, there is a difference between Philo on the one hand and Albinus and Plotinus on the other.

Few themes so dominate the homilies of John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 CE) as the plight of the poor and the necessity of almsgiving. His picture of the poor, however, is always set against the prosperous marketplace of late antiquity. It seems therefore scarcely surprising that his sermons on almsgiving resound with the language of investment. With such imagery, Chrysostom tried not only to prod wealthy Christians into acts of charity but also, and perhaps more importantly, to dislodge his rich parishioners from their conviction that an uncrossable social gulf separated them from the poor. The rhetorical strategy he used is typical of all his polemical attacks. On the one hand, he denigrated the pursuit of money and social status as fundamentally unattractive; it is both unchristian and unmasculine. On the other hand, he insisted that real wealth and lasting prestige should indeed be pursued, but more effectively through almsgiving. I shall first examine how Chrysostom effected this recalculation of wealth, and then I shall turn to the question of whether there may have been some advantage for him in pleading so eloquently on behalf the poor.