Despite the admirable “Licht vom Osten” of Adolf Deissmann and the more recent studies of Cumont, Bousset, Norden, and Reitzenstein, the student of the history of religions can still set his plough to much fruitful soil in the field of the papyri. Even the intensively cultivated domain of church history could be broadened and enriched by studies derived from such data in their application to problems of Christian institutional and constitutional development, of monasticism, and of the sociological aspects of the church's expansion. In another quarter, that of the persecutions, the papyri have helped to an understanding of the genre littéraire of the Acts of the Martyrs, and to a more accurate conception of the relations of Roman state and Christian church. This last we owe particularly to the finds of Libelli from the period of the Decian persecution.

To understand the essence of an historical movement, be it primarily philosophical, theological or cultural, the inquirer should abstain from generalizations and obediently analyze the relevant sources.

To understand its significance, however, he has, consciously or unconsciously, to take the dangerous step of comparing movement with movement in order to find a frame of reference which can bring out, by antithesis or analogy, the typical characteristics.

The publication in January, 1953, of fragments of an unknown recension of the Greek Bible gave the first unambiguous warnings of a revolution to come in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Earlier the publication of the great Isaiah scroll of Qumrân, Cave I (IQ Isaa), and later of the second fragmentary roll of Isaiah (IQ Isab), created noise and excitement, but none of the major text-critical schools was forced to shift significant ground. Champions of the Hebraica veritas who had increasingly dominated the field, especially in Europe, noted the close affinities of the scrolls with the traditional text. The failure of IQ Isa to produce a significant number of superior readings despite its antiquity embarrassed lingering survivors of the great critical tradition of the nineteenth century, and delighted biblical exegetes and historians who wished to ply their trade without entering the miasmal precincts of text-critical labors. Despite some attention paid to its occasional affinities with the Old Greek, most scholars, whether prompted by traditionalist prejudgment or sheer inertia, were pleased to label the text vulgar or even sectarian, avoiding thereby a serious reexamination of their text-critical theories.

Among the many religions of oriental origin Christianity was the only one which really became a Roman religion, and any attempt to explain the complex history of the institutional development of the Church of Rome during the early centuries of the empire must start from the analysis of this distinguishing fact, the ‘romanization’ of the Christian Church. A survey of the Roman environment in which Christianity made its first conquests and secured its success is the indispensable preliminary to the study of the process that gradually transformed Christianity in Rome from a religion of foreign groups into the legally established religion of the Roman Empire.

In the history of biblical interpretation and dogmatic speculation, Gen 1:26–28 has proved remarkably fecund as a source of exegetical and theological reflection. Literature on the passage is now boundless, but shows no sign of ceasing or abating, despite the appearance in recent decades of several exhaustive treatments of the text and the existence of substantial consensus among biblical scholars. The reason for the perpetual fascination of the passage lies in the nature and limits of the text. The verses contain a fundamental, and unique, statement of biblical anthropology and theology–presented in a terse and enigmatic formulation. A rare attempt within the OT literature to speak directly and definitively about the nature of humanity in relation to God and other creation, the statement is at once limited in its content, guarded in its expression, and complex in its structure. As a consequence, philologist and theologian are enticed and compelled in ever new contexts of questions and understandings to explore anew the meaning and implications of creation “in the divine image”–for it is this striking and unique expression, above all, that has dominated the discussion.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

An inscription from the Areopagus recently published by Meritt in Hesperia (XI, 1942, 282 ff.) has thrown new light on the structure of the type of association of which the members were called orgeones. The occasion thus presents itself to bring together what we now know about this obscure Athenian institution.

The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and glittered with gold and jewels and pearls, and she was holding a gold winecup filled with the disgusting filth of her prostitution; on her forehead was written a name, a cryptic name: “Babylon the Great, the mother of the prostitutes and all the filthy practices on the earth.” (Rev 17:4–5, NJB)

In discussions of the ancient Near Eastern setting for the Old Testament, various aspects of Mesopotamian society and culture are nominated as the precursors of certain features of Israelite practice.

Among the cults of classical antiquity, the worship of the Greek god Dionysus is one of the most intriguing, ranging in form from rural agricultural festivals in Greece and Asia Minor to complex mystery rites established throughout the Roman Empire. While various aspects of Dionysiac religion have received detailed scholarly treatment, existing studies have paid surprisingly little attention to the extent to which women appear to predominate in the cult as it may be reconstructed from the available sources. The frequent references to the involvement of women in the mythographers and historiographers have usually been explained away in modern scholarship by unsubstantiated appeals to the “emotional” needs of women, and by the association with fertility themes and fertility magic which are considered more appropriate to women than to men.

Who was a Jew in antiquity? How was “Jewishness” defined? How did a non-Jew become a Jew, and how did a Jew become a non-Jew? In their minds and actions the Jews erected a boundary between themselves and the rest of humanity, the gentiles, but the boundary was always crossable and not always clearly marked. A gentile might associate with Jews and observe Jewish practices, or might “convert” to Judaism and become a proselyte. A Jew might avoid contact with Jews and cease to observe Jewish practices, or might deny Judaism outright and become an “apostate.” Or the boundary could be blurred through the marriage of a Jew with a gentile.

The text discussed p. 73 ff. is a measure to ensure equitable and uncontentious distribution of the flesh of the two ‘fullgrown victims,’ and presumably of the young pig also. There is no mention of the burning of portions in honor of the heroines or of the hero, and outside Greece we know of sacrifices in which the worshippers took all. Such detail would be irrelevant to the purpose of our inscription, which is not a lex sacra; and the use of θύειν and the presence of an altar (for the restoration in line 6 is almost certain) strongly suggest that conventional symbolic offerings were made by fire.

When Alexander VI promulgated the bull Inter caetera on May 4, 1493 granting Spain a large part of the new world, there seems to have been no doubt that the natives who dwelt in the ‘very remote islands and mainlands’ would be willing and able to accept the teachings of the Catholic church. For Alexander had been informed that in those far off lands were

very many peoples living in peace and, as reported, going unclothed, and not eating flesh. Moreover, … these very peoples … believe in one God the Creator in heaven, and seem sufficiently disposed to embrace the Catholic faith and be trained in good morals. And it is hoped that, were they instructed, the name of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, would easily be introduced into the said countries and islands.

These optimistic predictions were not fulfilled and, as the Spanish conquest of the Americas proceeded to reveal the existence of millions of natives, the action of the papacy in the conversion and protection of these masses of Indians became an important matter, for as that studious seventeenth century jurist, Antonio de Leon Pinelo, declared:

Inasmuch as the Indies were conceded to the kings of Castile principally in order to favor and convert the Indians, no harm must come of this concession.

It has long been the common opinion that the Zealots were the party founded by Judas the Galilean — so Graetz and Jost, for instance, writing in the middle of the past century. Derenbourg, it is true, observed that the term ”Zealots” was not applied to the opponents of the Romans before the revolt, but when he came to the events of the revolt he made a descendant of Judas, Menahem, the leader of the Zealots and so apparently assumed the connection of the party with Judas. Schürer's adherence canonized the common opinion, and also the common description of the Sicarii as a more fanatical fraction of the party — though the sources contain nothing to suggest that the party had split before the Sicarii appeared. Hence, with only minor variations, Eduard Meyer, Bousset, Baron, and Yadin's account of the Zealots in Masada, to name only the largest studies.

As a scholar I am expected to deal with my subject matter in an objective way. If this were to mean without emotional concern, and without a personal standpoint, I have to admit failure in advance…. I do not hesitate to admit that in giving this lecture my aim is to contribute … to a change of attitude and behavior towards nature.

The text is written on a single sheet of papyrus cut from a roll; a join runs down the centre, and others are visible on either side. Top and sides of the sheet are more or less intact, but it is broken off at the foot and there is nothing to indicate its original height. We may perhaps assume that it would not be much over 30 cm., in which case anything up to fifteen lines of writing are now lost. The writing, which is along the fibres on the recto, is a rather large and loose cursive. The formation of the letters is haphazard, initial letters being not merely enlarged but often eccentrically so (e.g. the δ at the beginning of lines 12 and 18 and the λ of line 16). In addition the scribe was apt to let his pen run dry, making it necessary for him to re-write the last few letters when he had taken a fresh supply, so that in these passages the papyrus has somewhat the appearance of a palimpsest.

An important component in the recent discussion of the Second Gospel has been a continuing fascination with the Markan passion narrative. John Donahue has summarized the research under three headings, which represent recurring questions that scholars have put to the text. (1) What roles did the Scriptures and their motifs play in the formation and growth of the Markan passion narrative? (2) Did Mark make use of an extant passion narrative, and if so, what did it look like? (3) To what extent and in what ways does the Markan passion narrative reflect Mark's own theological and literary interests?

John Dewey famously argued that Darwin had introduced a new conceptual vocabulary that would completely overhaul the traditional philosophical enterprise. His sense was that the kinds of monumental metaphysical questions that philosophy typically asked about causes, trends and purposes start to look meaningless and willfully unanswerable once we absorb the tough lessons of natural selection. More specifically, Dewey thought that The Origin of Species provided a strong but beneficial dose of philosophical therapy because it illustrated how to simultaneously abandon the lifeless questions of the past while formulating new questions to take their place. Darwin's achievement revealed for Dewey that sometimes philosophical progress is not “an affair of different ways of dealing with old problems, but of relegation of the problems to the attic in which are kept the relics of former intellectual bad taste.” From this perspective, the litmus test for measuring intellectual growth is surprisingly simple. If we examine the concerns that once excited our ancestors and feel only the shudder of regret that so much energy was wasted on a lost cause, we can be reasonably confident that we have taken a few steps forward.

The liberation of rabbinic theology from the reins of medieval theology is still underway. One of the central issues that sets rabbinic theology apart from later medieval developments is the attribution of body or form to the godhead. Even though the anthropomorphic tendency of rabbinic thought is widely recognized, it is still early to speak of a learned consensus on this issue. The standard work on the topic remains Arthur Marmorstein's Essays in Anthropomorphism, written in 1937. Marmorstein recognized the anthropomorphic tendency of rabbinic thinking. His way of dealing, both theologically and scholastically, with the issue was to suggest the existence of two schools in the tannaitic period. According to Marmorstein, the schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael were divided on the question of the literality of the understanding of the biblical text. Rabbi Akiva's literal reading gave rise to an anthropomorphic understanding of God. Rabbi Ishmael's nonliteral, or allegorical, reading brought about an opposition to anthropomorphism. This description of rabbinic anthropomorphism has informed the discussions of many scholars, including those who have dealt with our present topic—the image of God. I would, therefore, state my differences with this presentation.

Let me explain the jagged, cacophonous title of this talk, which must jar on ears expectant of a disquisition on immortality, the leitmotiv of the Ingersoll lecture series. By “anti-temporality” I denote that which is opposite in kind to being temporal, that is, pertaining to, concerned with, or limited by time. By “time” I provisionally accept the first definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary: “A limited stretch or space of continued existence, as the interval between two successive events or acts or the period through which an action, condition or state continues: a finite portion of ‘time’.” Here, however, I would detect a certain ambiguity in the phrase, “interval between two successive events or acts,” for such intervals may, in many societies, be culturally detached from natural or logical sequentiality and formed into a domain governed by anti-temporality. Here the very definition of time implies its opposite.

A comprehensive view of the Son of David in the New Testament requires facing the following problem: on the one hand, Davidic quotations, metaphors, and the descent theme are derived from the Old Testament royal tradition as it is channeled through Jewish texts; on the other, the title Son of David is found only in the synoptic gospels and is associated primarily with a figure who is so addressed by people in need of exorcism or healing. The usual solution to this problem in works on Christology is to say that a) miracle working is not associated with the Jewish royal Messiah in general or the Son of David in particular in contemporaneous Jewish literature, and b) it is early Christian tradition and/or redaction which has transformed the traditional royal conception and linked it with miracle working.

As Robin Winks has persistently and wittily demonstrated, there are striking and suggestive parallels between the methods of scholarship, especially in the human sciences, and detective fiction. Perhaps the earliest self-conscious methodologist, therefore, is the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes. Some attention has been given to extracting his procedures and presuppositions from the prosaic, once-removed accounts of Dr. Watson, who plays a role in Doyle's fictions somewhere between one of Socrates' interlocutors, “I hadn't thought of that, please continue” and Jesus' disciples as represented by Mark, who, in one scholar's well-known formulation, progress from “nonunderstanding to misunderstanding.” In the literature on Holmes, however, I find surprisingly little attention paid to the manuscript writings and publications by the archetypical detective himself. There are fourteen in all, although four seem only sketches. While the two “memoirs” Holmes published in the Anthropological Journal are attractive, it is what appears to be his first publication, one of three translated into French, that catches my eye. Holmes describes this publication, which is primarily concerned with tobacco ashes, in The Sign of the Four.