Migne, Patrologia Gracca 24, columns 529–605, prints a work of Eusebius which he entitles Eusebii Caesariensis Commentarii in Lucae Evangelium quantum superest in Codicibus Vaticanis, the text of which is that of Angelo Mai, Bibliotheca Nova Patrum iv. 159ff., published in 1847. The work is abstracted from the big Lucan catena of Nicetas of Heraclea, other parts of which were published separately by Mai. No mention of a Commentary on Luke is made by later patristic writers such as Jerome and Photius in their notices of work by Eusebius, and J. Quasten, Patrology iii, does not include it in his description of Eusebius' work. Mai, however, is confident, I believe rightly, that it is a genuine work of Eusebius.

The Resurrection of Christ: Traditional Questions

The “Resurrection of Christ” is controversial. It does not fit into the modern world of things calculable and manipulable. Is it a historical event among other historical events that took place or that are still taking place? Is it a symbol of the language of times past?

First, a few remarks about the audience of the Gospel according to Mark. This study is based on the premise that Mark was read aloud in gatherings of Christians in the late first and early second centuries that were not necessarily liturgical in a narrow sense. Further, those who listened were not all equally committed to the Christian faith and probably assimilated and interpreted the instruction that they received in various ways. Some in the audience, even if they were familiar with the Pauline understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, may have preferred to de-fine Jesus' divine sonship in another, more traditionally Jewish way, to be discussed below. Finally, even if the Gospel was written primarily for insiders, it is likely that copies were available to interested or critical outsiders. Celsus's knowl-edge of the Gospels shows that this happened at least by the second half of the second century.

In one of his earliest articles, William James says that the radical question of life is whether this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe: moral or unmoral, not moral or immoral. James is not asking whether the universe is good or bad, but whether i t is coordinate with the inner lives of persons, their desires, and their purposes. The sense of “moral” here is not restricted to ethics, but is the sense in which the moral sciences (comprising what we now call the humanities and the social sciences) were contrasted in the nineteenth century with the natural sciences.

The principal authorities for the story of the Disputation of Barcelona are the Latin protocol published by Jaime Villanueva, Viaje literario a las iglesias de España, xiii. (Madrid, 1850) pp. 332–5: C. Girbal, Los judios en Gerona (Gerona, 1870) pp. 66–8; and, from a better MS., F. Baer in the Hebrew periodical Tarbitz ii. (Jerusalem, 1931) 185–7. The Hebrew account by Nahmanides was first published from an exceptionally poor Germanized recension (which confuses the names of the interlocutors, and frequently interposes abusive expressions) by J. C. Wagenseil in his Tela Ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681) ii. 24–60, with Latin translation: it was reprinted in Milhemet Hovah (Constantinople, 1710).

I recently became aware that I had for a long time entertained certain preconceptions about the way in which Presocratic thinkers saw the world, without ever having seriously considered the evidence on which my belief was based. This I have now tried to do, with the results which are set forth in this paper. Since in any case it will deal, in a fairly general way, with problems concerning the interaction of philosophical and religious thought in early Greece, I hope it will have a certain interest, whether or not its readers agree with the thesis put forward. The perennial fascination of that topic has been enhanced in recent years by the discussion provoked by Werner Jaeger's book on The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, from which I take this sentence as a kind of text for my own reflections: “Though philosophy means death to the old gods, it is itself religion.”

In his important Christological study, The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann addresses the problem of the ultimate relation Christ to believers, using as the focus of his analysis Calvin's exegesis of 1 Cor 15:24–28. Moltmann argues that this locus classicus of Pauline subordinationism— “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father … then shall the Son also himself be subject”—marks the point in Calvin's Christology at which “divine rule” is transferred from Christ's humanity to his divinity.

Part one of this article examined the Jewish sources that record the story of four individuals who “entered pardes,” three of whom came to grief while R. Aqiba, alone, survived unscathed. The story is preserved within a talmudic compilation of materials concerning maʿaśeh merkabah (an esoteric, visionary-mystical tradition associated with Ezekiel I), in Song of Songs Rabbah, and in two “merkabah-mystical” hekhalot compilations: Hekhalot Zuṭarti and Merkabah Rabbah. Several scholars have adopted the suggestion, first offered by Wilhelm Bousset, that this story indicates the background in Jewish mystical tradition of Paul's account of his ascent to paradise (2 Cor 12:1–12).

A small but growing number of theologians have begun to call for the development of a “public theology.” Although the proposals vary, they are fueled by a common desire to counteract the cultural marginalization of contemporary theology. Having lost its former power to influence public debate about our beliefs and actions, theology has increasingly become a privatized form of reflection. Too often theologians have become comfortable with this state of affairs, abandoning all presumptions to speak to or for those outside their narrow communities. Theological arguments have degenerated into dogmatic assertions or confessional accounts of personal beliefs which lack the power or intent to persuade others. As David Tracy so aptly puts it, we have fled to local “reservations of the spirit” where we need not confront the wider indifference to and impotence of our work.

In a recent article, F. Pfister has put forth a theory which appears to me so interesting a mixture of fruitful suggestion and of error as to repay a detailed and critical examination. It is briefly that ‘der Verfasser des Urevangeliums, das in verschiedenen Fassungen den drei Synoptikern bekannt war, eine kynisch-stoische Heraklesbiographie vor Augen hatte, und in enger Abhängigkeit von dieser das Leben Jesu geetaltete.’ This proposition he endeavors to support by a series of comparisons between details of the life of Jesus as given in the Synoptic Gospels and descriptions of the corresponding events in the life of Herakles, especially as told by our later authorities, such as Diodorus Siculus and the so-called Apollodoros.

The importance of Sappho's first poem as a religious document has long been recognized, but there is still room for disagreement as to the position that should be assigned to it in a history of Greek religious experience. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the language of the poem; not of its literal meaning, which is clear, but of its tone and color. Is the poem, as Bowra puts it, “a prayer intimate and serious”? Is it “after all a religious poem, concerned with an experience which can only be called mystical”? Or is it an exercise in a literary genre, charming indeed in the simple directness of its expression, but still conventional and not to be taken seriously as a religious utterance. Or, finally, does the truth lie somewhere between these two extremes?

The legend of Barlaam and Ioasaph, one of the most popular and influential of medieval romances, entered the western world by way of a Greek version, which fathered, directly or indirectly, translations into almost every European language, and inspired an entire cycle of literary influences. This Greek version was itself descended from a long line of Asiatic redactions, harking back through Georgian and Arabic to Pehlevi and to the Sanskrit prototype (now lost). Thus the Greek version occupies, so to speak, a focal position. It is at once the source of the European, and the culmination of the Asiatic, traditions. Its hero, Prince Ioasaph, can look backward to his earliest incarnation as the Buddha of the Lalita Vistara, and forward to his latest — as a saint of Rome and Byzantium; while many of the tales told him by the monk Barlaam to convert him to Christianity change little on their long journey from some such work as the Pantchatantra, via the Greek Barlaam, to the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, or the Gesta Romanorum.

This essay is an analysis of the natural law theory of one of the most important of the seventeenth-century Puritan philosophers and theologians, William Ames (1576-1633). Ames' theory of natural law has historical importance because of its contribution to the formulation of fundamental doctrines upon which modern democratic institutions were raised — such doctrines as the duties and inalienable rights of individual citizens, the social contract or government by consent of the people, and the right of resistance when a government exceeds the bounds of its authority. For although Ames spent his life in England and Holland, and although he died in the midst of his preparations to emigrate to America from Holland, his greatest impact and predominating influence were in the New World, He has justifiably been called ”the spiritual father of the New England churches,” ”the favorite theologian of early New England,” and ”the father of American theology.”

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the earliest and, for us, the single most important literary record of the Eleusinian Mysteries. These Mysteries were for a thousand years one of the crowning glories of Athens, the pride of her statesmen, poets, and orators, a focal point of piety which though intimately civic was at the same time panhellenic. The constant references to the cult in both prose and poetry attest its popularity and singular importance. Yet it remains a curious fact that in all Athenian literature, at least until Hellenistic times, there is no direct mention of the Homeric Hymn and scarcely anything which can reasonably be identified even as a reminiscence or echo of it. Apparently the Hymn was allowed to fall into almost total oblivion. Why this should have happened is a question that seems to merit some consideration. By the very nature of the problem the evidence is inadequate to assure definite conclusions, but it is hoped that the solution proposed, though necessarily tentative, may add somewhat to our understanding of an obscure but interesting period in the religious history of Athens.

These opening years of the twentieth century have been marked by a profound revival of interest in Mysticism, though we are perhaps not yet justified in speaking of a distinct revival of Mysticism itself. This revival of interest in Mysticism can be traced to no one explanatory cause, but is due to a confluence of many contributory streams of influence. Our expanding historical knowledge has very freshly brought to light the important part which Mysticism has played in the religious life of the world, and especially in the nineteen centuries of Christian development. A group of psychological researches has aroused an immense interest in the inner life, and particularly in the deep-lying regions of the subconscious, where vast sources of hidden spiritual energy appear to lie. The prevailing tendencies in philosophy—common to many schools—to attack “intellectualism,” to humble the claims and pretensions of “knowledge,” and to exalt, on the other hand, intuition, first-hand experience, knowledge of acquaintance, appreciation, and valuation, have given aid and comfort to those who prefer the “heart” to the “head.”

Professor C. H. Dodd in The Apostolic Preaching and its Development has drawn attention to the importance of the “Kerygma” as a more or less formal statement of the Christian Gospel, lying behind the earliest Christian documents; it determines the structure of Mark, the speeches in Acts and the form of the Creeds. This conventional form seems to be derived from Judaism. A statement of the mighty works of God in creation and the history of mankind, more especially in the deliverance of his people from Egypt, is a recurring feature of Jewish literature in the post-exilic era; perhaps the most notable example is Ps. 136; cf. Nehemiah 9. 6 ff., Is. 63. 7 ff. Such a recital of the mighty works of God in delivering His people was obviously necessary if the religion of Israel was to be changed from a primitive Semitic tribal cult into a system of monotheism, centred on the national deity, identified with the one God of Heaven; it was specially necessary to find an aetiological myth for the principal festival of the Passover. The emphasis on this deliverance reflects the process by which vague legends of a migration from Egypt have been conflated with the return from Babylon to form the biblical picture of the Exodus.

The problem of the two Messiahs in Apocryphal literature, especially in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and in the Damascus Covenant, occupied scholars at the beginning of the present century and has revealed new facets with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Especially pertinent to this problem are some of the texts from Qumran Cave 1, and some fragments from Qumran Cave 4, recently published. We shall here endeavor to make clear the distinctive features of these Messiahs, their status and their tasks at the end of days, and to elucidate the historical setting from which the doctrine of the two Messiahs sprang.

A few years ago Arnold Ehrhardt wrote an erudite and stimulating article as a criticism and development of Eduard Lohse's Die Ordination. A few observations in regard both to the laying on of hands in the Jewish background and to the seating of a candidate in the chair of office will serve to carry the discussion a step further.