In the old and worn parchment leaves of the baptismal register of Widford Parish in “pleasant Hertfordshire” we find this record:

Anno dm. 1604. John Elliott the sonne of Bennett Elliott was baptized the fifte daye of August in the yeere of our Lord God 1604.

There is also this record:

An° Dm. 1598. Bennett Eliot and Letteye Aggar were married the xxxth of October an° Sup Dicto.

Bennett Eliot had property in several of the neighboring parishes, and about 1608 removed to Nazing, where he died. In his will he directs his executor to pay out of the rents and profits of his lands and tenements, for the space of eight years from 1621, quarterly to his son John Eliot “the sum of eight pounds a yeare of lawful money of England, for and towards his maintenance in the University of Cambridge where he is a scholar.”

The home of Eliot was marked by the best religious influences stirring England in these early days of the Reformation and the dawning of the Puritan controversy, for he speaks of his first years as “seasoned with the fear of God, the word, and prayer.” He became a pensioner of Jesus College in 1619, took his first degree in 1623, and was early distinguished for his talent and proficiency in the study of languages. Upon leaving Cambridge he was a tutor for a time in a school kept by Rev. Thomas Hooker,—afterwards the founder of the state of Connecticut. Here the influences of his own home were deepened, for he wrote: “Here the Lord said unto my dead soul, live! live! and through the grace of God I do live forever! When I came to this blessed family I then saw as never before the power of godliness in its lovely vigour and efficacy.”

The writings of mystics always seem nonsense to the non-mystical, and apparently nothing will ever explain the one to the other. The chief difficulty is, perhaps, the freedom with which the mystic contradicts himself, and this he does largely for three reasons. First, the mystic despairs of language as an expression of his ideas, and often treats words and figures of speech loosely just because they mean little to him themselves, since he apprehends most completely in silence. Yet sometimes, in the second place, the inconsistency is studied, and the mystic is trying to suggest an a-verbal idea, doing so by a process which may be compared to the “resultant” of stresses in physics: for by two pulls at an angle to each other one may move an object between them in a direction different from either pull. Or, the same figure, one may make a wind blow a sail-boat in a path directly against itself by going off on a sufficient number of mutually correcting tacks. In the same way the mystic often feels that one of the best devices he can use to express himself is to build up verbal inconsistencies. So he declares that he goes to glory through humiliation, loses himself in order to find himself, dies in order to live, and in these statements creates an impression different from the literal meaning of any single word he uses. In art he similarly makes a monogram of cross and crown.

In its present position within the literary structure of the Book of Judges, Judg 1:1–2:5 stands as an introduction to those events purported to have transpired following the death of Joshua (1:1a). When it is read within the context of the deuteronomistic history as a whole, however, it is apparent that such cannot be the case, since most of the narrated events in Judg 1:3–36 have already been reported in Joshua 14–19. Thus, the present introduction to the Book of Judges appears to be a secondary and somewhat awkward redactional gloss to the deuteronomic account of the era of the Judges in the period after the initial entry into the land recounted in Joshua 2–12. The separation of Judg 1:1–2:5 is based on the investigations of the literary compilation of the predeuteronomic stories of the “deliverers” and the recognition that Judg 2:6–3:6 serves as the original deuteronomic introduction to this period of Israel's history. But despite the assertions of its secondary literary nature and its numerous parallels with Joshua 14–19, Judg 1:1–36 is generally seen as a collection of miscellaneous fragments of varying dates and varying reliability which presents a partial description of the initial occupation of the land. Judg 1:1–36 stands in distinct contrast to the pan-Israelite view presented in Joshua 2–12 and is thus of historical importance for a reconstruction of the period of the settlement. In general, modern scholarship has separated the introductory section of the Book of Judges from the body of the work it serves to inaugurate in its canonical form and has insisted that this introduction has no immediate or contextual connections with the stories that follow it.

In his search for the key to Hebrew metrics, George Buchanan Gray devoted considerable attention to the acrostic poems of the Old Testament. Since they are by no means typical of Hebrew poetry generally, it may be doubted whether they provide a suitable base on which to formulate principles governing the nature of the metrical systems employed by the biblical poets. Furthermore, the fact that acrostic poems have a rather rigid structure may have encouraged greater independence on the part of the poet in working out internal configurations so that a wider range of variation results, partly from the desire to avoid monotony, than would otherwise be the case. The great virtue of acrostic poems is that lines or stanzas are regularly marked off by words beginning with successive letters of the alphabet. Thus in the Book of Lamentations, the first four chapters are regular acrostics, while the fifth chapter follows the same pattern but without making use of the alphabetic device itself. In the first three chapters, three-line stanzas are the rule; in chapters one and two each stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet, whereas in chapter three, each of the three lines of the stanza begins with the same letter of the alphabet. Thus the first word of the first stanza of each of the poems begins with the letter 'ālef; in the case of chapter three, the second and third lines of the stanza also begin with 'ālef. The first word of the second stanza begins with bēt; again in chapter three, the second and third lines also begin with bēt. Chapter four follows the same pattern as chapters one and two, except that the stanzas have two lines instead of three.

Sometime during the second decade of the second century CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was conveyed under guard to Rome where he expected to leave this world through the mouths of the beasts in the arena. Along his journey he stopped at Philadelphia and Smyrna. At each stop he received visitors from a number of churches in the area. He, in turn, wrote letters to those churches and to the church at Rome. The letters of Ignatius have been the subject of scholarly investigation for over a century. The authenticity of the middle recension of those letters is almost universally acknowledged. These letters have been studied for the light they can shed on church structure in Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, the theology of Ignatius within its historical context, and the distinctive personality of Ignatius. One aspect of these documents which has implications for all other interests has not been satisfactorily explained, namely, how Ignatius understood his own letter writing activity. What gave Ignatius the audacity to interfere in the life of churches outside of Syria, and what kind of authority did he expect the admonitions contained in his letters to carry?

In the following reflections I shall start from what I consider an undeniable fact, namely, that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality. It is that over and above the objections which the modern intellect entertains against it on theoretical grounds. These — which for brevity I will simply grant en bloc — are by themselves indecisive. As transcendental, the object of the idea — immortality itself — is beyond proof or disproof: it is not an object of knowledge. But the idea of it is. Therefore, the intrinsic merits of its meaning become the sole measure of its credibility, and the appeal of such meaning remains as the sole ground of possible belief — as certainly the lack of such appeal is sufficient ground for actual disbelief. But since what is meaningful depends, beyond the mere condition of logical consistency, largely on the dispositions and insights of the mind that judges it, we must interrogate these for their prevalent unresponsiveness as well as for any possible hold which the idea, even in its present eclipse, may still have, or reclaim, on our secularized estate. Thus an examination of the problem at this hour will be as much an examination of ourselves as an examination of the issue of immortality; and even if it should throw no new light on the latter, on which in more than two thousand years probably everything has been said there is to say, it may yet throw some light on the present state of our mortal condition.

Saint-cultus is an element which mingles in the subject-matter proper to historians, liturgiologists and archaeologists. Sometimes they are tempted to draw conclusions with regard to questions belonging to their own fields of study in dependence upon the estimate which they have formed of some hagiological situation. Only too often the hagiological situation differs in some way from their idea of it, and the conclusion which they have reached is accordingly unsound.

One would be indeed presumptuous to predict the effect of this war upon foreign missionary operations. Indeed, to report fully the present effect of this world war upon the work of the various foreign missionary societies of the world is an impossible task. Missionary leaders are, however, attempting to estimate the significance of the present bearing of war conditions, while few would be so bold as to suggest even what the future may be.

Contact between cultures is a complex phenomenon that often involves accepting foreign ideas until these become new ways of self-expression. The case of the phoenix is of special interest, in this respect, because in antiquity it was associated with the sun temple at Heliopolis and miraculous forms of rebirth. The phoenix motif also appears in a variety of early Jewish and Christian writings, thus allowing for a comparative appreciation of its rabbinic reception. In light of these other intercultural encounters, it becomes clear that the rabbis were familiar with the details of the Hellenistic phoenix myths, and not only adapted the story to their own values but even enhanced its mythological dimension. In this way, the rabbis continued the Hellenistic practice of reactivating an ancient Egyptian myth. In contrast to the symbolic approach of early Christianity, the rabbis characteristically chose to accommodate the phoenix on a literal level, interpreting it mythopoeically, that is, by creating myth. Their interpretation of the phoenix moreover illuminates important, yet hitherto unnoticed aspects of rabbinic mythology.

Justin's social context in the city of Rome may seem to have only a tenuous connection with his beliefs about God, his doctrine of the Logos and the other religious commitments for which he ultimately laid down his life. Perhaps, had Justin lived in Athens or Ephesus, he would have written much the same thing. This, after all, is a man deeply moved by Platonist philosophy and the “perception of immaterial things.” Furnished with such Platonist wings, Justin himself would surely claim to soar high over all such mundane realities as the streets, bridges, and buildings of ancient Rome. It is not surprising that the vast majority of scholarship on Justin and other early Christian intellectuals follows him on a similar trajectory.

The engagement with Egypt and the Egyptian gods that transpired in the Hebrew Bible continued into the texts produced by rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic texts of late antiquity and the early medieval period frequently presented images of Egypt and its religion. One of the critical objectives of these portrayals of Egypt was to set boundaries of Jewish identity by presenting rabbinic Judaism in opposition to Egyptian culture. The Egyptian cultural icons in rabbinic texts also demonstrate that the rabbis were aware of cultures other than their own.1 The presence of Egyptian elements in midrash had previously been noted to a very limited extent by scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (the science of Judaism), and it has not escaped the attention of more recent scholarship.

A common uncritical criticism claims that dogma robs humans of the freedom to think and act. This dogmatic pronouncement reflects a sad misunderstanding con-cerning the function and meaning of dogma. When countering the negative effects of this attack, a systematic theology cannot be coerced into a defensive position. Rather, theology must clearly and creatively think of how a precise determination of dogma can remain principally open to a plurality of both experiences and inter-pretations of those experiences. Fixed by the dogma, the referent of a religion is the subject that is experienced in each successive generation of a living religion; the life of the religion is constituted by the varied experiences of its referent. If the religion is to have flexible permanence, then the referent must be presented anew to each new generation in a way grounding the diverse possibilities of experienc-ing that same referent. Dogma should be formulated not to repress and suppress, but to make possible both true activity as the “concretion of freedom,”This term is rephrased from the title of an article by Christof Landmesser, “Freiheit als Konkretion von Wahrheit: Eine exegetische Skizze zum Lebensbezug des Evangeliums in der paulinischen Theologie,” in Befreiende Wahrheit: Festschrift für Eilert Herms (ed. Wilfried Härle, Matthias Heesch, and Reiner Preul; MThSt 60; Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000) 39–56. and true thinking that can only take place in freedom.

In this essay I take up cudgels against a central construct in the confessional historiography of the Protestant Reformation: The notion that there existed a clear, well-defined doctrine of justification shared by all the major reformers from the earliest stages of the conflagration and that this “Reformation doctrine of justification” served as the “material principle” in the formation of the emerging Protestant self-identity.1 In contrast with this traditional view, I argue that the first-generation reformers, galvanized by Luther's protest against the indulgence trade, adopted a common “rhetoric of dissent” aimed at critiquing the regnant Catholic orthopraxy of salvation in the interest of a common set of primarily existential-religious concerns. During the course of the next several decades following the initia Lutheri, however, an “orthodox” doctrine of justification quickly emerged'several of them, in fact. The Roman Catholic church and the emerging Protestant confessions, Lutheran and Reformed, quickly found it necessary to formulate their teachings in increasingly precise terms, so as both to integrate their central soteriological affirmations within a wider body of contested doctrines and practices and to demarcate clearly the boundaries of confessional identity in opposition to competing confessions. As with earlier periods of intense theological controversy within the Christian tradition, this conflict represented not a sudden breakthrough, but rather “a search for orthodoxy, a search conducted by the method of trial and error.”2 Unlike earlier debates, however, what emerged in the aftermath of the Reformation was not a single, dominant orthodoxy which carried the field, but rather multiple, competing orthodoxies, each one with its own Gospel.

Perhaps the most extraordinary story about Jesus to survive from antiquity is one of the least often told. It runs as follows: Towards the end of his life, Jesus's reputation has spread out from Palestine and reached the terminally ill Abgar V (also known as Abgar the Black), toparch of Edessa, the capital city of the kingdom of Osroëne. Abgar writes to Jesus requesting that he visit Edessa and heal him. In return he offers sanctuary from the Jews and shared rule of his city. The story preserves the text of both this letter and Jesus's reply, in which he declines to visit (citing his upcoming engagements in Jerusalem), but promises to send a disciple in his stead. After Jesus's death, the apostle Thomas, moved by divine impulse, sends Thaddaeus, one of the seventy (Luke 10:1–24), to Edessa. Escorted to Abgar's court, Thaddaeus cures him along with one Abdu son of Abdu. The newly converted Abgar gathers his citizens to hear Thaddaeus preach, and the story ends with the Christianization of Abgar's kingdom.

Within the precincts of Harvard University, one can still hear an ardent defense of the venerable distinction between “facts” and “values,” or, as sometimes put, between “description” and “evaluation.” Arguments over this distinction go to the heart of the relation of ethics to scholarship, as was vividly illustrated recently by a controversy in this university concerning a doctoral dissertation proposal in “ethnonational studies.” Among other things, the proposal, which envisioned an examination and a critique of ideas of citizenship, as they bear on a contemporary case of ethnonational conflict, was criticized for being more a piece of advocacy, more the subject for an op-ed article, than serious scholarship. The possible consequences were portentous. If the case against the proposal had stood, the candidate would, in effect, have had no right as a scholar to pursue such a line of inquiry in the way proposed.

The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) has a long, complex history. Well-known in the Latin West, the story was neglected but not forgotten in the East. Incorporated within Late Antique and Early Medieval Gospel manuscripts, depicted in Christian art, East and West, and included within the developing liturgies of Rome and Constantinople, the passage has fascinated interpreters for centuries despite irregularities in its transmission.1 Throughout this long history, one narrative detail has been of particular interest: the content and significance of Jesus— writing. Discussed in sermons, elaborated in manuscripts, and depicted in magnificent illuminations, Jesus— writing has inspired interpreters at least since the fourth century, when Ambrose of Milan first mentioned it. Offering his opinion on the propriety of capital punishment, the bishop turned to the pericope in order to argue that Christians do well to advocate on behalf of the condemned since, by doing so, they imitate the mercy of Christ. Nevertheless, he averred, the imposition of capital punishment remains an option for Christian rulers and judges. After all, God also judges and condemns, as Christ showed when, responding to the men questioning him and accusing the adulteress, he wrote twice on the ground. Demonstrating that “the Jews were condemned by both testaments,” Christ bent over and wrote “with the finger with which he had written the law,” or so the bishop claimed.2 Ambrose offered a further conjecture in a subsequent letter: Jesus wrote “earth, earth, write that these men have been disowned,” a saying he attributes to Jeremiah (compare Jer 22:29),3. As Jeremiah also explains, “Those who have been disowned by their Father are written on the ground,” but the names of Christians are written in heaven.4

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories. Where did the very concept of “religion” come from? Whose interests are served by this apparently modern, European, and Christian way of categorizing practices? One way to think about the effect of the reflexive turn is to think of the conceptual vocabulary in religious studies as a window or lens through which scholars had previously been examining the world. What had been taken as natural and transparent now becomes itself the object of study. Richard King calls this “the Copernican turn,” that is, as he nicely puts it, a turn to focus on the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. The goal of this turn is to “denaturalize” the concept of religion (King, 1). The reflexive or Copernican turn, in my judgment, is a crucial aspect of social inquiry that scholars of religion should not ignore. But it clearly leads to the question: once one denaturalizes the concept of “religion,” what does the academic study of religion study?