In assessing the importance of William Ellery Channing to his generation, Ralph Waldo Emerson pronounced him “our Bishop” and put in sharp focus what was for him an intellectual problem, and what has remained for us a historical one. It is not the word “bishop” that is problematic, for almost no one disputed the leadership of Channing in the first decades of the nineteenth century, that crucially formative period for our culture. His first biographer, nephew William Henry Channing, noted that he “was everywhere recognized as the most eloquent and effective preacher in Boston,” and after his death Emerson remarked that he “left no successor in the pulpit” (JMN, 1. 470). New Englanders generally recognized him as the key spokesman for the liberal or Unitarian theology, and social reformers of all stripes looked to him with hope to support their endeavors. On the basis of a handful of literary essays and religious polemics, he became, in Sydney Ahlstrom's phrase, “the most influential American religious thinker being heard abroad,” and Robert Spiller noted that in the critical world, he was “among the first American writers to win British critical consideration.”

We are in possession of a Number of documents (inscriptions and papyri) relating to the lease of priesthoods in Greece and Egypt, dating from the fifth century B.C. to late Roman times. That curious practice, similar in some respect to the holding of Church benefices in the Middle Ages, has been studied by different scholars, but without agreement on many substantial points. Before the second World War K. Wilhelmson and M. Segre dedicated very important studies to the problem, advancing considerably the interpretation of the sources. In my Lois Sacrées of Asia Minor I collected many specimens of these documents and tried my best to promote their understanding. But nobody has sought to link the sale of cults in Greece with the same practice, as it is well attested through the papyri, in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Meanwhile the inscriptions and the papyri, put together, not only fill the lacunas existing in both fields of documentation, but contribute to elucidate the legal side of the practice itself. With the recent publication of the study of M. Talamanca on auction in the classical world, the task has now become easier. Unfortunately the author does not utilize the abundant epigraphical material on our subject. I should like to endeavor to supply in part this need.

In the first part of this verse it is said that Herod feared John the Baptist, knowing him to be a just and holy man, and protected him; the second part presents some difficulties which can best be discussed with the text before us. In the Textus Receptus the words are καὶ ἀκούσας αὐτοῦ πολλὰ ἐποίει, καὶ ἡδέως αὐτοῦ ἤκουεν. The authorities for the words with which we are concerned are reported as follows from Legg's critical apparatus, somewhat abbreviated:

ηπορει και א ΒLΘ Cop(bo), item ηπορειτο και W: εποιει και ACDNΠΣΦ ל Minusc. omn. Vss. pler.

A curious parallel exists between two early Christian discussions of prophetic or divine knowledge. Both deal with the Christian problem of sense knowledge about the divine in a thought world dominated by Platonic thinking: how can Christians base their knowledge of the divine upon the reports of the apostles who claim to have seen God in a human shape? The first of these discussions arises from criticisms from outside; Celsus, the second-century Platonist critic of Christianity, calls the Christians a carnal race who say that God is corporeal and has a human form, and complains, “How are they to know God unless they lay hold of him by sense-perception?” (C. Cel. 7.27, 37). The second comes from within the Christian camp, and is to be found in the Clementine Homilies. In this rather enigmatic text Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, accuses Peter in his reliance upon his apostolic experience of “introducing God in a shape,” and opposes to apostolic sense knowledge his own visionary experiences (Hom. 17.3). The examination of these two texts demonstrates that in their common terms and the common shape of their arguments the issue of the knowledge of the apostles was common in Christian polemics. It was also a problem for philosophically minded Christians who would prefer to place the knowledge of God, even if historically mediated by Jesus, in the intelligible knowledge of the soul, rather than in the senses.

With his Studies in Magical Amulets Professor Campbell Bonner has rendered a great service not only to collectors and museums, but also to the history of religion in Late Antiquity. His sound criticism has removed over-hasty interpretations, especially those which have given the name of “gnostic gems” to those amulets of which he writes. He says somewhere that his criticism will lessen the religious interest in the gems. But there is a great truth in his words: “Nothing is more important in these studies than to recognize the limits of our knowledge” (p. 195). If this is properly done we have firm ground to stand upon and are able to appreciate the value and importance of these monuments for the religious mind of Late Antiquity. The rivalry with the magic papyri is evident, but while these were the property of specialists, magical technicians, the amulets teach us what was current among the people.

Recent studies in the chronology of the monarchical period have demonstrated that the variations between the chronologies of MT and LXX are not the result of isolated misreadings, but are a product of different chronological calculations. These studies have been important not only for historical reconstruction, including new proposals for identification of kings involved in various war, but they have shed a good deal of light on the history of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures and LXX, including the Old Greek and the proto-Lucianic and kaige recensions. Furthermore, it is now possible to assign priority to one chronological system over another, and to understand why the different systems arose.

In illustration of Matt. 7, 3–5 the commentaries are accustomed to quote from Jewish sources the Talmudic treatises ‘Arakin 16b and Baba Batra 15b. Thus A. H. McNeile, The Gospel according to St. Matthew (1915), says with reference to Matt. 7, 3: “An illustration of the warning in v. 1. It was perhaps another current proverb. R. Tarphon (beg. 2d cent, A.D.) lamented that men in his day could not accept reproof; if one said to another, ‘Cast the mote out of thine eye,’ he would answer, ‘Cast the beam out of thine eye’ (Erach. 16b; cf. B. Bath. 15b); but this was possibly an attack on the New Testament words.” W. C. Allen, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to S. Matthew (1907), remarks on the same verse: “Cf. Arachin 16b, where R. Tarphon (end first cent. A.D.) says: ‘If one says, Take the mote from thy eye, he answers, Take the beam from thine eye.’” J. A. Broadus in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1886), says: “The illustration our Lord uses is found several times in the Talmud; e.g. ‘I wonder whether there is any one in this generation who is willing to receive reproof. Nay, if one says to another, Cast out the splinter from thine eye, he will reply, Cast out the beam from thine eye.’” The list could be continued at length.

The diversity among introductions to Paul is a tribute to the apostle's genius. There are two basic reasons for the diversity of opinion that exists today: First, internal incoherency—the difficulty of sorting Paul's thought into center and periphery (or event and context); and second, external incoherency—the gaps in our information about one of the most famous and interesting lives of all time. No consensus has emerged on the question of Paul's place in the world. We make this point not because this study will address the problem directly, but because we shall make inferences from one of the views in current circulation, namely that there is a basis to Paul's claim to Pharisaism (Phil 3:5). Attacking this view, some scholars have thought of him as a “would-be Pharisee” at best. We, nevertheless, think that the preponderance of evidence situates Paul in a universalist Jewish, probably Pharisaic, context. Paul believed that many of the law's prescriptions were still valid. As an illustration of Paul's belief in the continuing validity of the law, this essay attempts to show that 1 Cor 7:5–7 is best understood in the context of ritual purity concerns. These concerns include both the injunction for spouses to abstain from sexual activity for a time of prayer and Paul's defense of a celibate lifestyle within his own charismatic self-understanding.

Following the failure of national prohibition, the temperance movement came to be regarded as an alien blight that had afflicted the American landscape. Richard Hofstadter spoke for many historians when he suggested that the story of prohibition seems “like a historical detour, a meaningless nuisance, an extraneous imposition upon the main course of history.” Rather than being viewed as somehow integral to and indicative of developments in American society and culture, the temperance movement has more commonly been exploited as a quarry for providing colorful instances of human folly and fanaticism. The tendency is natural for, unlike other leading reform movements such as antislavery and women's suffrage, which have legacies most historians are eager to affirm, the crusade against drink seems odd and misplaced to contemporary minds. But this approach has overlooked important features of the movement, failing to show why it did not strike its many advocates as a pseudo-concern or do justice to its widespread support and distinction as the longest continuous reform movement in American history.

Concerning the effort to recover rabbinic biographies, Professor Judah Goldin writes:

… Such works are hardly biographies in the serious sense of the word, … for not only do the primary sources disappoint us deeply in the amount of reliable historical detail they provide, but even as regards the opinions and teachings of the Sages, one is left to guess what is early and what is late. In short, there is practically no way to get at development, surely and desperately necessary for the historian and biographer. These books therefore are filled with speculation, sometimes plausible, sometimes not. As reflections of the author's own imagination and interpretation, however, and as collections of data about the specific sage, they are informative exercises.

My research exhibits, alas, the deplorable qualities to which Goldin points. At the same time, I have continued to reflect on what we know about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Here are some of the results.

A fourth-century inscription from Thessalonica includes an enigmatic symbol for which no explanation has been offered. The symbol appears on a stone marking the graves of a certain Σαμβάτιϛ and, presumably, his wife, Mαξήμα, and represents three intersecting staffs.

Professor N. Glueck has discovered a good deal of evidence for the existence of a large Byzantine settlement at Aila on the Gulf of ‘Aqabah. Some fragments of a marble screening belong to the remnants of a Byzantine church, which now lies hidden underneath the gardens on the shore of the gulf. Two Byzantine capitals which can now be seen in the police-station of ‘Aqabah also seem to belong to a Byzantine church of Aila. On the one, St. Theodore is represented in relief in his full armor and above him ΘΕΟΔΩΡ can be read. The other represents a saint, also in his full armor with breast-plate, shield, and spear, and above him the letters ΟΓΓΙΝΣ can be recognized. Professor Willoughby emphasizes that the martial character of the saints and of the archangels who are seen on the capitals is a sign of the military assistance of which this outlying frontier-post of Byzantine Christianity and the Empire stood in need.

The role philosophy played in the rise of new Jewish esoteric traditions in the Middle Ages has always been a critical question for kabbalah scholarship. Many scholars have contributed to our understanding of kabbalah's relationship to Greek, Christian, and Jewish philosophy, Neoplatonic and Neo-Aristotelian traditions alike. In this article I wish to contribute to this vast scholarly discussion by enlightening some aspects of theosophical kabbalah's innovation in light of its dialogue with philosophical ideas. This dialogue is complex, and the extent of kabbalah's interaction with philosophy is difficult to evaluate. My assumption in the following is that such a dialogue is best apprehended where conflict can be detected. Consequently I will study different cases of theological conflict between theosophical and philosophical conceptions—cases of heresy, where a theological tension can be identified. These tensions will help us to evaluate the nature of the theosophical innovation in question. The framework of this article rests on the assumption that theosophical kabbalah shares with different philosophical traditions some important theological structures but also that it maintains important conceptual differences. In order to evaluate the theological tensions involved I will analyze different cases of theological heresies, both philosophical and theosophical. I hope with this analysis to clarify theosophical kabbalah in light of its theological renewal, a renewal that was not merely the result of the acceptance of or resistance to philosophical ideas but also of the emerging of what I propose to call counter-theology.

This paper represents a conversation between two disciplines that too rarely enter into dialogue: New Testament studies and the history of Byzantine art. Two gospel passages have been chosen for analysis here: the first is a parable, the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–9); the second, which follows immediately upon the first, is a miracle story that provokes a controversy (Luke 13:10–17). Both passages appear exclusively in the Gospel of Luke. Our joint study will start with exegetical notes on the Gospel of Luke and the history of the interpretation of these particular verses and will then turn to the miniatures that illustrate them in an eleventh-century Byzantine manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Parisinus graecus 74 (figs. 1–2). François Bovon has interpreted the Gospel of Luke in a German collection, the Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, a series attentive to the history of the reception (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the biblical text in the life of the Christian church. He will explain the two New Testament passages and follow the path of patristic and Byzantine interpretation during these periods.

Despite decades of research, it remains surprisingly difficult to identify the origins of the works preserved in the hoard of Coptic manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Even as unearthed “Gnostic” gospels continue to make headlines, many academics repent intoning these old, fiery heretics, and some have even called for an all-out dispensation of the term “Gnosticism.”2 Yet a felicitous piece of external evidence seems to offer a more stable foundation for identifying the date and sectarian provenance of several of the most difficult works discovered at Nag Hammadi, the so-called “Platonizing” treatises of the “Sethian school” of Gnosticism.3 Porphyry, the top pupil of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus (third century C.E.), remarks that,

One of the achievements of recent scholarship forever to be identified with Ludwig Traube's name is the combination of history, palaeography, and textual criticism as an indispensable guide to the understanding of early mediaeval culture. The investigator of the course of politics and of letters works at second hand if he knows not the characteristics of those manuscripts in which contemporary events are recorded, or of those in which the treasures of the past were handed down to the Middle Ages. The palaeographer must consider his books not only as specimens of script but as witnesses for the text of the works they contain and as monuments of the culture of the times. The textual critic ploughs an arid field if the codices of an author are to him but A and B and C, to be hung from a stemma according to the value of their readings and their interrelations. These separate studies, which indeed call for diverse methods and diverse trainings, are but parts of a single science—a harmonious and comprehensive view of the life of an epoch. Traube of course had precursors in this complicated art, but his brilliant pursuit of it entitles him to what he himself would disclaim—the rank of a founder.

Old Testament textual criticism focuses on variant readings (such as “on the seventh day” in the MT of Gen 2:2 as opposed to “on the sixth day” in the Samaritan Pentateuch and in the LXX and the Peshitta) and these readings must be evaluated carefully. Ever since the seventeenth century, abstract rules have been formulated for the evaluation of textual readings. These abstract rules are of different types and each generation of OT scholars has a different approach to them. In the seventeenth century only a few such rules were suggested, but after that time one notices a growing appreciation for and employment of textual rules. In the present century one discovers a frequent reliance on–and often a blind belief in–textual rules.

Paul Veyne wrote a book entitled, Did the Greeks Believe their Myths? Regarding rabbinic Judaism, one might similarly ask: Did the rabbis believe their imagery? Rabbinic literature is so replete with fanciful images of God and humans and anecdotes of epiphanies involving both, that one naturally wonders whether the midrashic authors believed that their imagery reflected some actual moment in the world's history. Some scholars have chosen to view the literature as containing parables and images that were composed as mere metaphors, sometimes used for political purposes, and other times to spawn further associations and religious teachings. The question is, can one differentiate true statements about happenings in the material world from symbolic statements whose relationship to that material world is more vague? The tension is especially acute when one considers cosmogony, the story of human origins, and other moments in primoridal history. Yet it is no less present in those simple midrashic “biblical scenes” that are not actually part of the Tanakh, but which the sages readily ascribe to the text. Does a given rabbinic image convey literal beliefs about material happenings or metaphorical metaphysics?

The Armenian version of the works of Athanasius is known to European scholars from four sources: (1) the list in Karekin's catalogue of early Armenian translations, (2) Conybeare's edition of the pseudo-athanasian “Dialogue between Athanasius and Zacchaeus,” (3) an article by the same scholar, ‘On the Sources of the Text of St. Athanasius,’ with accompanying collations of the Armenian of De Incarnatione et contra Arianos and Qvod unus sit Christus, and (4) the Venice edition of Armenian Athanasiana made by E. Tajezi and published with Conybeare's help at the Mechitarist press in 1899. This edition contains all the material then available in the Mechitarists' library at Venice but is not based on a complete survey of the sources. Furthermore, the manuscripts employed are (with the one exception of Cod. Venet. 818) collections of various patristic writings, and do not contain corpora of Athanasius's works such as are commonly found in Greek.