The study of Origen's anthropology has generated a great deal of interest in the last few decades. This ongoing reassessment has filled considerable lacunae and redressed fundamental misconceptions in this area of his thought. There remains, however, an aspect of his anthropology in need of more thorough analysis. Scholarship on Origen's understanding of sin remains underdeveloped. Most studies of his conception of sin have concerned themselves with his famous teaching on the preexistent fall found in First Principles. Seldom has scholarship traced this theme beyond this early treatise. A notable exception is the ambitious attempt by Georg Teichtweier to offer a comprehensive account of Origen's understanding of sin in his Die Sündenlehre des Origenes. However, the scope of Teichtweier's project is so broad that any sustained expression of any particular aspect of Origen's hamartiological teaching is inhibited.

In Constantine P. Cavafy's 1917 poem, “Simeon,” a young cultured aesthete (probably from Antioch), writes his friend Mebis about a recent chance encounter with the famous stylite that left him “shattered, unnerved, and aghast,” and entirely unfit to resume his sophistic career in belles lettres:

Dubitatio is a complex figure of speech in which a speaker explicitly weighs her or his options in the course of making a difficult decision. Dubitatio was typically used to display a protagonist's character as revealed in her or his decision-making. In Philippians 1:22–26, Paul uses dubitatio to draw the readers into his deliberations whether to commit suicide in prison. In so doing, he not only reveals to them his own character but their character as well, in as much as it is their inordinate grief over his imprisonment that will ultimately determine Paul's decision. Dubitatio occurs already in Homer, but it was made famous in Greek tragedy, where it largely defined the genre. The tragic dubitatio was parodied in subsequent comedy and, by the Roman period, was beginning to appear in other genres, including political oratory, various poetic genres, history, and epistle. Paul's apt use of dubitatio in Phil 1:22–26 shows an obvious familiarity with the figure. By attending to Paul's use of dubitatio in Phil 1:22–26, we can arrive at a fresh and convincing interpretation of this challenging crux interpretum.

Ever since Leopold Zunz inaugurated the critical study of rabbinic literature in 1818, scholars of the school of midrash known as Tanhuma-Yelammedenu (TY) have given priority to analyzing questions of textual history, dating, aesthetics, form-critical issues, and the literary qualities of these texts. This scholarship has focused on questions of form rather than content; for the most part, the distinctive ideas of these texts, their values and theologies, have yet to be explored. In an article devoted to form-literary issues in aggadah, Yonah Fraenkel argues that “indeed there were also changes in the [Tanhuma's] ideas, like their ethical and social values and their overall world view . . . these types of issues need further research.” Unfortunately, very few scholars have responded to Fraenkel's call. In fact, two excellent scholarly works on rabbinic thought have ignored the content of the TY altogether: neither David Kraemer's Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature nor Ishay Rosen-Zvi's recent work, Demonic Desires, engage TY texts. While Kraemer and Rosen-Zvi extensively discuss sixth- and seventh-century Babylonian texts, such as the Babylonian Talmud, they do not do the same with sixth- and seventh-century Palestinian texts, such as many TY texts. These two important studies exemplify how, in a more general sense, late Palestinian midrashim have been conspicuously neglected by scholars of rabbinic literature working on content-based projects.

Readers of the Journal of Theological Studies may recall the interesting note by Mr. C. H. Roberts in the issue of January, 1939, vol. XL, no. 157, pp. 55–56. In connection with the occurrence of the verb in Galatians 2, 14 (ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε εἶδον ὅτι οὐκ ὀρθοποδοῦσιν πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου κτλ.), Mr. Roberts calls attention to the appearance of the noun ὀρθοποδία in a recently published private letter of A.D. 117 (Papiri della R. Università di Milano, No. 24), which contains the sentence: νὴ τὴν σήν μοι σωτηρίαν καὶ τὴν τοῦ τεκνίου μου καὶ ὀρθοποδίαν, ἧς πέπεισμαί σε κήδεσθαι οὐκ ἔλασσόν μου κτλ.

The Journey of the Divine Comedy begins with a conversion. The pilgrim “comes to” after somehow having lost his way in a dark wood. He looks up from that tangle and sees the rays of the sun striking upon a mountain-top, and knows that he must attain the summit. From that moment, the problem is no longer where to go, but rather how to get there, and the problem proves to be insoluble. Try as he may, he cannot achieve the goal which is the beginning and the cause of all joy, for three formidable beasts drive him back into the wood from which he has come, and he retreats, no longer able to help himself, exhausted, and very nearly defeated.

Here and there in the published literature on Navaho ceremonials one finds a suggestive detail or an illuminating general statement bearing on the relationship of ceremonial organization to social organization, but we have not yet had a systematic analysis of any body of data from this point of view. This paper will supplement my “Participation in Ceremonials in a Navaho Community” in the direction of providing an account of the “religious” behaviors of the Ramah-Atarque Navahos. The treatment will center around the family and clan affiliation of practitioners, their teachers, patients, and those attending ceremonials, but it will be convenient to incorporate also a few details bearing on individual status.

Three dates have been suggested for the celebration of the festival of Adonis at Athens, all of which have found adherents in recent years. Deubner, relying solely on the apparent evidence of vase-paintings, as interpreted by Hauser, placed the Adonia at the beginning of autumn. The only argument in favor of so late a date, that bunches of fresh grapes appeared in representations of the κῆποι 'Aδώνιδος' was disposed of by Nock, who pointed out that grapes were also kept until the feast of Choes, Anthesterion 12.

At least from the time of the influential analysis of B. Duhm in 1899, a scholarly consensus has developed which judges Psalm 89 to be a composite of poems of widely different date. Often cited is the view of H. Gunkel: to an old hymn (vv 29–52) a lament (vv 39–52) has been appended. The hymn was joined to the lament by interposing vv 20–38 and at the same time vv 4–5 were inserted. Articles in recent years have challenged the prevalent view of original disunity. J. M. Ward in 1961 showed that arguments based on metric considerations are not conclusive and that logic, vocabulary links throughout the whole poem, and poetic structure all argue that the psalm was a single poem from the that logic, vocabulary links throughout the whole poem, and poetic structure all argue that the psalm was a single poem from the beginning. In 1972 J.-B. Dumortier showed convincingly on purely literary grounds that at least two of the sections commonly thought to be diverse, the so-called royal poem of vv 2−5+20−38 and the cosmic hymn of vv 6–19, were in fact originally one.

The following reassessment of present-day NT textual criticism requires, by its very nature, a brief statement of the circumstances that occasioned it. Seven years ago, in the W. H. P. Hatch Memorial Lecture at the 1973 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I attempted in fifty minutes an adventuresome—if not audacious— assessment of the entire scope of NT textual criticism during the past century. Though this was an instructive exercise for me and one that others report as instructive also for them, it was inevitable that so bold an undertaking would elicit sharp criticism. The first hint of this came from Münster in 1976, but more clearly within the past year or so in an invitation to subscribe to a Festschrift for Matthew Black containing an article by Kurt Aland of Münster with an announced title—appearing as it did in English—that had a highly familiar ring: “The Twentieth-Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism,” obviously the title of the Hatch Lecture, which, following its presentation, had been published in the 1974 volume of JBL When the Festschrift itself appeared, it seemed obvious from Professor Aland's article that some reassessment of the course and significance of twentieth-century NT textual criticism was in order. Late in September 1979, Aland's article was reprinted in the annual report of his Münster foundation for NT textual research, now under the title of “Die Rolle des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Geschichte der neutestamentlichen Textkritik.”

In the light of these warnings from two philosophers who are attended to very carefully by contemporary theologians it might be expected that theologians would use the term “experience” with considerable caution. Exactly the opposite, however, seems to be the case. Contemporary theologians are talking a great deal about experience and, as we shall see, without much clarity or precision. This is probably the result of the swing of the theological pendulum to the left in the latter half of this century. It is also probably determined by the “hunger for experience” (Gadamer, Biersdorf) which has emerged in Western culture since the sixties. This in turn I take to be an aspect of a contemporary romantic movement which, like its predecessor in the last century, is marked by a reaction against the effects of modern science and technology and their accompanying secularism and rationalization of society, and by a longing for a deeper experience of the self, the world, and the divine.

In speaking about his objective in translating the tales of Nahman of Bratslav in July of 1906 Martin Buber said, “In general it is not my goal to gather new facts, but rather solely to give a new interpretation of their coherence, a new synthetic presentation of Jewish mystics and their creations.” Before his death, in responding to harsh criticism of his translations of the Hasidic tales, Buber referred to his work as an attempt “to convey to our own time the force of a former life of faith.” His task, as Gershom Scholem once pointed out in derision, was not primarily historical; it was not a process of fact gathering, but it was hermeneutical. He aimed to present a new interpretation of the Hasidic tales of the past which would render them relevant to the crisis of the contemporary reader.

Within the sanctuary of Artemis, on a small plain just east of the Sacred Harbor of Delos, lies a tomb dating from Minoan times which remained holy throughout most of antiquity. Modern investigators call it the sema of the Hyperborean Maidens, identifying it with a tomb which Herodotus says is “on your left as you enter the Artemisium” (4.34). Here, he was told, lay the remains of two maidens, Hyperoche and Laodice, who had once brought a tribute to the goddess Eileithyia from the Hyperboreans and had died on the island; here, in their honor, the boys and girls of Delos placed locks of their own hair. Callimachus, writing around 270, seems to know of this tomb; he does not mention it, but he says that the Delian girls offer their hair to the daughters of Boreas, Upis, Hecaerge, and Loxo, who once brought a tribute from the Arimaspians. The boys now give “the first-fruits of their beards” to honor some men who escorted the “Arimaspian” maidens to Delos (Hymn 4.278 ff.). And Pausanias says that the Delian maidens used to cut their hair in honor of Hecaerge and Opis (1.43.4).

In the last issue of the Harvard Theological Review, Mr. Eugene McGee has rendered the service of repeating the old caricature of Nominalist Eucharistic theology (this time pinning the donkey's tail on the English reformer Cranmer) and extending this line of argument in such a way that it can be clearly faced and perhaps finally silenced. For, contrary to Mr. McGee's claim, he is not the first to “discover” the Nominalism of Cranmer. Throughout the forties and fifties of this century there raged a controversy over whether Cranmer could be called a Zwinglian and, if so, to what degree. In this controversy were drawn Dom Gregory Dix, G. B. Timms, E. C. Ratcliff, C. C. Richardson, and G. W. Bromiley. In the course of their arguments both Dix and Richardson referred to the Nominalism of Zwingli and Cranmer, who, Dix and Richardson felt, shared essentially the same position. “Cranmer,” Dix said, “was a man of the high Renaissance period, with all its deliberate ‘subjectivism,’ which sought so intently to segregate what was present in the forefront of consciousness as words as the only significant element in human life.” Richardson expanded on this charge. “The philosophic presuppositions of Zwingli's thought on the Eucharist,” he said, “are derived from Nominalism and humanism. Like most of the Reformers Zwingli attacks transubstantiation from a Nominalist point of view.” McGee's exposition bears a striking resemblance to Richardson's development of this thesis, and is to be regarded as its “re-presentation.”

The Sefer Miṣwot Gadol (The Great Book of the Commandments) of R. Moses b. Jacob of Coucy (mid-thirteenth century), is one of the central works of halakhic codification stemming from Franco-German (Ashkenazic) Jewry in the High Middle Ages. It has long had a reputation for being one of the classic compilations of the tosafist age, a period of efflorescence of talmudic scholarship which spanned the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its influence both as a legal source and schoolbook was wide-ranging, as the large number of extant manuscripts of the work, as well as the intensive work of annotation and commentary that it inspired, bear witness.

St. John Chrysostom came, according to Socrates (Hist. Eccl. VI, 3), of a good class Antiochene family (ἐξ ɛὐπατρίδων τῶν ἐκɛῖ). Palladius (Dialogus, 5) gives more specific information — υἱὸς γɛγονὼς τῶν διαπρɛψάντων ɛὐγɛνῶς παρὰ τῇ τάξɛι τοῦ στρατηλάτου τῆς Συρίας. In all commentaries and encyclopedias which I have been able to consult this is taken to mean that his father (Secundus, according to Socrates) had been magister militum per Orientem. The words, however, do mean that Secundus (and his forebears) had served with distinction in the officium of the magister militum per Orientem. The words, however, do mean that Secundus (and his forebears) had served with distinction in the officium of the magister militum per Orientem. Secundus, that is to say, was not a senator of the highest rank, later to be called illustris, but a high grade civil servant. This accords with what John says himself in the de Sacerdotio (I.2) of his fortune and birth, that he was not excessively rich or noble by comparison with his friend Basil. It also accords with the story which his mother tells in the same work (I.5) of the struggle which she had to give him a liberal education; her husband's estate was evidently moderate, since to avoid encroaching on its capital, she was obliged to spend her own dowry.

The question about the whence and whither of the drift of our cosmic weather is an old one and cannot be lightly brushed aside. It is both a forced and a momentous issue. It is a forced issue, because we cannot help taking an attitude towards it, whether we make it explicit to ourselves or not. It is momentous, because such an attitude is a serious index of our deepest practical faith as regards the value of life, and cannot help determining our conduct. There have been three distinct types of theory in the past as regards this drift—Mechanism, Finalism, and Vitalism.

Thomas Carlyle never visited American shores. There was much to encourage his coming, especially the argument dear to his Scottish heart of money to be earned by lecturing. His friend Emerson, whose efforts made Sartor Resartus appreciated in America earlier than in England, was ready both to entertain him at Concord and to introduce him to the paying public. Once Emerson wrote to Carlyle a letter of invitation, describing his life at Concord so charmingly that the invitation must have been hard to decline. Carlyle was touched at one of his most tender points when his correspondent suggested that the hardy Scot's destiny lay in a new world. “What have you to do with Italy?” Emerson asked. “Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West.” Carlyle was invited to try New England for a year, with the promise of new health for poor Jane. The conclusion of Emerson's postscript made the mock assumption of real expectation. “Shall we have anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad you are coming.”

The Text The last sixteen lines of the remnants of the Exagōgē by the playwright Ezechielus depict the appearance of a wondrous and mysterious ζῷον. Since the fifth or sixth century, exegetes, with the singular exception of Israel Abrahams (see below, notes 33 and 56) have identified this wondrous creature with the mythical phoenix. This paper argues, however, that the ζῷον in the Exagōgē is a huge eagle that serves as a metaphor for God, drawn from Exod 19:4 and from chaps. 1 and 17 of the book of Ezekiel.

The theological crisis in Judea occasioned by the destruction of the Temple in the year 587 B.C.E. left its indelible imprint upon the contemporary literature. The conflict between the popular belief in the inviolability of the House of God and the stark reality of the national catastrophe raised fundamental questions about the nature of God and divine justice. The books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk, in particular, bear repeated testimony to the pervasive urgency of the problem. Once the inevitability of the fall became an ineradicable conviction in the prophetic consciousness, the need for an explanation became no less imperious than if the disaster were already an accomplished fact.