Uttering a vow was an important and popular religious practice in ancient Judaism. It is mentioned frequently in biblical literature, and an entire rabbinic tractate, Nedarim, is devoted to this subject. In this article, I argue that starting from the Second Temple period, alongside the regular use of the vow, vows were also used as an aggressive binding mechanism in interpersonal situations. This practice became so popular that in certain contexts the vow became synonymous with the curse, as in a number of ossuaries in Jerusalem and in the later Aramaic incantation bowls. Moreover, this semantic expansion was not an isolated Jewish phenomenon but echoed both the use of the anathema in the Pauline epistles and contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian magical practices.

New Testament scholars have almost universally assumed that Luke was written before Acts. The evidence to support this assumption is not great, and the possibility that these two books might have been written in the reverse order should also be considered. The clearest and perhaps the only evidence for the priority of Luke to Acts is to be found in Acts 1:1, where the author speaks of a “first book” which he has written, and then describes it in terms which show that he is referring to the Gospel of Luke. To this might perhaps be added the evidence of Luke 1:1–4, where the author is almost certainly giving us a preface not only to the Gospel but to Acts as well. But as Cadbury has indicated, Luke 1:1–4 may have been written after Acts had already been completed, so that this General Preface does not really give us substantial evidence for the priority of Luke. And although the secondary preface in Acts 1:1 is explicit enough about the priority of Luke, there is the possibility that it too may have been written only after the main body of both Luke and Acts had been completed. The editors of The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. V, p. 350, say, “Prefaces then, as now, were probably written after the work was completed….” This comment was made with special reference to the preface to Luke, but it might apply equally to the preface to Acts.

During a tour of Europe in 1860–61, Lev Tolstoy had the opportunity to meet the internationally famous French socialist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who was then living in exile in Brussels. Since by that time Proudhon's reputation in Russia was already well established, and since the young Russian author was thoroughly familiar with his Qu' est-ce que la propriété?, Tolstoy looked forward to the meeting with great anticipation. By all accounts he was not disappointed. The two men hit it off remarkably well, and even toward the end of his life Tolstoy remembered Proudhon with affection and admiration. This is not to say that their views on politics, society, religion, and international law were in complete accord. Tolstoy was, after all, quite skeptical about Proudhon's socialism both before and after their encounter. But in the main he respected him for his impassioned commitment to moral truth and social justice.

In 1891 Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) opened her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, with a romanticized account of her family tree entitled “Ancestral Shadows.” Little more than one hundred pages later she closed her presentation with a confident prediction that in future centuries the “Tree of Life” would “blossom” under the influence of “Divine Science,” benefiting all the nations. Between these extremities of genealogy and eschatology she grouped a potpourri of reflections— personal, historical, literary, and theological —which defy easy categorization and lack apparent organization. To this day her selfportrait remains a puzzle, a resource often ignored by those struggling to understand this “remarkable” woman. This essay is an attempt to unlock the enigma of Retrospection and Introspection by examining the content and the structure of the text itself, thereby shedding light on Mary Baker Eddy's self-conception as the discoverer and founder of Christian Science.

The following study on aspects of the form of apologetic literature in the early church and Judaism grows out of a previous analysis of themes in the apologist Athenagoras that reflect the manner of praising kings in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. My argument was that, although Athenagoras's Legatio is correctly read as apologetic literature, the task of the orator to render the judge well disposed to his cause is carried out by Athenagoras by calling on familiar epideictic strategies known to us primarily from Menander's (or Ps.- Menander's) codification of them in the third century. Meanwhile, Robert M. Grant has reoriented my discussion of Athenagoras by reading it against the background provided by Fergus Millar in the latter's detailed investigation of the activities of the Roman emperors in meeting the appeals and requests of the people of the Roman empire. Here the fact that Athenagoras's apology is entitled “Embassy” is seen as significant in the light of the importance of embassies in presenting appeals and requests to the emperor. It seems natural to look at the kinds of addresses that ambassadors gave in such circumstances for more precise clues to the literary character of the Christian apologies. The following study is intended as a contribution to the inquiry that has been opened up by that suggestion.

It has been conjectured that παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας in Matthew 5:32, which reflects the view of the School of Shammai with respect to the permissibility of divorce, is an addition of the editor. It is perhaps not without significance in this connection that in the Sermon on the Mount there seems to be agreement with the view of the School of Shammai in another important respect, namely that an evil intention is tantamount to an evil act (Matthew 5:22, 28). In Mishnah, Baba Metzia 3:12, it is stated: “If one intends (חחךשב, literally, thinks) to convert a deposit to his own use, the School of Shammai says: He is liable (for its value in case it is lost or damaged). And the School of Hillel says: He is not liable until he has converted it.”

In the 1820s it was predominantly Black abolitionists who opposed gradualist abolitionism and the concept of colonization, while, in general, White abolitionists opposed slavery, viewing it as seductive or as sin in itself, but did not want full emancipation for Blacks. Therefore, David Walker’s Appeal from 1829 is a central document in that it calls for immediate and full emancipation as well as opposition to racism and White supremacy. This article argues that the shift in political aim of Black radical abolitionists correlates with an innovation in theological foundation. Walker grounds his quest for immediate and full emancipation in an egalitarian concept of imago Dei. It is this theological foundation that became influential in radical abolitionist discourse and was employed by Maria M. Stewart as well as William Lloyd Garrison. As a result of research on Walker’s theological innovation, it comes to the fore that he most likely was influenced by Black Freemasonry, especially Prince Hall.

During recent years, scholars have been producing a great deal of important work to clarify and interpret Milton's metaphysical position, but at least one important question appears still unsettled. Does his materialistic monism embrace the whole range of being, uncreated as well as created? It certainly comprehends the whole hierarchy of creatures; does it comprehend God too?

In the extant writings of certain of the Church Fathers there are some interesting references to a man named Thallus. At the present time, beyond what can be inferred from these early Christian references, nothing is certainly known about him. In recent years, however, attempts have been made to fix the identity of this Thallus. Because of its potential significance for the early history of the gospel tradition, one of these attempts has become rather popular. Much of the acclaim over this suggested identification would seem to be based on a confusion between what has recently been said about Thallus and what is actually known about him from the early Christian references. Consequently, numerous errors of fact and fancy have arisen. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate, first, what is actually known about the Thallus referred to by the Church Fathers, and second, the validity of the identification currently proposed.

Although Jesus' agony in the garden (Matt 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; Luke 22:40–46) may be powerful and even inexpressibly poignant to modern readers, it was a plague and embarrassment to patristic and medieval interpreters. Few narratives in the New Testament were so inimical to received christological assumptions. Ancient and medieval interpreters, at least those ultimately judged to be orthodox, ascribed to the Incarnate Word the qualities of divine consubstantiality, omnipotence, omniscience, obedience, and impassibility. The pericope, at least in its Markan and Matthean versions, however, presents a figure who appears in utterly human form—powerless, ignorant, recalcitrant, and passible.

In June of 1533, Thomas Cranmer wrote to Nicholas Hawkins, Archdeacon of Ely, and reported to him that a certain John Frith had been ordered by Henry VIII to undergo an examination for suspicion of heresy before a tribunal which included Cranmer himself and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. The interrogators discovered that Frith “thought it not necessary to be believed as an article of our faith, that there is the very corporal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar.” Frith must have defended his own position in a winning manner, for both Cranmer and Gardiner were reluctant to see him persist in his heretical opinion. Cranmer, in this same letter, owns to having “sent for him three or four times to persuade him to leave… his imagination;” and we have it on Frith's testimony that, after his arrest, he visited Gardiner's residence in what was probably an effort on the Bishop of Winchester's part to win the young reformer back to Catholic belief.

The exact status of the fourth tractate included among the Opuscula Sacra of Boethius is still uncertain, though the other theological works are now almost universally accepted as genuine. Boethian scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were generally inclined to reject Tractate IV. Viktor Schurr, in the outstanding recent work devoted to the theological treatises, takes the same view, basing his judgment upon the lack of a title indicating authorship and upon the notation ‘actenus Boetius’ found between Tr. III and IV in Codex Augiensis XVIII (saec. IX). Schurr, like some of his predecessors, was strongly influenced in this conclusion by the doctoral dissertation of E. K. Rand. In that study Professor Rand attacked the authenticity of the unsigned treatise with vigor but also with prudence, tempering, in certain instances, the views of earlier proponents of his own position. Though he concluded that Tr. IV was not genuine, he made no secret of the uncertainties of the case.

A good deal of attention has centered of late on those sections of Samuel and Kings which are often said to constitute a biography of David. In particular, this ‘biography’ was recently singled out by Professor R. H. Pfeiffer, in his Presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature, as an example of the almost complete absence of religious motivation in the school of which it was representative: Its showed history almost independent of religion, as the work of the Chronicler showed religion almost independent of history.

The scientific study of religion which has gone on for the past fifty years has reaped a rich and varied harvest; but a thoughtful observer might hold with good reason that its most important result is this, that all investigators, whether themselves religious or not, have come to recognize candidly the tremendous motive power of religious emotion and the actual validity of religious experience. Yet singularly enough comparatively little attention has been paid to ancient religious feeling for its own sake. Classical scholars have made fruitful researches into the objective phenomena of ancient religion, particularly Greek and Roman cults; they have considered the relation of religion to philosophy and morals; and after many aberrations they have even found firmer paths through the morass of mythology. But we still await an adequate study of the subjective side of ancient religion.

Vincent Ferrer was born in Valencia on January 23, 1350 and died at Vannes (Brittany) on April 5, 1419. He grew up in a devout family, and by 1367 had joined the Order of Preachers in Valencia. As a member of the Dominican Order, Vincent Ferrer underwent extensive academic and pastoral training from 1370 to 1378 in preparation for a life of scholarly teaching and preaching. He was a teacher of logic at Lleida (1370–71), philosophy at Barcelona (1375), and he completed his formal training at Toulouse (1376–78). These academic activities reflect only one aspect of his intellectual background.

The brilliant light thrown upon the Pharisees and the Sadducees by the careful studies of Geiger and Wellhausen, and their many disciples, has not completely dispelled the obscurity whieh surrounds the origin and being of these ancient groups. Geiger, whose views have in the main been accepted by Graetz, Detenbourg, Weiss, and Klausner, conceived of the conflict between these sects as intrinsically similar to that which developed in his own day between the reform and orthodox Jews in Germany.

The centuries which we designate politically by the names of the dominant powers of the age successively as the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods of Jewish history constitute as a whole an epoch in the religious history of Judaism. In these centuries, past the middle of which the Christian era falls, Judaism brought to complete development its characteristic institutions, the school and the synagogue, in which it possessed, not only a unique instrument for the education and edification of all classes of the people in religion and morality, but the centre of its religious life, and to no small extent also of its intellectual and social life. Through the study of the Scriptures and the discussions of generations of scholars it defined its religious conceptions, its moral principles, its forms of worship, and its distinctive type of piety, as well as the rules of law and observance which became authoritative for all succeeding time. In the light of subsequent history the great achievement of these centuries was the creation of a normative type of Judaism and its establishment in undisputed supremacy throughout the wide Jewish world.

During the 1520's Luther's Latin writings were well known to scholars in England. But the realm was officially as loyal to the Catholic cause as any the popes of that decade might have named. The few clerics and theologians who dedicated themselves to the rediscovered gospel were hunted out and severely punished. Only by escape to the continent might they save their lives, in relative safety study evangelical teachings, and find literary expression for their convictions. Moreover, it was clear by 1525 that only through translating the scriptures and evangelical thought into English might the realm be reformed. Among the small circle of English Protestant writers, William Tyndale led the field by turning the New Testament into his mother tongue (1525–1526). He was guided by Luther's German New Testament not only in framing that translation but also in drafting the prefaces to it and to its individual books. Perhaps Tyndale had translated Bugenhagen's Epistola … ad Anglos into English, and perhaps MS. copies of this translation were circulated, but extant published copies date back only to 1536. Certainly Tyndale was the first translator of a Luther tract to have his work preserved to us.

In the catalogue of manuscripts at the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos by Eustratiades and Arcadios there is a curious error in the description of No. 236. The manuscript contains a variety of patristic treatises, letters, and fragments, four of which are thus described: