Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s unfinished and posthumously published Ethics was intended to be his magnum opus. However, its incomplete structure and the distinct ethical approaches evident in its unfinished essays have allowed for considerable debate about its overall coherence and contours, as well as the hermeneutics appropriate to the text. This essay reconsiders prior interpretations of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics through close readings that disclose three rival versions of moral reasoning operative in three manuscripts from Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Retracing his reasoning regarding the ethics of lying, the place of guilt, and the relation between the law of God and God’s will, I argue that Bonhoeffer’s detractors and defenders alike have misconstrued the controversial ethic of “actively embracing guilt” (Schuldübernahme). Far from the paradigmatic expression of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, its organizing theme, or the basis for his participation in the tyrannicide plot against Hitler, Bonhoeffer’s reflection on Schuldübernahme is properly understood as an outlier—a short-lived thought experiment that he critiques and reconceives in two alternative versions of moral reasoning in later chapters.

The Tosefta reads: “If a person found a ring on which was the image of the sun, the image of the moon, the image of a dragon (snake), he should bring it to the Dead Sea. And also a nursing female image () and Sarapis.”tos. ‘Abod. Zar. 5(6):1 (ed. Moshe Shemouel Zuckermandel, 468). The term follows MS Erfurt, while the version in MS Vienna is . The latter is preferable. This passage in the Tosefta almost certainly belongs to the second century C.E. Although this dictum is unattributed in the Tosefta, b. [Abod. Zar. states that R. Judah taught the baraita concerning the nursing female image or Sarapis (see b. ‘Abod. Zar. 43a, and Shraga Abramson, Tractate ‘Abodah Zarah of the Babylonian Talmud [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America] 77). “R. Judah” is R. Judah bar Ilai, a fourth-generation Tanna, who was active in the Land of Israel in the Usha genera-tion (second century C.E.). Each component of this intriguing passage in the Tosefta deserves close examination; the current article will reexamine the phrase a “nursing female image,” and attempt to identify the two pagan characters repre-sented by this cryptic wording. Saul Lieberman, one of the leading scholars who attempted to answer this question, was of the opinion that this phrase refers to Isis nursing her son Horus (“Harpocrates” in Greek).Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962) 136. Actually, he was not the first to note the connection between the nursing female image and Isis. See Isidore Lévy, “Nébo, Hadaran et Sérapis dans l'apologie du Pseudo-Meliton,” RHR 20 (1899) 373 n. 6; Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (London: Luzac, 1903; repr., Jerusalem: Horev, 1985) 103, s.v. “ ,”; Heinrich Blaufuss, Götter, Bilder und Symbole nach den Traktaken über fremden Dienst (Nuremberg: Buchdruckerei von J. L. Stich, 1910) 19; Jacob Levy, Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim (vol. 3; Berlin: Harz, 1924) col. 107a. Because the pair Isis-Sarapis was extremely common during the time of the Roman empire and especially in the second century C.E., the listing of Sarapis after the “nursing female image” probably led Lieberman to conclude that this character can be none other than Isis.Plutarch, De Isi. et Osi. 28.361 and many more. For the affinity between Isis and Sarapis, already in the Hellenistic period, see Robert Turcan, Les cultes orientaux dans le monde romain (2d rev. ed.; Paris: Les belles lettres, 1992) 78–79. Furthermore, Isis nursing Horus (Isis Lactans) is a quite well-known motif in Hellenistic-Roman sculpture.Roger Packman Hinks, “Isis Suckling Horus,” The British Museum Quarterly 12 (1937–1938) 74–75; John Ducey Cooney, “Harpocrates, the Dutiful Son,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (1972) 284–90; Vincent Tran Tam Tinh, Isis Lactans—Corpus des monuments gréco-romains d'Isis allaitant Harpocrate (EPRO 37; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); idem, “De nouveau Isis Lactans,” in Hommages à M. J. Vermaseren (EPRO 68; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978) 3:1231–68, pls. 226–49, figs. 1–56. The expression, the “nursing female image,” usually refers to Isis nursing her son Horus; however, on occasion we see Isis nursing the bull Apis. See G. J. F. Kater-Sibbes and Marteen J. Vermaseren, Apis I (EPRO 48; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975) no. 106; no. 141, pl. 81. According to the BT interpretation of the baraita, it is proven that the nursing female image to which R. Judah bar Ilai referred is that of a woman nursing her son. See ‘Abod. Zar. 43a; Rashi ad loc., s.v. meniqah: “A woman nursing a son.” It may also be noted that in the first century C.E., men commonly wore rings bearing depictions of Harpocrates and Egyptian gods. See Shua Amorai-Stark, “Isis in the Art of Gems of the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” Ph.D. diss. (Hebrew), Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988, 13 (primary sources). Lieberman concluded from this that Isis, like Sarapis, is “specifically mentioned” in Rabbinic literature.Lieberman, Hellenism, 136. Although this assertion would be correct regarding Sarapis, who is mentioned by name both in the Tosefta and in the Babylonian Talmud,b. ‘Abod. Zar. 43a. In this source, the tradition regarding the nursing female image and Sarapis is transmitted by R. Judah bar Ilai (see above, n.1). The fact that R. Judah taught this exegesis is apparently a further proof that the tradition of the nursing female image originated in the Egyp-tian cults, since R. Judah bar Ilai was known to be a sage who possessed a number of traditions pertaining to Egypt and its religions. See Gen. Rab. 87 (ed. Judah Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, 1071–72); Cant. Rab. 1:1 (ed. Shimshon Dunsky, 1). For a theoretical and historical interpretation of this tradition, see Samuel Tobias Lachs, “An Egyptian Festival in Canticles Rabba,” JQR 46 (1960) 47–54. For other traditions relating to Egypt that were transmitted by R. Judah, see tos. Kip-purim 2:5 (ed. Lieberman, 231–32); y. Yoma 6:6, 43(d); tos. Sukkah 4:6 (ed. Lieberman, 273–74). It is our opinion that R. Judah's frame of reference for the nursing female image is not Egypt, but rather the Land of Israel. R. Judah's halakhic stance on this issue almost certainly derives from the fact that the nursing female image comprised a quite common and widespread religious-ritual phenomenon in the second century C.E. Gentile community in the Land of Israel, as reflected in Rabbinic literature. We will show (below) that the cult of Isis Lactans did not exist in the Land of Israel in the Roman period. the name “Isis” and similar theophoric names, such as ’ and ’, are absent from Rabbinic literature.

Jonathan Z. Smith's essay “Religion, Religions, Religious” discovers the invention of religion as a generic term in colonial adventure. The move is notable: religion is born in violence, but it can be repurposed as a term without determinate content by which to compare cases. Smith's origin story is to empower scholars to pick up “religion” as they do the terms “language” and “culture.” There are reasons, however, not only to revisit the story but also to ask whether it is not missing a move—whether the reclamation of a violent term requires more from the scholar than Smith's structuralist reversal, his reinvention of colonialist invention. I compare Smith's resourcefulness with the conquistadors to Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. Both thinkers are asking questions of violence, invention, and use. Said more squarely addresses problems of thinking with and beyond guilty concepts. Yet Smith's story is an important counterpoint. Together, these thinkers help the humanities lay ground for a more expansive and self-conscious theoretical future.

Our generation celebrates its freedom from the constricting yoke of the imperial age of grand systems. It joyfully rebels against abstract thinking and disavows preoccupation with systematicity, which none epitomized better than Immanuel Kant, according to whose daily routine the women of Königsberg allegedly set their clocks. Contemporary liberal theology claims that we can no longer believe in a universal disembodied reason that is free from the constraints of particular circumstances. Our thinking, it alleges, reflects interests and desires. Theories serve our will to power and are to be interpreted not by appeal to an aloof rationality, but through analysis of our needs and inclinations. Freedom, however, produces new trepidations. Confronted with radical implications of their convictions, very few are willing to regard their theologies as relatively valid. Tending to reject the past yet wary of anarchy, contemporary liberal theology seeks a method that is attuned to contingent circumstances and avoids the pitfalls of unbridled relativism. I suggest that in our haste to defy and overthrow past masters, we deprive ourselves of profound insights that could guide a quest for resolution. As a case in point, I propose that if we are willing to look afresh at Kant and explore central elements of his system that have been obscured by an overzealous portrayal of his thought as a rigoristic abstract formalism, we shall find clues for escaping the impossible choice between absolutism and relativism.

Educated but uncritical thought finds the notion of miracle increasingly burdensome. Many reject it outright and others would gladly be rid of it. The current conception with such persons may be fairly described as follows: There is an order of nature from which it is hard, if not impossible, to show a departure. There may be apparent departures from the accustomed order, but they are always expressions of a deeper order and hence are natural. For instance, the freezing of water by the application of heat seems like a violation of the familiar laws of physics, but it is really an illustration. The science of today makes us familiar with many facts, which would once have been thought miraculous, but which we now see to be outcomes of law. Comets and eclipses were cases of this kind in the middle ages, and epidemics also were similarly regarded; but all of these things have been brought under the reign of law. The aëroplane and wireless telegraphy, and even the trolley car, would have been signs and wonders beyond ordinary thaumaturgy three hundred years ago, but they are not miraculous. The facts of witchcraft, faith healing, cures at shrines, were long denied because they seemed to affirm spiritual agencies of some sort; now we admit many of the alleged facts, but deny their supernatural character by including them under the head of hypnotism, suggestion, influence of mind on body, and so on. Considerations of this kind are making us increasingly hospitable to strange facts which once would have been thought miraculous, and increasingly indisposed to admit their miraculous character. Thus the realm of nature and the realm of mystery are both extending, but the sphere of miracle seems to be approaching the vanishing-point.

What the supernatural is depends on what nature is. And nature is regarded from two widely different points of view. The first of these is shown in Richard Watson Gilder's sonnet:—

THE CELESTIAL PASSION

O white and midnight sky! O starry bath!

Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood;

Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath;

Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood!

Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps;

Touch and baptize me with the mighty power

That in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps;

Make me all yours for one blest secret hour!

O glittering host! O high angelic choir!

Silence each tone that with thy music jars;

Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire

Till all I am is kindred to the stars!

Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy night—

So shall my days be full of heavenly light!

The second attitude is expressed in Matthew Arnold's

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

To a Preacher

“In harmony with Nature?” Restless fool,

Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,

When true, the last impossibility—

To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,

And in that more lie all his hopes of good,

Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;

Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;

Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;

Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;

Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.

Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;

Nature and man can never be fast friends.

Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!

Philosophical hermeneutics concerns itself with the philosophical concepts a theologian uses to express the content of revelation. This paper is an exercise in the philosophical hermeneutics of Karl Rahner. It will focus on one particular aspect of his philosophical background, namely those elements which he shares with the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This exercise is designed to be conceptual in nature, rather than historical. The question of how much of Rahner's thought is directly influenced by his reading and study of Hegel is probably not answerable with certainty and, at any rate, is not as interesting as the conceptual question of how these two thinkers took recourse to very similar ideas in order to solve some common problems.

In the introductory essay to a collection of studies on Luke-Acts published in 1966, W. C. van Unnik says that the twovolume work has become “one of the great storm centers of New Testament scholarship.” Old questions are being raised afresh and old answers face fresh review. Among the old questions is that of the sources used by Luke in the writing of Acts. However, the only study of recent vintage referred to by van Unnik is that by Jacques Dupont, The Sources of the Acts (1964). There are no essays in the Keck-Martyn volume itself which deal specifically with the question. Without disputing the importance of other questions (text, style, and especially theology), the sparse attention given of late to source-criticism of the speeches of Acts is not entirely felicitous. One essay does treat the speeches (Eduard Schweizer, “Concerning the Speeches in Acts,” 208-16), but only those in the first seventeen chapters and only in terms of their structural identity. Schweizer's opening remark is interesting: “Ever since Martin Dibelius' essay about this subject, it has been more and more widely recognized that the speeches are basically compositions by the author of Acts who, to be sure, utilized different kinds of materials for particular passages” (208). The question of the sources of the speeches is a difficult one, and any suggested answers are, at best, tenuous. It is however the premise of this essay that further work in the area is warranted, possible, and of contributory value to the rest of Lucan scholarship, a conclusion drawn from an analysis of two of Paul's speeches in Acts: his address to the mob of Jerusalemites (22:1-21) and his Abschiedsrede or parting address to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (20:18-35).

In the Expository Times for November 1927 Dean C. A. Webster revived an explanation of the saying of Jesus on the mote and the beam made by Karl Furrer (Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, 1890). Furrer held that we have in the saying of the mote and the beam an incorrect Greek translation of an Aramaic word which signified both ‘eye’ and ‘well,’ and that the Greek translator made a mistake and chose the former instead of the latter meaning. Webster offers an argument in support of this contention, which, again, is combatted by P. L. Hedley in the Expository Times for June 1928.

The Differences between the developed liturgies of East and West appear at first sight to be matters of purely ecclesiological interest, but more closely examined they are found to shed light on primitive Christian practice and on the growth of the text of the New Testament.

The story of the four who entered pardes, or the orchard, is the crux interpretum of the study of ancient Jewish mysticism. The answer to the question of how much mysticism existed in rabbinic Judaism depends on the interpretation of this story. In the history of scholarship of the past several decades, two major approaches have been taken. One approach, spearheaded by Gershom Scholem, although by no means initiated by him, sees in this story a record or some testimony of a mystical experience. The various terms employed, and in particular the term pardes, are seen as expressive of a heavenly ascent into paradise, and thus as a testimony of a mystical experience. The other approach, which consciously seeks to tone down the mystical and ecstatic element of the pardes story, sees in this story a parable. If it is a parable, then we do not have a record or testimony of an event of a mystical nature. Of course, even if the story is parabolic, the question of the subject of the parable remains open. Ephraim E. Urbach, who first took this line of interpretation, suggested that the story is a parable, and not a mystical record. The story refers, however, to the study of maʿaseh merkabah (“the work or story of the divine chariot,” referred to in the first chapter of Ezekiel), and thus retains esoteric significance.

The list of Sir Oliver Lodge's writings is long and varied, ranging from school text-books in elementary science through The Ether of Space, School Reform, Life and Matter, Reason and Belief, to The Survival of Man. With most of these writings I have no direct acquaintance, but on the mere evidence of their titles one may with reasonable safety venture certain particulars toward an estimation of their author. He must have intellectual vigor, he must have an instinct for vital questions, he must have the power of popular exposition, and, finally, he cannot be overcautious in the formation and expression of his opinions. All of these particulars would, I believe, be found also in any consensus of judgment that his fellows in science might pass upon his scientific work. This, if not unmixed praise, is much to say for a man, and it may be added that in general he speaks out from a sense of well-being natural to one of cheerful and sturdy temper who has achieved fame, station, ten children, and the confident hope of immortality for all of us. Is it then to be wondered at that he says things which multitudes are glad to hear, and holds a position almost unique in the esteem and confidence of the public at large?

“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the Law highly regarded by all the people, got up in the council and ordered the men to be removed for a while, and then said, ‘Men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men. For some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be a person of importance, and a group of men numbering some four hundred joined him. But he was killed and all his followers were dispersed and disappeared. After him, at the time of the census, Judas of Galilee appeared, and raised a great following, but he too perished and all his followers were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this idea or movement is of human origin, it will come to naught, but if it is from God, you will not be able to stop it. You may actually find yourselves fighting against God!’” — Acts V, 34–39 (tr. Goodspeed).

It takes perhaps some boldness of assertion to maintain that the life-story of an author relatively unknown—at least to the English-reading world — deserves to rank with those acknowledged masterpieces of religious autobiography, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman, and the Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse of Ernest Renan. Renan and Newman were born leaders of men, each drawing after himself a train of zealous disciples, and followed by an admiring public. Both were consummate artists in words, knowing full well how to make the most of the dramatic and human element that chance or their own choice had woven into their careers. Each produced a long row of eloquent volumes, and their writings not only enjoyed the widest vogue in their own day but are among the works of the nineteenth century whose significance is still far from being exhausted. Each was a convert — the one into Roman Catholicism, the other out of it — and so their self-revelations appeal to the psychological interest of such a process, when the subject of it is a man of genius, and no less to the historical interest attaching to any conspicuous individual whose career has become interwoven with the Church of Rome. The Choses Passées of Professor Alfred Loisy assuredly did not originate in any conscious imitation of these two famous writers, although both were conspicuous among his formative influences. But his book belongs in the same class with theirs, and in its distinction of style, its dramatic and human appeal, and its psychological and historical interest, as I shall try in this article to show, falls no whit behind. It is my confident belief, at least, that Choses Passées bids fair to become in its turn a classic to be placed beside the Apologia and the Souvenirs on the shelf of the student of religion, as a document of outstanding significance for the intellectual and religious evolution of the last quarter-century.

In 1901–1906 the publishing office of Hubert Welter in Paris issued a new edition of the well-known “Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio,” edited in 1759–1798 by J. D. Mansi. This “new Mansi” is a mere reprint, which allowed no correction or enlargement of Mansi's text, the pages being reproduced almost photographically. Did the publisher of this reprinted Mansi and his advisers give a “testimonium paupertatis” to modern scholars, by thus reproducing a collection which appeared one hundred and fifty years ago? Not in the least. The modern manner of editing ancient texts was rather recognized than disregarded by assuming that a really new edition of Mansi's collection was impossible. It was indeed quite impossible; for while all scholars who have made use of Mansi's collection have perceived its defects, yet at the same time they have seen that to correct them would require more time than can be spent on a new edition.

In her admirable study of autobiography, Janet Varner Gunn argued that the religious significance of the form “lies not in its literary function but in its anthropology,” that is, in its role in articulating and creating human experience. She also stated that much literary discussion of autobiography serves to conceal its “strangeness” and “unruly behavior.”

In the year 1794 Charles François Dupuis brought out his Origine de tous les cultes, ou religion universelle, a work that made a great stir in its day. His object, he explains, was not to express his own religious views, but simply to describe the opinions of the ancients. The religion of antiquity he represents as the recognition of the divinity of the universe, the heavenly bodies playing the chief rôle; all ancient cosmogonies, with heaven and earth, all the apparatus of religion (ritual, processions, images), and all myths were derived from sun, moon, planets, and constellations. The beast-forms and plant-forms of the Egyptian deities, for example, were copied from the constellations into which men had divided the starry sky; the zodiac was associated with the sun as a cause of mundane phenomena, and the division of the sky into twelve parts gave vogue and sacredness to the number twelve among Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks; the sun was the chief god—it was called the right eye of the world, and the moon the left eye; from the victory of the sun over darkness and winter sprang the idea of a Restorer of the world, a Saviour. He remarks also that the ancient Chaldeans were distinguished for their achievements in astronomy, and that from them the knowledge of these sciences was carried to the West. They taught that the heavenly bodies controlled mundane destinies, and, according to Diodorus, that the planets were the interpreters of the will of the gods.

As one deeply involved in the politics of his day, whether in Palestine or in Rome, and as a student of Thucydides and of Plato (particularly of the latter's Republic), Josephus was much concerned with examining the qualities of the ideal leader of the state, convinced as he was, with Plato, that the wrong kind of leadership could and did bring about its downfall. Since one of the most important qualities of a great leader is to be able to discern the qualities of people and, above all, to select a worthy successor, the fact that Moses, the greatest leader that the Israelites had ever had, chose as his successor Joshua led Josephus to the conclusion that Joshua possessed the qualities of an ideal statesman. As Josephus puts itin an editorial comment (Ant. 3.49) which has no biblical basis, Joshua possessed five crucial qualities: he was extremely courageous, valiant in endurance of toil, highly gifted in intellect, highly gifted in speech, and distinguished for piety in worshiping God. Again, when summarizing his qualities upon Joshua's death (5.188), Josephus singles out four qualities—his supreme intelligence, his supreme skill in speaking lucidly (σαφώς) to the multitude, his stout-heartedness and great daring, and his utmost dexterity in directing affairs (Πρνλανεσαι) in peacetime and his adaptabilityto every occasion. If we combine these two accounts we see that Josephus stressed in Joshua the qualities of wisdom, eloquence, courage, endurance, flexibility, and piety.

Armenian dogmatic literature is rich in creeds, some of which remain unpublished. The two which follow have a claim on general interest because one bears the name of Athanasius, and is an Armenian counterpart to the famous Latin spurium, while the other is a curious commentary on a well-known text.

It is a common fallacy to regard great movements in history as the work of one great prophet, to think that he alone changed the current of human events by the force of a single dynamic personality. As a matter of fact, great movements, such as the Reformation, have been produced because an unusually large number of prophets arose at the same time. Though the names of only a few have been illumined by fame, the deeds of the rest were just as necessary for the success of the movement.