The leaden tablet, on which this defixio is written, was presented to the University of Reading by Dr. W. H. Buckler, F.B.A., who bought it in Constantinople from an antique-dealer, who gave Claudiopolis in Bithynia (the modern Bulu) as its provenance. The number of defixiones from Asia Minor is comparatively small (K. Preisendanz in his ‘Die griechischen und lateinischen Zaubertafeln,’ Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, ix, 1930, 119–154, mentions thirteen from Caria, two from Phrygia, and one from Pontus), and, if this tablet really comes from Claudiopolis, it is the first, so far as I know, to be reported from this region.

The German mysticism of the fourteenth century was one of the most remarkable manifestations of that individualistic trend of thought and feeling which set in during the thirteenth century with the height of chivalric culture, developed under the influence of the growth of civic independence in the great municipal republics, and finally, in the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century, overturned the whole corporate system of the mediaeval church and state.

“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).

Numerous parallels to the Golden Rule of Matt. 7, 12 and Luke 6, 31 have been found in various writers. Most of these are Jewish or Christian, but some of them are far remote in time and place from Judaism and Christianity. Sometimes the precept is put in the positive form and sometimes in the negative, more frequently in the latter. A Syriac parallel, particularly interesting because it combines the two forms, seems to have been hitherto overlooked. It occurs in the philosophical dialogue entitled The Book of the Laws of the Countries, and is as follows: “For there are two commandments set before us, which are meet and right for free-will: one, that we should depart from everything that is evil and we hate to have done to ourselves; and the other, that we should do whatever is good and we love, and are pleased to have it done so also to ourselves.”

George Tyrrell's identification of the Pope as the Antichrist was not particularly original but it was important. For Tyrrell was the leader of a movement which, in the opinion of René Marlé, created the most serious disturbance in the Catholic Church since the time of the Reformation. Moreover, the reformers and iconoclasts who had made this charge previously had usually done so from a position outside of Catholic tradition. Tyrrell, however, attacked the Pope from within, as a member of his flock. The Jesuit philosopher even went so far as to claim that his radical posture was the inevitable consequence of his Catholic convictions. Thus he explained:

I believe in the Roman Church so far as it is Christian and Catholic; I disbelieve in it so far as it is papal. I see two spirits in it, as in myself, struggling for supremacy — Light and Darkness, Christ and Anti-Christ; God and the Devil. At present Christ is thrown and Anti-Christ is uppermost. … I look for the day when Peter, after his boasted fidelity and manifold denials, aliquando conversus, confirmabit fratres. It is a long way off from that blessed cockcrow.

In the October number of this Review for 1912 there appeared, as many readers will doubtless remember, a striking article by Professor Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, under the caption “Christless Christianity.” This is his rather clever designation for the religion of those who hold that belief in the historicity of Jesus, however valuable to the Christian, is nevertheless not absolutely indispensable to Christian faith. The article shows a wide acquaintance with the recent literature of the subject, is written in a spirited and forcible manner, and altogether makes an appreciable contribution, as it seems to me, to the clearing up of this interesting question.

As making for this devoutly-to-be-wished consummation, however, what we have chiefly to thank Professor Warfield for is the way in which, having chosen his presuppositions, he carries them through to their logical conclusion, and states the result with all the candor that could be desired. He plays the game; he is never “off side.” And when he intimates that, in his judgment, the exponents of this “Christless Christianity”—among whom the present writer finds himself included—are not Christians at all, there is no just ground for complaint; it is all in the game. It is a case where, in strict logic, everything depends upon how Christianity is defined.

Complicating the exegesis of this difficult passage are certain textual problems with which this present submission is to be concerned. With the Masoretic Text of v. 24 — wayehî badderek bammālôn wayyipgešēhû YHWH wayebaqqēš hamîtô — the Versions are in substantial agreement. The Syriac text twice inserts ‘Moses’ into this verse, as the subject of the sentence and as the object of mût, but this is an obvious intrusion designed to clarify a difficult context, while the Targum (expectedly) and the Old Greek prefix an equivalent for Heb. mal'āk before YHWH. It is probable that the double mention of a setting (i.e. badderek/bammālôn) is the preservation of two ancient variants. J. Morgenstern, who with others, has rightly noted this, draws attention to the peculiarity of the article with mlwn (i.e. bammālon), since the contextual situation is generally vague and in a journey of many days there may have been several such stops, though on the other hand the article with derek occasions no difficulty since the journey as a whole is referred to. Morgenstern preferred to read bammālôn as a nominal form from the root mûl, translating ‘now upon the journey, at the circumcision Yahweh attacked him (i.e., the child) and sought to kill him.’

Theology is constantly recognizing, more fully and more freely, the closeness of its relation to philosophy. Starting though they do from different impulses—theology attempting to interpret experience and philosophy to attain knowledge—they converge upon a common field. No great theologian but influences philosophy, no great philosopher but affects theology.

Of American philosophers since Edwards, no one has made so rich, profound, and extensive a contribution to religious thought as Josiah Royce.

In 1895 there appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Prussian Academy an account of Eine bisher unbekannte altchristliche Schrift in koptischer Sprache, by Carl Schmidt, at that time a scholar of the German Imperial Archaeological Institute in Egypt. Schmidt was helped in further research on this document by Pierre Lacau, the Egyptologist, but a full publication was delayed in the hope of further knowledge. This has come, slowly but satisfactorily from new discoveries and the friendly coöperation of French, English, and German scholars.

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.

A certain affinity between Aristeas and III Maccabees is to be expected, for both books derive from a single environment — the Jewish community of Alexandria, both have a major purpose in common — that of setting forth the relations of the Jews to their non-Jewish rulers in as favorable a light as possible, and, most important, both are Greek books, written according to Greek canons of form; they are not, like other books on the periphery of Scripture with which they have been associated, translations from Hebrew or Aramaic, nor do they follow the forms of such works. Each is what would be called in the progymnasmata or curriculum of the rhetoricians διήγησις or narratio. Theon declares (70.25) that the canon is to be followed not only by intending rhetors but by writers in various categories; the διήγησις he defines (78.15) as λόγος ἐκθɛτικὸς πραγμάτων γɛγονότων ἢ ὡς γɛγονότων. Cicero, again without doubt following ancient principles of criticism, sets forth the difference between a continuous chronological history and a narratio in his invitation to Lucceius to write a treatise on his life (Ad Familiares 5.12). Whereas history serves veritas and utilitas, a narratio may supply delectatio also. The ancient canon of veracity for such treatises is clearly stated by the grammarian Asclepiades of Myrlea, in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos 252.

In 1861, a French priest published in Paris a pamphlet entitled “The Modern Papacy Condemned by Pope Saint Gregory the Great: Excerpts from the Works of Saint Gregory.” The author, René-François Guettée, was a Gallican, deeply involved in the so-called Roman Question. He proposed to demonstrate to his opponents, the advocates of absolute papal supremacy, that his side was really more orthodox because it conformed to the views of St. Gregory. From the letters of Gregory he drew support for his argument that all bishops share the same dignity and that claims by the bishop of Rome to a superior position represent a corruption of early Church practices. And upon those readers who rejected his thesis he placed the burden of explaining why Pope Gregory did not merit as much credence as modern popes. Father Guettée therefore turned to Gregory for help in building a case against the present-day papacy. It was not the first time someone had done this.

Sometime in the latter half of the second century, Bishop Dionysios of Corinth began writing letters to Christian communities around the eastern Mediterranean. Of these letters, which remain only as fragments and summaries in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, we know of eight, including one addressed to a woman named Chrysophora. Though Dionysios is not often mentioned in histories of second-century Christianity, he was famous enough in his own day that his advice was requested from as far as the Black Sea and his letters were tampered with by those seeking to lend his authority to their theological positions. When Dionysios has been discussed by historians of early Christianity, his work has been mined for what it can tell us about early Christian letter collections, for the names of other second century bishops, and for fights over various early Christian heresies. Though I draw on these studies, I am here concerned with examining Dionysios's surviving letters as political rhetoric within what Loveday Alexander has called the “social networks” of early Christianity. Rather than focusing on questions of episcopal succession or early Christian letter collections, I consider how Dionysios's letters functioned as political instruments that knit together early Christian communities as they made their way to and from Corinth aboard merchant ships and overland caravans, moving amongst the myriad of people and goods that flowed through Roman trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean.

The surprise find of a portion of the lost Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus, to be presented below, was made inside another text discovery. In the course of searching for manuscripts containing works by Sophronius, the seventh-century patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the authors (JD) came across, in the collection of St. Catherine's monastery at Mt. Sinai, a book that consists exclusively of extracts from a variety of patristic, chronographic, and heresiological sources. The original purpose of this codex was, among other things, to gather evidence for the time and dating of important Christian events.1 For example, the first extract discusses a method for calculating the date of Easter, and the second is concerned with identifying the years and days of the week on which Christ's birth, baptism, and passion occurred. Other extracts are focused on an assortment of different topics ranging from the nature of God to the origin and meaning of certain philosophical or theological concepts, such as “beginning” (ajrchv) and “eternity” (aijwvn).

“It is true,” conceded the Russian Minister of Education on 17 March 1841, those “fanatics” who held fast to the Talmud “were not mistaken” in ascribing a missionary impulse to his project of enlightening Russia's Jewish population. The Jews’ anxieties were understandable, Count Sergei Uvarov admitted, “for is not the religion of Christ the purest symbol of grazhdanstvennost’ [civil society]?” Since conquering Polish-Lithuanian lands in 1795, the Russian government had been unable to establish a consistent policy for integrating its Jewish population into the social and political fabric of the Empire. Most notably, it restricted Jews to living in what was called the Pale of Settlement, a geographic region that includes lands in present day Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Belarus, and Lithuania. The Jews of the Empire were highly observant, spoke their own languages, and occupied specific economic roles. Buoyed by the reformist initiatives that had begun to take hold in Jewish populations based in western European countries, Uvarov hoped to begin a similar process among Russia's Jews.

The late antique world was filled with demons. These demons were constantly present and always at the ready to attack unsuspecting humans. Like almost everyone else in late antiquity, the rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia were aware of demonic threats and took steps to protect themselves and their communities from harm. But while demons were a danger, they were also an opportunity for creativity, identity formation, and community building for the rabbis. In fact, some Babylonian rabbis “thought with” demons in order to organize their environment and imbue their world with larger spatial meanings.

It is a curious feature of the present time that a boom in secular interest in the idea of a life after death seems to be matched by a recession in high level theological interest in that possibility. There is today a wave of popular non-religious concern about death and about a post-mortem existence, expressed in parapsychology, occultism, thanatology, and talk of mediumship, reincarnation, out-of-the-body experiences and the reports of those who have been revived after having been clinically dead. And yet at the same time some of the best Christian thinking today is inclined to deemphasize the idea of the life to come, even to the point of virtually abandoning it as an element in the Christian message. It is true that there is much talk of the future (sometimes with a capital F), and of Christian hope and of the radically eschatological character of the gospel. For example, Jürgen Moltmann has said that “From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving. …” But when we read on we find that the hope of which he speaks is, in so far as it has any content, a this-worldly hope and that ‘the life everlasting’ has been reduced to a penumbra of mythic imagery.