A New era in Septuagint studies began in the autumn of 1891. In November of that year Hort drew up a scheme for the larger Cambridge edition: a few days later Lagarde, just before the operation from which he died on December 22, showed to his young pupil Alfred Rahlfs the works on which he was engaged, and explained his plans for their completion and publication. In these two schemes three scholars have found an arduous and self-sacrificing life-work. When A. E. Brooke and Norman McLean undertook the preparation of the Cambridge edition in 1895, they hoped that the Octateuch might be completed in five years: the final part of this first volume did not appear until 1917. But strenuous and untiring as their toil was through long years, it is now bearing rapid fruit. It is astonishing that the intricate editions of Samuel and Kings should have been published within the four years 1927–30, and Chronicles at the beginning of 1932.

In 1932 Vitelli and Norsa published a substantial fragment of the Greek Jonah, the remains of a parchment codex, consisting of the final leaf of an initial quaternion and two other complete quaternions, in all seventeen consecutive folios or thirty-four pages. The text covers 1.11b–4.10a. The fourteen missing pages of the first quaternion and five additional pages beyond the present end of the codex would suffice to complete the text. The quaternions are so arranged that each begins and ends with a recto, and within the quaternion verso always confronts verso, recto always confronts recto. Each page bears one column of ten lines, and the lines contain as few as six and as many as fourteen letters, but commonly eight to eleven letters. Vitelli and Norsa give the size of the columns as 4 × 4.5 cm., but this is probably a mean estimate since a measurement taken on the facsimile yields 4 × 4.8 cm. for the columns of writing on pp. 12 and 13 of the third quaternion. The codex is 5.5 cm. broad and 6 cm. high. The unusually small format is noteworthy. The editors have assigned the manuscript to the fourth century A.D. It was acquired by purchase and its provenience is unknown.

In an article in the fall 1991 issue of the Harvard Theological Review, David Steenburg proposes “to consider the potential significance of chaos theory for modern culture.” This important issue has not received adequate attention because the understanding of math and the physical sciences necessary to be able to speak cogently about chaos theory can be intimidating for nonscientists. Those who are not scientists, however, have at their disposal the popular and effective summary of chaos theory by James Gleick. While Gleick's work is solid, it has led some to be captivated by chaos theory's fecund metaphorical terminology and elegant computer-aided graphical images. Although those images, particularly the logistic map, show striking instances of order hidden within chaotic systems, too often they are used to forward the thesis that there are other systems, ranging from modern literary theory to stock market fluctuations, that also house deep structure amid their apparent disorder. The result is, on occasion, analysis that is based only upon metaphor.

The use of the term άλεεῖς άνθρώπων, “fishers of men” at Mark 1:17 (on which depends Matthew 4:19 but only indirectly Luke 5:10) has often been treated as a self-evident metaphor. “The words of Jesus summon Simon and Andrew to become disciples and heralds of the Kingdom of God,” Vincent Taylor says. Other figures might have sufficed for this dual purpose and the peculiar nature of the metaphor is not explored when the terms “disciples” and “heralds” are used. What is the relationship of disciples to Jesus and how heralds were related to the Kingdom is not made clear although the Markan term may have been intended to do something of this kind. It is insufficient to observe that, since the four men are depicted as fishermen, the summons is appropriately phrased.The metaphor has a Biblical background which provides some clue to the nature of their new calling or, since they are already fishermen, to a new type of fishing and a new catch. Riesenfeld underlines the importance of the phrasing of the call but does not enquire into its meaning.

In the essay “Creed or Chaos?” written in the midst of the turmoil of World War II, British mystery novelist Dorothy L. Sayers defended the relevance of the creeds produced during the doctrinal debates of the fourth and fifth centuries to the lives of modern Christians. The theological dogmas contained in such documents as the Nicene Creed (325) or the Chalcedonian Definition (451) are not, she notes wittily, “a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling,” but were “hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity” to resolve theological controversies that had real impact on the discipleship of ordinary Christians. To put matters at their simplest, the trinitarian controversies revolved around the question of whether Christ was divine, and so capable of saving humankind from sin and death. The christological controversies, at least in their earliest stage, debated whether Christ was really human, truly the God-made-man capable of healing wounded humanity and providing aviable role model for Christians to follow in the living of a redeemed life. At stake in both controversies was a convincing explanation of the central Christian tenet that “Jesus saves” for those who profess to be his followers.

In her recent book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi pointed out the violence endemic to the Wild Man paradigm set forth in Robert Bly's Iron John:

For months, Bly has refused requests for an interview—his media interviews are largely with men—but today he accedes to a brief conversation over lunch. Between man-size bites of a sandwich, the poet says he bars women from most of his events because men need a sanctuary from a female-dominated world. “There's no place for the warrior in this country. The feminists have taken over from the Catholic priests.” And this is only the start of the female incursion. “I just see it getting worse and worse. Men will become more and more insecure, farther from their own manhood. Men will become more like women.…” What evidence does he have that all this is happening, or that feminism is actually turning men “soft”? The venerable poet flies into a sudden rage. “I don't need evidence. I have brains, that's how I know.”

No one who has studied the history of the last century can fail to be struck by the great changes which have taken place in human thought, affecting the whole outlook of man in his relation to the world both within and without and constituting a revolution in the intellectual life of our times. The most permanent forces in human life have been brought face to face with new facts, new conditions, and new ideas, and nowhere do we find the evidences of this change in outlook greater than in the sphere of religion, where the old problems and the old controversies are passed or passing. One of the great questions of today is, as a recent writer has said, “whether Christianity can come to terms with the awakening self-consciousness of modern civilization, equipped with a vast mass of new scientific knowledge and animated for the first time by ideals which are not borrowed from classical or Hebrew antiquity.” But Christianity itself has already been deeply influenced by some of the changes which have taken place. The great forces of history press steadily upon all the institutions of society and the form or expression of the religious life is profoundly affected by the movements of thought or changes in sentiment which take place in human society.

One of the most engaging personalities of that most engaging of Christian centuries, the thirteenth, is Brother Salimbene of Parma. His life, begun in 1221, five years before the death of Francis of Assisi and ended, probably, about 1288, thirteen years after the birth of Dante, connects the mystical, devotional, ascetic piety of the Middle Ages with the rational, individualistic, personal attitude of the modern mind. A devoted member of the Franciscan Order and acutely sensitive to its historic significance, he spends his life in its manifold activities, and toward the close sets himself to the congenial task of putting down in order the most vivid impressions remaining to him of the men and things he has had dealings with.

The question of how human language functions in relation to God constitutes one of the most difficult problems in Christian theology. I contend that Christian notions of language about God should be constructed in light of christology, since both are concerned with the relationship between the human and the divine. Northrop Frye, drawing on the poetry and thought of William Blake, speaks of the importance of “the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present” in understanding how religious language works. This fundamental quality of double vision or tension characterizes the relationship between the human and the divine both in language about God and in christology. In this article I shall examine several aspects of the relationship between the human and the divine: first, the basic problem of theological language as discussed by George Lindbeck; second, the notion of theological language as metaphorical, as discussed by Sallie McFague; and third, christology as found in the Chalcedonian definition of Christian faith. I shall conclude that it is appropriate to construct notions of language about God in light of Chalcedonian christology.

One of the most inclusive of the Armenian Canon lists is that compiled by Gregory of Tatʿew (1346–1410 C.E.). He was a man of great and comprehensive learning, head of the monastery of Tatʿew, in the province of Siunikʿ. This was a most important center of Armenian learning, which flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This article presents a reading of the story of the Patriarch's meeting with the Emperor Diocletian as it appears in the late antique midrashic compilation, Genesis Rabbah. The story encapsulates the complexity of the relationship between the rabbis and Roman political, cultural and religious hegemony, showing the rabbis as both in eternal conflict with the Roman Empire and its culture and, yet, in many ways, very Roman themselves. In the second half of the article, I argue that this story presents a unique perspective on rabbinic views of both “demons” and the Olympian gods themselves. I conclude by comparing and contrasting these views with the approaches of early Christian thinkers.

Scholars in all fields should hold themselves morally responsible for what they publish and teach. One would think that everyone would take this for granted, but Hilary Putnam, for one, has earnestly warned that we dare not. As he writes, “To-day, as we face the twenty-first century, our task is not to repeat the mistakes of the twentieth century.” He sounded this warning at the conclusion of his analysis of Jacques Derrida's philosophical works. Putnam regrets that philosophers reside among the all too numerous scholars whose publications and instruction aided and abetted the development of the “political tragedy” exemplified by the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Derrida the philosopher counts among current scholars whose thinking raises the specter of repeating those mistakes of the twentieth century and their horrendous aftermath. Taking the renewal of philosophy as the theme for his Gifford Lectures of 1990, Putnam characterized the writings of Derrida as not only philosophically unsound, but also as dangerous and irresponsible.

The understanding of Hebrew prophecy has made great advances in modern biblical scholarship. To be sure, such is the diversity and complexity both of prophetic texts within the Hebrew canon and of contemporary methods of interpretation that many unresolved—perhaps irresolvable—issues remain. Yet recent hermeneutical debate, like the philological and historical work of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, can offer fresh lenses through which to read the text, in ways that at least sometimes may help make progress beyond seeming impasses. My purpose in this paper is to focus on one particular prophetic narrative, one which is often used as a case study: the story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kgs 22:1–38. I hope it may illustrate something of the kind of fresh understanding of a difficult prophetic text which is achievable.

The Genevan Reformation was subjected to a trenchant ethical critique during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Radicals who identified both Calvin and Beza as unscrupulous, dishonest, and immoral. By contrast, modern scholars have paid little attention to such matters. They have either stated explicitly that both men were upright and honest in their lives and ministries or implied it. A handful of scholars have, however, alluded to dishonest conduct on their parts. The present article takes up this topic in detail, looking particularly at Geneva’s ministry to France. It contends that duplicity characterized Calvin and Beza’s French ministry between 1536 and 1563. It commences by examining their understanding of mendacity, which provides the standard for our analysis of their ministry. After outlining what Calvin and Beza did to support and strengthen Calvinist churches in France, the article sets forth and explains the system Calvin devised to hide their ministry from the French Catholic government and probably from the Nicodemites as well. This system depended on lies, deceit, and simulation.

Toward the end of his nine-year tenure as Fellow, Thomas Hooker awoke in his sleeping quarters at Emmanuel College terrified by a sense of “the Just Wrath of Heaven.” His God, the same God in whom he had always put his trust, had turned against him and was furious at his sinfulness. Dreading divine punishment, Hooker found himself “fill'd. . . with most unusual Degrees of Horror and Anguish.” Alone in the night, Hooker was haunted by the anger of a terrifying God.

The mysticism of the seventeenth-century French cardinal, Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), contains an extended treatment of the relationship of the human and the divine in mystical union. Bérulle explores the nature of mystical union in detail and gives attention to the combination of the apparently incompatible elements of the human and divine and the historical and eternal. He prefers not to begin with the opposition between these elements but instead, by exploring the relationship between them, to use relational language, which brings together unity and difference. For this task, he draws on the tools of late medieval mysticism, which entail especially the metaphors of interior poverty, nuptial mutuality, and neoplatonic emanation. At the same time, he applies the categories of Christology to the problem of mystical relationality and difference. Christology deepens the ways in which to assert and to combine unity and difference between the human and the divine in mystical union. For the reader today, this provides an intriguing perspective on the question of mystical relationality.1 I intend here to set out Bérulle's understanding of mystical relationality and to focus on his christological development of questions of unity and difference.

Scholarly treatments of the Christian Socialist movement, which gained a modest notoriety in the United Kingdom from 1848 to 1854, invariably draw attention to the resolute political conservatism of its spiritual leader, Frederick Denison Maurice.See, for example, Gilbert Clive Binyon, The Christian Socialist Movement in England: An Introduction to the Study of Its History (London: SPCK, 1931); Olive J. Brose, Frederick Deni-son Maurice: Rebellious Conformist (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1971); Torben Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism 1848–1854 (Universitetsforlaget I Aarhus, 1962); Frank Maudlin McClain, Maurice: Man and Moralist (London: SPCK, 1972); Edward Norman, The Victorian Christian Socialists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) esp. 1–34; Charles E. Raven, Christian Socialism 1848–1854 (London: MacMillan and Co., 1920); and David Young, F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Maurice's self-confessed “anti-democratical heresies,”The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice Chiefly Told in His Own Letters (ed. Frederick Maurice; 4th ed.; London: Macmillan and Co., 1885) 2:136. his unflagging concern to defend the institutions of monarchy and aristocracy, and his near pathological dread of social programs are taken to be indicative of a “monumental conservatism”Brose, Rebellious Conformist, xv. that ruined his close relationship with his key colleague John LudlowJohn Ludlow (1821–1911) was arguably the initial political inspiration for Christian Socialist movement. He equipped Maurice with an understanding of cooperative groups. Though less theo-logically-minded than Maurice, Ludlow was the other major public voice of Christian Socialism from 1848 to 1854. and thereby ensured the movement's rapid demise. This paper does not attempt to overturn entirely such an assessment of Maurice, but it does seek to complicate matters significantly by way of a critical analysis of Politics for the PeoplePolitics for the People, Nos. 1–17 (London: John W. Parker, 1848). (1848) and Tracts on Christian SocialismTracts on Christian Socialism, Nos. 1–7 (London: George Bell, 1850); Tracts on Christian Socialism, No. 8 (London: John James Bezer, 1850). (1850–1851)—two populist journals that attempted to spread the gospel of Christian socialism to both the English working classes and Anglican clergy. I argue that while often endorsing conservative political values“Conservative” is, of course, a term with meanings relative to context. To call Maurice politi-cally “conservative” is to acknowledge his basic unwillingness to countenance a large-scale political reorganization of English society. Maurice showed little interest in a redistribution of wealth or government ownership of the means of production; nor did he believe that the basic socio-economic structures of English society—such as class—should undergo change. there was also a subversive dimension to Maurice's thought that recent commentators have not appreciated. This subversiveness proceeded from a theological basis: a powerful and imaginative anthropology that conceived of all human beings as sharing in the infinite goodness of Christ, not the corruptive sin of Adam. Cast in political terms, this anthropology enabled Maurice to propose that radical changes to English society might begin in unexpected ways, animated by agency of the marginalized, the downcast, and the disenfranchised. In light of the solidarity of all in Christ, church affiliation, class status, gender, and the like were no barriers to an individual inaugurating the transformation of English society. Anyone could challenge the competitive principle of political economy and promote the Christian ideal of cooperation.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul appeals to the principle of “equality” (ἰσότης) in order to encourage the Corinthians to contribute to the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. What is this “equality” of which Paul speaks and to which he exhorts his readers? Is it a principle of fairness, an equitable balance between the “haves” and the “have-nots” that might find expression in spirited generosity and charitable initiatives? Or is it “a regulative principle of mutual assistance,” which sets in motion a process of equalization between those who have surplus and those who have need? Or does Paul intend something more radical, more democratic? Is Paul asserting that all believers in Christ Jesus are “equal” and on this basis (ἐξ ἰσότητος) should engage in redistributive action, “so that there may be equality” (ὅπως γένηται ἰσότης)?