Do the majority of the Greek lectionaries of the gospels agree with one another so consistently that it is possible to speak of their text as “the lectionary text”? It has generally been assumed that the text of lectionaries does not merit serious attention, and that even if they should agree in text, the quality of that text would not justify its study. But the discussion of the quality and significance of this text may reasonably be postponed until its existence has been established.

By the editor's kindness I am permitted to present here some corrections and supplements to papers and notes previously published in this Review. I had hesitated to claim the attention of readers again for matters of minor importance; but justice to other scholars seemed to demand an additional word about some of the following topics, and the interest of the supplementary matter must be my excuse for reverting to the others.

In the years since the uprisings of the late 1960s swept the cultures of Europe and America, the emergence of a radical critique of modernity and the heralding of a corresponding transition into postmodernity have increasingly occupied the minds of many cultural critics, theologians, philosophers, and historians alike. These three decades have witnessed the development of a wide array of differing cultural, social, and conceptual possibilities: the academy, for example, has seen the growth of gender studies and inquiries dedicated to previously marginalized communities, as well as the advancement of postmodern theories of culture, action, and knowledge among practitioners of philosophy, sociology, and theology, among others. The story is by now familiar, and while cataloging these changes itself would be an interesting endeavor, suffice it here to underscore that the interests, orientations, foci, and theoretical approaches of the academy have all changed significantly at the end of the twentieth century.

The religions of ancient Western Asia, though presenting in detail a number of differences, agree in their conception of the relation between man and god. This is the same relation that exists between the servant and his master, or between the subject and his king or prince. According to the religions of ancient Western Asia, man had to serve his god, his king and his master, and this service constituted his religion. In fact, man was created solely to serve god, and all his life therefore was but a series of religious acts in the service of his god. The religious texts of all palaeo-oriental nations afford us ample proofs that this was the fundamental principle of their religion. I refer to Semitic nations, that is, to those who spoke Semitic languages, or to peoples of other tongues: the Sumerians or the Phoenicians, the Hittites or the South Arabs. All these saw divinity in masters, princes, or kings who had man as subject or servant.

The article in the April, 1941 number of the REVIEW on The Epitaph of Julius Terentius by C. B. Welles, and the following Postscript by A. D. Nock, are of great interest for their presentation of Graeco-Roman thought on the state of departed souls. The writer would note some scanty correspondences from the Oriental field.

In his 1947 article, “Das judäische Königsritual,” Gerhard von Rad argued that the Judean enthronement ritual was heavily dependent on the corresponding Egyptian ritual. He argued persuasively that the of Ps 2:7, the of 2 Kgs 11:12, and the of Ps 89:40 were all simply different designations of the same reality, the Judean counterpart of the Egyptian nḫb.t, the royal protocol that the deity writes and presents to the new king along with the crown at the time of the latter's coronation. The Egyptian protocol contained the five names of the new pharaoh's titulary and the legitimation of his rule by the deity's acknowledgment of the king as the deity's child. Von Rad argued that both of these elements also appeared in the Judean ritual. Ps 2:7 quotes from the protocol marking Yahweh's legitimation of the new Davidic king as God's son, while Isa 9:5 reflects the king's divine sonship as well as his five-fold royal titulary.

In a letter written on his thirty-fifth birthday, November 21, 1803, Schleiermacher called the year just past the unhappiest of his life. This troubled year provides the background for three letters Schleiermacher wrote to the Würzburg theologian Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus in January, February, and May, 1804, which are published for the first time below. The first letter is Schleiermacher's reply to an invitation, transmitted by Paulus, for Schleiermacher to join the theological faculty of the University of Würzburg. The second relates to Schleiermacher's acceptance of this Bavarian appointment and to his plans to move there. The third explains the necessity Schleiermacher subsequently faced of breaking his Würzburg contract in order to obey King Friedrich Wilhelm III's command to remain in his Prussian fatherland.

Confucianism, with its elaborate ritual, its bloody sacrifices, its antiquated symbolism, and its fine ethical teaching, has again been made the State religion of China. Several recent mandates by the President, Yüan Shih-k'ai, have restored to it in the school, in the civil service, and in the army, the authority which previous to the revolution it had held almost uninterruptedly for two thousand years.

Although he considered himself set apart from the world, a man through whom the Spirit revealed a higher truth, Jones Very has consistently provided his critics with an irresistible challenge to classify him historically in a tradition that would explain his unique poetry and personality. Histories and descriptions of American Transcendentalism usually list him hesitatingly as a peripheral member of the movement, but Very seems to worry recent historians in much the same way he worried Emerson and the other members of “Hedge's Club,” who were both attracted and repelled by his spiritual intensity. His association with Emerson was undoubtedly a fortunate historical accident for him—Emerson both encouraged him in his poetry, valiantly tried to give him editorial assistance, and used his influence to find a publisher for the only collection of poems Very was to publish in his lifetime. Yet this close personal association has helped to perpetuate the historical assumption of Very's ties with Transcendentalism. This assumption, both when it has been affirmed or vigorously rejected, has obscured the kind of objective reading that is necessary to our understanding of Very's poetry and his place in American letters.

Eloisa, the medieval nun torn between “grace and nature” in Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, has proved to be one of the poet's most fascinating and popular female creations among religious scholars as well as literary critics. Yet there appears in Pope's masterpiece another female figure who has been largely ignored and whose nature and function in the poem have never been accurately described. In the midst of Eloisa's spiritual and emotional conflict between her carnal memories of Abelard and her religious obligations as a nun, she imagines that she sees sitting in front of her the figure of “Black Melancholy,” a woman spreading spiritual gloom over the entire scene:

But o'er the twilight groves, and dusky caves,

Long-sounding isles, and intermingled graves,

Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws

A death-like silence, and a dread repose;

Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,

Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,

Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,

And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Our study criticizes the respective theodicies and methodologies of Joseph Washington, James Cone, and Albert Cleage. Our argument is reducible to the following propositions. (1) On the basis of their own presuppositions, the point of departure for black theology must be the question: Is God a white racist? (2) Accordingly, a viable theodicy, one which refutes the charge of divine racism, must be the foundation for the edifice of black theology. (3) The theodicies of the above theologians leave the issue of God's racism essentially unresolved. Consequently, the remainder of the theological system lacks adequate support.

I. The myths and epics of Ugarit are composed in poetic formulae and patterns which reveal original oral composition. Parallelistic structure derives, originally at least, from the techniques of orally composed poetry, and the use of traditional formulae including parallelistic pairs has been well established in Ugaritic and Early Hebrew poetry. Usually the formulaic structure gives an extreme symmetry or regularity to Ugaritic verse.

In Book Two of De Specialibus Legibus (Special Laws), Philo of Alexandria presents his readers with a “festival manual”: a list of ten holidays, their origins, and the practices associated with each one. Philo names the first festival in his list ἡμέρα πσα, “every day,” about which he muses: “If all the forces of the virtues remained unvanquished throughout, then the time from birth to death would be one continuous feast.” In what historical, intellectual, and literary context might we best understand Philo's “every day festival”? And how can we understand Philo's view of quotidian time in the context of his conception of time and temporality more generally? In this paper, I argue that Philo's presentation of this festival of the every day, and, more generally, his perspective on daily time, is an engagement not only with biblical texts but also with contemporaneous Stoic perspectives about time, especially those articulated by the philosopher Seneca the Younger. I thus read Philo's De Specialibus Legibus in conversation with Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life), analyzing their similar perspectives on daily time and suggesting several ways of understanding the connections between the two texts. I conclude by explaining how appreciating the similarities between Philo and Seneca's ideas about quotidian time also allows us better to understand Philo's exposition of the other festivals, especially his presentation of the Sabbath.