Prefatory Note. This letter has a lengthy history. More than thirty years ago I felt the necessity of a knowledge of and clearing up of the modes and lines of thought of unlettered people and wrote down a draft of a lecture upon which I have drawn here. Later on I applied my views to a special field, the concept, or to speak more justly the concepts of the soul, in a lecture delivered to the Fifth Congress for the History of Religions at Lund in 1929. Then I put the subject aside, although it always lurked at the back of my mind. Certain recent tendencies in the science of religion caused me to reconsider the problems involved and to write down a draft in order to coördinate and to systematize my views in regard to certain fundamental questions of this science. I happened to mention this in a letter to Professor Nock, and, as he wanted to take cognizance of the draft I had made for private purposes, I translated it into English and sent it to him. When he wished to publish it I asked him to subject my draft to the judgment of an expert anthropologist and to let me know his opinion. Professor Kluckhohn of Harvard was kind enough to read my manuscript and to supply some useful remarks and references. As he found my considerations useful, I consented to their being printed. I thank these two colleagues warmly for the interest they have taken in them. I am under a heavy debt of gratitude to Mrs. W. L. Sperry for her kindness in undertaking the difficult task of revising my English style in this paper as well as in others which I have published in the Harvard Theological Review.

A l'occasion d'une arétalogie de Karpokrate, qu'il publie, M. R. Harder a été induit à reprendre le problème des arétalogies isiaques, connues, comme on sait, par cinq documents du même type. M. Harder pense que tous ces textes remontent à un original égyptien (H) traduit en grec. Un exemplaire de cette traduction, gravé à Memphis dans le temple de Ptah (M), est la source de Kymé (K), Ios (J), Salonique (S) et du texte en prose qui a servi de modèle au poème d'Andros (Ap). Un exemplaire du texte égyptien, gravé dans la fabuleuse Nysa d'Arabie, c'est dire en une ville inconnue, serait, une fois traduit, la source de Diodore (D). D'après l'inscription de Kymé, la plus complète, M. Harder reconstitue cette source commune de MD. On aurait là, pense-t-il, un écrit qui se révèle égyptien, non seulement par les idées, étrangères à l'esprit grec, mais aussi par le désordre de la composition, trait proprement égyptien. D'un mot ce document aurait été forgé par les prêtres d'Egypte pour exalter auprès des Grecs le culte d'Isis, que l'on présente surtout comme une bienfaitrice de l'humanité. La tendance serait “pro-égyptienne,” et il y aurait lieu de comparer l'ouvrage d'Hécatée d'Abdère, sorte de programme de gouvernement rédigé du point de vue de l'Egypte et adressé à Ptolémée Soter pour lui recommander d'être un Bienfaiteur, à l'exemple des dieux égyptiens (Isis et Osiris) et des pharaons.

There can be little doubt that of all the services rendered by the late Rector to learning the most widely known is his introduction to anthropologists and comparative religionists of the concept of mana. The debates excited by his short and modest survey of the matter, just before the beginning of this century, have not yet died down, and the “odd piece of twine” wherewith he proposed to bind certain facts together has grown into a thick rope, known by many fine names, such as preanimim, predeism, orendism and so forth, which is stoutly hauled upon by some, while others stumble over it or try to unwind it or prove that it was never really there, or at least that it has replaced something much earlier which formed an essential and legitimate part of the tackle. It is indeed a remarkable thing, on which a Hellenistic philosopher might have founded a thoughtful treatise on the inscrutable ways of Chance, that that one lecture and its unassuming successors raised such a pother, whereas the much longer, more elaborate and by no means unlearned or ill-reasoned work of J. H. King, only eight years earlier, fell still-born from the press and owes its reintroduction to science to the bitter opponent of all such theories of the origin of religion, the redoubtable Father Wilhelm Schmidt.

‘Cette grande personnalité chrétienne’: the phrase, applied to him by a Swiss theologian, M. Guiran, is rightly fixed upon by M. Loisy in his Mémoires as the mot juste in describing Friedrich von Hügel. In language no less well chosen the same writer has gone on to speak of those ‘valeurs intimes et profondes que M. von Hügel a si magnifiquement et si humblement incarnées.’ For it was indeed not by the construction of a system that von Hügel promoted our understanding of religious experience, nor even chiefly by originating or giving currency to new and fruitful ideas in this department of study, but rather by the impression made by his unforgettable personality upon those who were brought into contact with it, whether through actual conversation or correspondence with him during his lifetime or through the reading of what he wrote and stamped with the peculiar and distinctive style in which that personality found so characteristic an expression. Therefore, while in the case of any thinker who takes as the subject of his lucubrations one which, like religion, must be comprehended, if at all, by an experience in which the whole man is engaged, some acquaintance with his biography will perhaps be found necessary to the understanding of his thought; in the case of such a thinker as he of whom I am now to speak to you it is certainly indispensable.

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.

The year 1948 drew to a close with a spate of articles appearing in religious magazines honoring the memory of Watts. Along with the King James Version, Dr. Watts' hymns have become a symbol of Protestantism's underlying unity in a day of proliferating denominations. Around his hymns there now cluster historic associations and fond memories that endear Watts to the entire Protestant community.

The origins of the name Xριστιανοί are narrated in the Acts of the Apostles as follows. After Stephen's martyrdom, some believers from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had left Jerusalem, preached at Antioch. Their success became known at Jerusalem, and “the community which was in Jerusalem” sent Barnabas to Antioch. Barnabas in turn brought Paul from Tarsus. For a whole year they worked together and taught many people. Ἐγένετο δὲ αὐτοῖς καὶἐνιαυτὸν ὅλον συναχθῆναι ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ διδάξαι ὅχλον ἱκανόν χρηματίσαι τε πρώτως ἐν Ἀντιοχɛίᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς χριστιανούς (Act, Ap. XI, 26).

Many years ago, to a student who had made what to him and to the rest of the class seemed a sensible guess as to the origin in the misty past of a practice still in vogue, the teacher, an eminent anthropologist, made what was to me a memorable reply. Said he in substance, “When we are probing back into antiquity we need be ever on our guard against the fallacy that what seems to us rational or sensible or practical would have so seemed to them. Thus it has been my experience that when seeking to explain the origin of a practice which still continues, but with no real indication as to what started it, of all the various possible guesses the one which seems to us most [sensible] or [reasonable] is the one to be most resolutely excluded. Because a practice so appears to us is no guarantee that it would so have appeared to men under totally different circumstances, whose notion of the world was totally different from our own; in fact, it is usually a guarantee that the exact opposite would be the case.”

Information about the cult of the divi and divae greatly increased with the publication of the Feriale Duranum. The editors of the latter have shown that the divi and divae whose cult the Army took over were those of the fasti publici. The divae included Trajan's sister Marciana and her daughter Matidia but no member of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian families.

The following lines are intended to give an explanation of Kierkegaard's Thorn in the Flesh. They may be of interest not only to the biographer, but also to the student of Kierkegaard's terminology. We shall consider contemporary interpretation and Kierkegaard's own interpretation of the term “the thorn in the flesh,” review later scholarly theories, and finally present our own solution based upon a comparative study of passages from the Diaries, reminiscences of Kierkegaard preserved by his acquaintances, and extracts illustrating contemporary medical opinion.

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.

This list of treatises on preaching begins with the year 1500 and extends to the present time. It is thus a sequel to Mediaeval Artes Praedicandi: A Hand-List (Ithaca, New York 1934) and Mediaeval Artes Praedicandi: A Supplementary Hand-List (Ithaca 1936) by Harry Caplan, and to Artes Praedicandi (Paris-Ottawa 1936) by Th.-M. Charland, wherein are listed manuscripts and printed editions of tractates composed in the Middle Ages. The present list of printed books (which contains also a few manuscripts) includes as many titles as the compilers have been able to collect over a period of several years. We have, where possible, examined the books themselves, but in many instances direct observation was not feasible, and we have naturally relied on a wide variety of bibliographical sources. In making our list public we are acceding to requests made by a number of students of the doctrine and history of rhetoric and homiletics, and we hope that it may, with all its deficiencies, prove useful to investigators in these fields. We intend to follow this list of Latin treatises with like lists of treatises written in other languages of Europe.

The theory that this number reflects the number of kinds of fish recognized in antiquity comes from Jerome, Comm. xiv in Ezechiel (Migne, PL 25, 474C). He says, “Writers on the nature and properties of animals, who have learned ‘fishing’ in either Latin or Greek (one of whom is the most learned poet Oppianus Cilix), say there are one hundred fifty-three species of fish.” It was customary in antiquity — and the practice has not come to an end — to generalize from single instances, and we shall not be far from the mark if we suspect that Jerome's only source for this statement is his understanding of Oppian. Jerome knew the work of Pliny on natural history, and Pliny (N. H. ix. 43) states that there are seventy-four species of fish, in addition to thirty varieties of Crustacea.

The figure of the rose with which Dante tops the soaring structure of his Paradiso may seem to have stimulated comment enough by now, and the present note, pointing out yet another possible analogue, serve merely to expand the raw bulk of such materials, which, though interesting in themselves, add little essential to our knowledge of the poem. But no Stoffkritik has yet explained entirely happily to the student of the popular otherworld traditions, the origin of this figure in the Divine Comedy or the peculiar fitness of its use there. And the present parallel has the virtue that it is really a parallel, and not confined to the rose alone, whose figure and symbolic significance are common property in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, it describes at the supernal heights of heaven a city which is shaped like a rose, is also the special paradise of the Virgin, and contains traces of another motif — the empty thrones and the waiting crowns and vestments reserved until the Time shall come for the just and the poor in spirit —, which Dante also places for the elect within the limits of this heavenly city. All this, moreover, appears in a work belonging to that body of otherworld lore from which the Divine Comedy, itself the most elaborate literary example of this genre, frequently borrows.

Three recent discussions of Irenaeus by Reynders, Audet, and Enslin have examined the thought of Irenaeus almost exclusively in relation to the Christian tradition. This attitude toward his writings is natural, since Irenaeus lives so largely within the tradition; but he lived in the philosophical-rhetorical world of his day as well as in the church. It is the purpose of this paper to examine some of the ideas which he shares with non-Christians of the second century. First we shall consider his use of doxographical materials for the opinions of philosophers, and then we shall turn to his knowledge of other authors and of rhetoric.

In Cross's excellent translation of the Russian Primary Chronicle a misunderstanding in the famous passage describing Yaroslav's encouragement of religion and learning has obscured an historical point. Cross translates,

“Thus Yaroslav, as we have said, was a lover of books and as he wrote many, he deposited them in the Church of St. Sophia which he himself founded. He adorned it with gold and silver and churchly vessels and in it the usual hymns are raised to God at the customary seasons. He founded other churches in the cities and districts, appointing priests and paying them out of his personal fortune. He bade them teach the people, since that is the duty which God has prescribed them and to go often into the churches. Priests and Christian laymen thus increased in number.”

In a significant study of inscriptions pertaining to the cults of Thessalonica, Charles Edson has given for the first time a text both accurate and complete of the “testament of a Thessalonian priestess.” The portion of the text with which we are immediately concerned, is brief and easily summarized. A priestess of Dionysos Prinophoros bequeaths to her thiasos two plethra of vineyard, ὅπως ἀποκέηταί (=ἀποκαίηται) μοι ἀπὸ ἀγορᾶς μὴ ἔλατ〈τ〉ον (δηνάρια) ɛ, “in order that sacrifices may be burned for me from the income thereof to the value of not less than five denarii.” Each member of the thiasos is to bring a crown of roses to the ceremony; if he fails to do so, he shall forfeit his share of the legacy.

The fragments of an unknown Gospel published by Mr. Skeat and myself in 1935 have recently been made the subject of a thoroughgoing and very interesting study by a Japanese scholar, Dr. Goro Mayeda, to whose kindness I owe a copy of his work.