From the days of the Renaissance and Reformation to the present, the Mystery Religions of antiquity have engaged the attention of classical scholars and theologians alike. During what may be called the precritical stage of the study of this subject, it was commonly believed that by the Mysteries a constant succession of priests or hierophants transmitted from age to age an esoteric doctrine, better and nobler than that of the popular religion. Whether this recondite science had been derived originally from the hidden wisdom of India or Egypt, or from the Old Testament, or even from a primitive revelation to all mankind, was debated with characteristic disregard for historical methodology.

In a previous article I have dealt with the striking parallels between the Dead Sea Manual of Discipline (iQS) and the Book of Acts and the special material of Matthew. The organization of early Christianity in Jerusalem, particularly its conservative or Judaizing wing, strongly suggests the Dead Sea sect at several points. The more liberal Christianity of Stephen and the Epistle to the Hebrews may, however, also have contacts with the Qumran sect's idea of spiritual sacrifices and its protest against the Jerusalem Temple. In addition there are parallels between the Dead Sea literature and the Pauline epistles but they are very different from the ones just named.

Users of Bible Translations and especially makers of them have reason to be interested in the grandson of Ben Sira. He is perhaps the earliest identified person of either species. He lived in Egypt twenty-one centuries ago having arrived there, as he tells us, “in the thirty-eighth year under Euergetes the King,” which is probably 132 B.C. That is of course too early to speak of a finished Bible, though he does know the law and the prophets and other books and knows them also in another tongue than Hebrew. It was another Hebrew book—what we call Ecclesiasticus—written by his own grandfather, that he himself translated into Greek. With other translations this was accepted into the Greek and Christian Bible and so has come down to us in the Septuagint, while its original in Hebrew was not ultimately so received in the Hebrew or Jewish Bible.

In the Article of the Summa theologica on the question “whether infidels can have dominion and rule over Christians” (II–ii, q. 10, a. 10), St. Thomas says:

Dominion and rule are based on human law; the distinction between Christian and infidel springs from divine law. But divine law, which is founded in grace, does not destroy human law, which stems from natural reason. Therefore, the distinction between Christian and infidel does not, considered in itself, destroy the dominion and rule of infidels over Christians.

Taylor's work will influence the study of Mk. for years to come. Therefore it deserves such detailed criticism as the following, which should be considered a tribute to the book's importance and to the great learning from which that importance derives. These, however, will be obvious to every reader; therefore this article is devoted to points which seemed to deserve correction rather than praise.

The schismatic “Church of the martyrs” which arose in Egypt after the last persecution possessed, at the time of Nicaea, twenty-eight bishops besides its founder Meletius. Nothing survives to tell us with what rites these men were made bishops. But the schism was so nationalist in character that it is likely to have followed Egyptian church tradition. It has been contended that this tradition, as regards episcopal succession, was peculiar, and followed a pattern different from that established for the propagation of a Catholic hierarchy by the Fourth Canon of Nicaea. The aim of this article is to show that this contention finds support in the Meletian story.

New Testament scholars have almost universally assumed that Luke was written before Acts. The evidence to support this assumption is not great, and the possibility that these two books might have been written in the reverse order should also be considered. The clearest and perhaps the only evidence for the priority of Luke to Acts is to be found in Acts 1:1, where the author speaks of a “first book” which he has written, and then describes it in terms which show that he is referring to the Gospel of Luke. To this might perhaps be added the evidence of Luke 1:1–4, where the author is almost certainly giving us a preface not only to the Gospel but to Acts as well. But as Cadbury has indicated, Luke 1:1–4 may have been written after Acts had already been completed, so that this General Preface does not really give us substantial evidence for the priority of Luke. And although the secondary preface in Acts 1:1 is explicit enough about the priority of Luke, there is the possibility that it too may have been written only after the main body of both Luke and Acts had been completed. The editors of The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. V, p. 350, say, “Prefaces then, as now, were probably written after the work was completed….” This comment was made with special reference to the preface to Luke, but it might apply equally to the preface to Acts.

In 1629, emboldened to believe that “Our books may come to be seen where ourselves shall never be heard,” Thomas Adams, London preacher, published his “Workes,” a massive folio which brought together the sermons, meditations, and “other divine and moral discourses” of seventeen years.1 “You see I have venturously trafficked with my poor talent in public,” he says in his preface. “If the grain be good, it doth better in the market than in the garner…. If it were profitable being spoken, sure it cannot be unnecessary being written.” The only other work to appear during his lifetime was a lengthy but close-reasoned “Exposition upon the Second Epistle General of St. Peter,” an epistle which he considered “a magnificent and beautiful structure” having “many a column of comfort, many a door of hope, many a window of light.”

The Work of the Northumbrian Alcuin in the service of Charlemagne by far excels in importance the contributions of other scholars allied with the Frankish king. One of Alcuin's many interests was to develop in the leaders among the laity of a barbarian age a sense of moral responsibility and a personal culture fit for the commanding positions which these men held. Many of the letters sent by Alcuin to Charlemagne and other members of the Royal household, to the kings of Mercia and Northumbria, to Frankish and British nobles and government officials, overflow with advice and requests to mend their ways. With this aim he wrote special works for some of these persons — for one example, the Rhetoric as a Via Regia for Charlemagne, a work which must be classed as the oldest Carolingian speculum principis, preceding that of Smaragdus of St. Mihiel (written for Louis the Pious), that of Jonas of Orláns (for Pippin of Aquitania), that of Sedulius Scotus (for Lothar II), and that of Hincmar of Reims (for Charles the Bald).

Mysteries of State as a concept of Absolutism has its mediaeval background. It is a late offshoot of that spiritual-secular hybridism which, as a result of the infinite cross-relations between Church and State, may be found in every century of the Middle Ages and has deservedly attracted the attention of historians for many years. After A. Alföldi's fundamental studies on ceremonial and insignia of Roman emperors, Theodor Klauser discussed more recently the origin of the episcopal insignia and rights of honor, and showed very clearly how, in and after the age of Constantine the Great, various privileges of vestment and rank of the highest officers of the Late Empire were passed on to the bishops of the victorious Church. At about the same time, Percy Ernst Schramm published his compendious article on the mutual exchange of rights of honor between sacerdotium and regnum, in which he demonstrated how the imitatio imperii on the part of the spiritual power was balanced by an imitatio sacerdotii on the part of the secular power. Schramm carried his study only to the threshold of the Hohenstaufen period, and he was right to stop where he did. For the mutual borrowings of which he speaks—insignia, titles, symbols, privileges, and prerogatives—affected in the earlier Middle Ages chiefly the ruling individuals, both spiritual and secular, the crown-wearing pontiff and the mitre-wearing emperor, until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance, and the regnum a clerical touch.

On May 8, 1847, The Literary World—the newly founded vehicle in New York City for the program of “nativist” literature—reviewed an exhibition at the National Academy. The magazine had just undergone an editorial revolution and the new management was endeavoring to tone down the strident nationalism of the first few issues; still, the exuberant patriotism of the reviewer could not be restrained, for he had just beheld two exciting landscapes of Staten Island painted by J. F. Cropsey.

The group known as the “Twelve Gods” possessed a δωδεκάθεον at Cos and had their own priest. But the gods' names are nowhere explicitly enumerated. They can only be recovered (1) from observation of the roster of the Twelve Gods elsewhere in Greece and (2) from conclusions as to the most important gods at Cos. The “canonical” group in Greece generally was: Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Poseidon, Zeus. But of these twelve, Ares and Hephaestus are nowhere found at Cos on either epigraphic or literary evidence. It is therefore unlikely that they belong in the Twelve.

The seventh centenary of the death of Robert Grosseteste, the brilliant theologian and scientist who became bishop of Lincoln, was celebrated in 1953 and stimulated some interest in him and his work. The same year saw the publication of an outstanding study of his contribution to the origins of experimental science. The author of this study regards Grosseteste as “the first medieval writer to recognize and deal with the two fundamental methodological problems of induction and experimental verification and falsification which arose when the Greek conception of geometrical demonstration was applied to the world of experience.” Grosseteste's eminent position in science and theology thus makes the problem of his early life and education more significant both as to sources of influence and dates and places of education.

The fourth oration of Libanius, an invective against a consularis Syriae of 389, contains a passage of unique interest (Or. iv,37). In the catalogue of this governor's misdeeds, not the least of which was that he had dubbed the celebrated rhetor of Antioch a “silly fool” (λῆρος), we read that Eutropius was unduly harsh in meting out punishment for minor criminal offenses. Specifically, he had not only permitted men to be flogged to death, but just the day before he had revived a refinement of indignity which had been long in abeyance because it was insulting to the regime: πληγῶν εἶδος πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον ἐξεληλαμένον ὡς ὑβρίζον τὸ σχῆμα τῆς πολιτείας, ἀνενεώσατο, κτλ. This consisted of placing an appliance of some sort—either a donkey's nose-bag, or else a mask resembling a donkey's face—over the face of the prisoner who was being flogged. The purpose was to arouse mirth and laughter at the expense of the culprit; to this end “the bell” contributed (ποιοῦντός τι καὶ τοῦ κώδωνος), and an incidental advantage was that the victim's tears were concealed, so that they won no pity from the onlookers.

Despite the well-known and well-attested tradition that the Law was given by angels, W. D. Davies has recently presented a case for interpreting δι΄ ἀγέλων in Josephus, Antiquities, 15:136 as a reference not to angels but to the prophets as ambassadors of God. Together with other arguments he adduces the fact that in the LXX the word ἄγελος is occasionally used to refer to prophets and priests, and for the latter he cites Malachi 2:7 (sic, not 2:1), where a priest is described as angelos Kyriou. Thus a Greek precedent for the usage of Josephus may be found as early as ca. 250 B. C., the approximate date of the LXX.

The relatively frequent occurrence in the New Testament of the preposition ὅτι before passages of direct speech calls for an explanation. The following note does not aim at giving an explanation that would hold good in all cases where the usage is found, but it is confined to a few instances where ὅτι precedes passages of quoted speech in Luke; the suggestion proposed ought, perhaps, to be more closely explored.