In many respects the inscription of Zakir, king of Luʻash and Hamath, is quite typical of the northwest Semitic documents of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. Like most of his royal counterparts, Zakir first introduces himself, indicating the extent of his domain; in this connection he claims that Baʻal-Shamayn stood by him and made him king. He then proceeds to the immediate occasion for the inscription, telling of a coalition of north Syrian and Anatolian kings united against him by Bar-Hadad of Aram, and the subsequent siege laid against his city of Ḥazrak. After an account of Zakir's appeal to Baʻal-Shamayn and the god's encouraging reply, which will be the main concern of this essay, the stele undoubtedly reported the raising of the siege (on the missing lower portion of Side A), for on Side B we find the king boasting of his building operations, again in the style of his time. The inscription closes with the traditional curses upon anyone who dares to damage the stele.

The Papal Inquisition of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cannot be assigned so prominent a position in the history of French Jewry as that which the “New” Inquisition later occupied in the destinies of the Jews of Spain. It is perhaps for this reason that the Jewish aspects of the Inquisition in France have attracted comparatively little attention from scholars. The paucity of original documents relating to the subject may also have been a contributing factor. Still, though it can be understood, this neglect remains unfortunate. In addition to its intrinsic interest for the study of Franco-Jewish history and of Jewish relations with the medieval Church, research into the treatment of the Jews by the French Inquisition can shed much light on the later development in Spain. For all the difference in the historical situations, the Papal Inquisition adumbrated, in its dealings with the Jews, the institution which was to play such a formidable role in the Iberian Peninsula. There is surprisingly little in the theoretical, procedural, and even the practical approach of the Spanish Inquisition to Jewish affairs for which one cannot find the archetype in the earlier Inquisition.

As early as 1906 R. Reitzenstein suggested in his study on “Poimandres” that the “holy word” spoken by the god in § 18 of that tractate comes from an older source. “Es sind Worte einer älteren heiligen Schrift; das zeigen die weiteren Zitate …” But Reitzenstein was unable to say anything more about this older source of “holy scripture” which he was suggesting. W. Scott firmly believed that the first line of the “holy word” came into the hands of the Hermetist from the Book of Genesis, but he was certain only about the first, and not about the second part of the quotation, where he thought the author “had in mind” God's covenant with man in Gen. 9:11ff. or the speech of God in Plato, Tim. 42a. Scott took the quotations in “Poimandres” § 21 also as insertions, but made no real effort to inquire about their origin.

Buber's thought in all its wealth and wide-ranging scope is formulated in terms of one fundamental insight which is then applied to the manifold domains of our culture, there to be refracted by the special categories and problems of each domain. One can understand and appreciate, therefore, Buber's thought in any one particular domain only in terms of this fundamental insight, for the specific concepts receive their essential meaning, and their treatment is guided and circumscribed, by the considerations and requirements which this fundamental insight imposes.

The explosive emergence of the so-called “writing prophets” in the history of Israel is one of the great historical mysteries of Old Testament scholarship. The first, and in some ways one of the greatest of these figures, Amos of Tekoah, can hardly be dated much before 750 B.C., and the beginnings of the prophetic careers of Hosea ben Beeri, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Micah of Moresheth all fall within the following decade and a half. From this time forward, with the single exception of the dark and bloody reign of Manasseh, there is a steady succession of prophetic literature, ending somewhere around the mid-fifth century B.C. Once initiated, this succession moves in what seems to the historian, operating with the full confidence of hindsight, to be an entirely logical and reasonably consistent fashion. Yet its origins are wholly obscure. Like Melchizedek, Amos seems to have been born without benefit of ancestors. (And it goes without saying that such an [apparently] “uncaused happening” in the historical sphere is as troubling to the modern historian as the thought of an ancestorless Jebusite king would be to the historian's colleague in the biology department.) But what sort of events would be deemed to constitute “sufficient historical causation” for the rise of the classical prophets of Israel?

Along with the analogical (homer) exegeses, the Yavneh ordinances constitute the earliest components of the normative tradition concerning Yoḥanan ben Zakkai. Conventional forms occur, which indicate that even the earliest strata of edited materials have already been given substantially permanent shape, perhaps after circulating for a brief time in various unofficial formulations. We shall first review and comment on individual traditions, in order of the redaction of the documents in which they occur, and then offer some synoptic remarks.

The new mythological, magical, and liturgical texts which are published by M. Virolleaud in Ugaritica V are very important. I want to thank Professor Schaeffer for giving me the opportunity to work on these texts. One very important text from this group is text 612 (RS 24.249). M. Virolleaud thinks that we are missing about ten lines from the lower edge or the central portion of the text. This text is the most complete ritual calendar that we have from Ugarit for any one month. Texts 3 and 173 (in Gordon, UT) give us more than one month but they are also very fragmentary. Text 613 (RS 24.253) of the new texts is also a text that covers more than one month but it does not seem to use the same structure as the other texts. At any rate, I think that it is important to use text 612 as a basis for this study, and therefore at the outset I want to give my translation.

There is a large and growing number of people, both Catholic and Protestant, who are coming to recognize Karl Rahner, S.J., as the most important Roman Catholic theologian of the present period. While a number of books and articles on Rahner are beginning to appear, most of them are limited simply to expositing his position. What has yet to be done in a satisfactory way is to think through critically his relationship to and significance for the wider theological enterprise, that is, in terms of the interconfessional discussion (as well as in terms of current secular reflection upon general human experience). Rahner's work deserves such consideration, although, because of the fact that since the Reformation and Vatican I Protestant and Catholic thought have tended to develop independently of each other, it is difficult for one schooled sufficiently in Rahner's tradition to understand his work to understand Protestant thought sufficiently well to make a discussion meaningful, and the opposite situation is also the case. Without claiming exemption from this handicap, I should like to make a beginning at the sort of clarification and critical analysis that seems to me to be needed.

In The Country Parson or the Priest to the Temple George Herbert portrays his ideal parish priest not only as a man learned in the works of the Church Fathers and contemporary theology but as one who “greatly esteems also of cases of conscience, wherein he is much versed,” because “herein is the greatest ability of a parson to lead his people exactly in the wayes of Truth.” The case of conscience which the pastor of Bemerton praised so highly was, in the seventeenth century, the characteristic form of casuistry, the branch of theology which attempts to provide the perplexed human conscience with a means of reconciling the obligations of religious faith with the demands of particular human situations. In the case of conscience, the casuist poses, or is posed with, a difficult moral problem and solves it, often with a startling display of erudition and logical ingenuity.

In recent years scholars who have studied the problem have reached what may fairly be called a consensus that the Lukan Travel Narrative is primarily a theological-Christological rather than a geographical entity.

From the fourth century on, whenever Church Fathers stressingly point to the distinction between the Word and the world as a distinction between that which was generated from God and that which was created from nothing, they aim, we may assume, not only at the Arian contention that the Word was created from nothing but also at the Plotinian view that the world was generated, that is, emanated, from God. It is this double target that is aimed at by Athanasius in a passage where he contrasts the Word with the world. The Word, he says, is a “generated being” (γέννημα) or a “son” and, as such, he is “the proper offspring (γέννημα) of the essence,” “not subject to will,” and hence is one who “must always be.”

For all practical purposes, the lengthy and comprehensive essay of Leopold Cohn published in 1898 introduced Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum to modern scholars. To demonstrate that the existing Latin text was a translation from the Greek, Cohn listed individual words presumably transliterated from the Greek (metra, holocaustomata, epomis, cataracte, eremus, etc.), noted that many biblical names were written according to their Greek forms (Abel, Enoc, Noe, Jesus, etc.), and pointed out a few LXX readings implying, as he thought, the use of the Greek Bible. However, on the basis of other names, the frequent use of et to join sentences, as well as the occurrence of idioms as et factum est, responderunt dicentes, etc., Cohn concluded that the work must have been originally written in Hebrew. While these considerations may have some indicative force, they do not really prove the point at issue. It is imperative, therefore, that we uncover more decisive proofs for determining the languages in which LAB has been transmitted.

The literature of the rabbis in its many volumes stands before the student of the rabbinic period as a resource of enlightenment and a source of frustration. A vast treasure of haggadic materials which would be invaluable to the historian of the period is too often rendered inaccessible by difficulties in dating and localizing traditions. Even when traditions are associated with particular rabbis, multiple attributions and major variants engender extreme caution if not despair in the literary critic and historian. When traditions are unattributed in a literature which has developed over centuries as is the case with the Targums, the problems are magnified.

For some decades now, Luther scholars have concentrated on the early “young Luther” (1513–16). He is being dissected month by month, year by year. It may be another decade or so, however, before any attempt can be made at a complete presentation of the theology of the young Luther. This study is intended to be a partial contribution to the construction of a full picture of the young Luther.

Romans 3:21–31 is a perplexing passage made up of important words and phrases. Some of the most crucial elements of Christian theology hinge on it. Entire movements within Christian history have stood or fallen with its interpretation. With few exceptions scholars have given more than ample consideration to every detail, although a consensus of opinion lies in the future. This paper is designed (1) to summarize the issue over the unity of the passage, (2) to list the general conclusions scholars have reached on the most important words, and (3) to offer suggestions toward an understanding of the text in light of Paul's teaching about the inclusion of the Gentiles.

It is self-evident from a survey of the Calvin Corpus that the Reformer's polemic with the Roman Catholic Church was one of the most important and essential aspects of his labors. However, it is distressing to note that this area of Calvin's thought, which finds its fullest expression in the many tracts which he penned in the 1540's, has been all but neglected in recent Calvin scholarship. The purpose of this brief essay is to outline one aspect of Calvin's attack on Rome: his reactions to the Council of Trent. Nowhere in Reformation literature are the essential theological and ecclesiastical issues which divided Rome and the Reformers more lucidly delineated.

The treasure manuscript Clm 19414 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich has for many years provided scholars in three fields of study with a rich lode of material. Art historians have found one of the best examples of fourteenth-century German Bibliae pauperum in this manuscript. Historians of canon law have discovered several books of the early eleventh-century Collectio XII Partium. For historians of the barbarian laws Clm 19414 contains an excellent witness to the Lex Baiuwariorum. The purpose of this article is to bring to light another portion of Clm 19414, a florilegium on the ecclesiastical grades which should be of interest to historians of early medieval canon law, religious instruction, and sacramental theology.