The subject of this study is, perhaps, the most commonly known of the manuscript sources of early church history. Beginners in the subject, who are apt to take for granted the text of their sources, nevertheless presently learn that they owe the beginning of the story of the Meletian schism in Egypt and much of the later history of Athanasius to their discovery, early in the eighteenth century, by the Marchése Maffei, in a volume belonging to the Chapter library of Verona. But the fact is that this codex as a whole possesses great interest and presents the student with many fascinating problems. These have been attacked, and in part solved, by a succession of scholars, beginning with Maffei himself and two other Veronese savants, the Ballerini brothers, continuing later with Maassen and Batiffol, and in our own times with Professors C. H. Turner and E. Schwartz. The work of these and others, on this subject, is scattered through many books and periodicals, and the time is ripe for a résumé in English of the whole story. It is even possible to carry the work forward in one or two respects.

By means of his definitive edition of the Collectio Palatina the late Eduard Schwartz made possible the revision of several long accepted theories concerning its source, date, and purpose. That collection of writings almost exclusively devoted to the Pelagian and Nestorian heresies, which had been generally regarded, since its edition in the seventeenth century, as the work of Marius Mercator, Schwartz believed to be a product of the sixth century. He also believed that the collection was prepared in the course of the violent theological struggles of Justinian's time and he ventured to conclude that the Palatine collector was chiefly interested in the anti-Origenistic and anti-Nestorian struggle centering about the Three Chapters. These surmises as to the date and purpose of the collection led Schwartz to make still another assumption concerning a certain John of Tomi who is mentioned in the collection. It is the purpose of this paper to consider the identity of John of Tomi more fully and to give some indication of his importance in connection with the Palatine Collection.

The composition dayyenu as preserved in the extant rituals consists of two parts — the first a poem in fifteen strophes (Da), the second a prose summary (Db). It reads as follows:

D

How many are the calls of the Almighty upon our thankfulness!

Facing as I do the great and difficult task of writing the second part of my History of Greek Religion, I should like beforehand to state some of the main problems and to bring out some dominant ideas. The subject is so vast that I can offer but a subjective selection; yet let me remark that my standpoint is not that of syncretism as a whole but that of Greek religion, which seems to me to be a factor of syncretism at times neglected.

Some time ago I sought to give an account of a famous fragment of Pindar which till then had lacked any commentary that satisfied me. My results have been criticized in the most friendly and courteous manner by Professor Ivan Linforth in the course of a work which no one interested in Orphic literature can afford to neglect. It seems worth while to ask how much of my conclusion is still valid if it be taken for granted that his results will in their turn stand the careful examination deserved by all good research into complicated problems.

In the curious collection of lapidary and magical lore known as the Kyranides directions are given for making a ring with certain special virtues. The stone is to be νεμεσίτης, which is explained as a name given to a stone chipped from an altar of Nemesis made of λίθος κραταιός. We can only translate those words as “hard stone,” but the expression seems to be a technical term for a particular stone which we cannot identify. Upon such a stone a figure of Nemesis is to be carved; she is represented as a maiden resting her foot upon a wheel, holding in her left hand a cubit-rule (πῆχυς), in her right a twig (ῥάβδος). The writer concludes, ἐὰν οὖν τὸν δακτύλιον τοῦτον προσενέγκῃς δαιμονιζομένῳ, παραῦτα ὁ δαίμων ἐξομολογήσας ἑαυτὸν φεύξεται. These words are the occasion for this paper; but before proceeding to discuss them, something should be said about the design prescribed in the passage.

“The most ancient of the philosophers,” wrote Clement of Alexandria, “were not carried away to disputing and doubting, and much less are we who are attached to the really true philosophy, and on whom the Scripture enjoins examination and investigation…. The point proposed for inquiry and answer knocks at the door of truth…. To those who thus ask questions in the Scriptures is granted that at which they aim, the gift of God-given knowledge, by way of comprehension, through the true illumination of their intellectual search…. It becomes him who is at once a lover and a disciple of truth to be pacific even in investigation, advancing by intellectual demonstration, without love of self but with love of truth, to the knowledge of comprehension.”

There are comparatively few matters of any real importance in the confused story of the Christian beginnings concerning which responsible critics would care to say, “It is established beyond peradventure of a doubt.” Wilhelm Wrede, though dead, yet speaketh. And there is the wholesome apprehension that such a rash utterance may prove a boomerang: some disciple of the dead master who so hated those smug confidences is sure to step forward, indued with a double portion of his spirit, to challenge, if not to deflate, the incautious scholar.

Those present at the delivery of Melito's declamation can be supposed readily to have grasped the meaning of this artificial phrase; but for the modern reader, unacquainted with the accompanying circumstances, its studied preciousness becomes a source of bewilderment.

One of the puzzles of the Gospel tradition has been the interpretation of the epithet which distinguishes the betrayer of Jesus from other bearers of the very common name Judas. The attempt to explain it has brought forth perhaps as many impossible theories as any other New Testament riddle of the kind. The most recent authoritative work dealing with Palestinian affairs, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 6 (1942), merely mentions three attempted explanations of the name: 1. “man of Kerioth”; 2. derivation from Hebrew sheker (“falsehood”); 3. from Latin scortea, meaning the “leather bag” which Judas as treasurer carried (John 12: 6, 13: 29). The reader is left to make his own choice, as no preference is expressed.

In his most recent book, the great Semitist, Professor Charles Cutler Torrey, presents a new theory to explain the phenomena of the Old Testament quotations in the Gospel of Matthew, and thus adds one more element to the recurrent debate on Aramaic origins of the gospels. Hitherto most critics have held that the vast majority of citations in the first gospel were taken over from the Septuagint (or, more properly, the Old Greek) version, the chief exceptions being the Reflexionszitate or “formula citations,” a group of passages introduced by some such formula as “in order that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying” (1:22). The latter were thought to have been made on the basis of the Hebrew text, either directly by the evangelist, or borrowed from an old book of Christian testimonies or proof-texts, or, as Bacon believed, taken over from the Aramaic “targumic material” which had grown up in Syria around Mark's gospel. Torrey completely rejects this usual view, which assumes that our Mt. was originally written in Greek. The original Mt., he says, was in Aramaic, and its principal source was the originally Aramaic Mk.; its biblical quotations were, however, in the Hebrew of the Bible. If, at many points, quotations in the Greek Mt. agree with Greek Mk., it is only because the translator of Mt. made use of the latter.

Professor Scholem, who is professor of Jewish Mysticism in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has produced a very important book, which will at once take its place in the list of the most significant books that have appeared on Mystical Religion. Baron von Hügel's The Mystical Element in Religion came at the end of 1908. My Studies in Mystical Religion came out in 1909, and Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism appeared in 1911. We all three were working independently of one another and, without knowing that anyone else was engaged in the undertaking, we produced our results almost simultaneously, and though representing three different types of religious thought, we became intimate friends through our work, and all three books went through various editions. Dean Inge had already, in 1899, published his important book on Christian Mysticism, and in 1902 William James had published his work of genius, Varieties of Religious Experience. Between 1911 and the present date there has been a remarkable output of books on Mysticism, many of them valuable contributions to the subject, and Mysticism has become an important feature of the interpretation of religion in our time. But meantime there had been no adequate interpretation of the great stream of Jewish Mysticism. In 1913 J. Abelson published a valuable little book on Jewish Mysticism, and in 1935 Jacob Minkin wrote a popular book on The Romance of Hasidism.

Theists, I suppose, are persons who believe in “God's” existence. Atheists are persons who deny the same.

Such statements may be suitable, and even adequate, for many proper purposes. In several contexts it is silly or malicious to interrogate them closely. Even in theology, which is, or should be, some kind of science, they may have, and they do have, their use and their propriety. For many theological purposes, however (and also for some others) they are far too vague. It may be wrong, no doubt, to tell a theologian that he must either produce an accurate definition of what he means by “God” or be forever shamed.

Dr. Zuntz's learned and acute paper must be taken into account by all future students of Melito's homily. He has carried the discussion of the opening sentence into a field where I am not competent to follow him, and I must therefore refrain from any estimate of his principal conclusions. Of the following points, some are intended to clarify my own position, others suggest additional questions which should be considered in any final summing up.

In the Michigan Collection there are three fragmentary papyri, which have these points in common: they are definitely Christian in character and though fairly legible have not thus far been identified. All seem to be of an homiletic or interpretive character but the extent of each is too small to admit of a more definite classification. All of the other Christian fragments in the Michigan Collection have already been published and the fact that these have thus far proved uninterpretable is a sufficient reason why they should no longer be kept in concealment. I am accordingly taking advantage of the kindness of the Editor to print them in the Harvard Theological Review. I hope that another may succeed, where I have failed, and in case such an interpretation or identification calls for changes in the readings here published, I shall be glad to reëxamine the papyri or even to send photographs.

Marius Victorinus, fourth-century Rome's most distinguished professor of rhetoric, appears immediately as a definite personality to one who looks into his biography. So vividly has Augustine, in the eighth book of the Confessions, told the story of the old rhetor's conversion that he seems real flesh and blood. Yet a feeling of uneasiness soon takes possession of the investigator. The limits of Victorinus's life have not been established even in terms of broad approximation; and it is perhaps of some importance for understanding the character of the man and the times of which he is so pertinent a representative to know, for example, whether his youth and early manhood were passed in the atmosphere of Diocletian's persecutions or of Constantine's tolerant reign. I have tried, therefore, in this study to discover the means of determining at least approximately the date of his birth and of his death.