In his Protreptikos (2,22) Clement of Alexandria rages against the contents of the mystic chests used in the rites of the mystery religions. Among other items he lists such things as cakes, salt balls, the serpent, and adds as though an afterthought, “the ἀπόῤῥητα σύμβολα of (Γ)-Θἐμις, ὀρίγανον a lamp, a sword, and a κτεὶς γυναικεῖος, which is a euphemism used in the mysteries for the female parts.” What was the association of these objects with (Γ)-Θέμις? What evidence might Clement have had for such an association?

A considerable number of detailed studies have been devoted to the Messiah of Ephraim (or of Joseph). Among the problems which were raised by scholars are the following: What need was there for the creation of another messianic figure? Why was this second Messiah ascribed to the Joseph tribes in particular? Why and when did the strange motif of the forerunner of the Davidic Messiah, who was doomed to fall in battle, come into being? Does this figure have any connection with the “suffering servant” of Isaiah or, perhaps, with the Christian Messiah, destined to suffer and die?

Over a decade ago, Hans Walter Wolff observed that there is a bracket around the Deuteronomic Corpus (Dtn) which includes parts of Deuteronomy 4 and Deuteronomy 28-30. The elements of the frame which he isolated and discussed in some detail are Deut 4:29-31 and Deut 30:1-10. He saw the former passage as a late addition to the Moses speech in Deut 4:25-28, regarding the change from plural to singular address as a decisive indication of authorial discontinuity. Several years later, Norbert Lohfink argued in detail for the unity of Deut 4:1-40 from a variety of viewpoints. The broadest in scope was that the passage in question follows the outlines of the covenant formulary in much the same way as do the succeeding chapters of Deuteronomy. For example, like Deuteronomy 5-11, Deut 4:1-24 offers an historical retrospect and a statement of the chief commandment, in this case, the prohibition on images. Deut 4:25-31 then constitutes the curses arid blessing, such as we shall see in Deuteronomy 27-28. Arguing in greater detail, Lohfink noted also a highly specific and integrated rhetorical structure which could hardly result from the linking of originally disparate pericopes. Thus, vv. 1-4 are a plea for attention, followed by a demand for observance of the laws (vv. 5-8), which narrows first into a discussion of the Decalogue in particular (vv. 9-14) and then of its central stipulation (vv. 15-22). As in the text of the Decalogue itself (Exod 20:5-6, Deut 5:9-10), this commandment is followed by a statement of YHWH's jealousy (vv. 23-24). Having laid the groundwork, the preacher begins to speak to the existential situation of his audience. The idolatry he has just stressed is the ground of the Exile (v. 25), which he then describes (vv. 26-28).

At the end of the nineteenth century Louis Duchesne's Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule decisively undermined the foundation for maintaining the apostolicity of Gallic sees. This epochal study proved that, of the twenty-five lists of Gallic bishops which were credible and could be verified, only that of the church at Lyon reached back as far as the second century, and only four others as far as the third century. Thus it effectively discredited the pious medieval myths which had been created to prove that the Gallic episcopal traditions derived from the apostles, and led Duchesne confidently to conclude that, except for the “mother-church” at Lyon, established probably in the middle of the second century, no other church was founded in the Gallic provinces of Belgica, Lugdunensis, Aquitania, and Germania much before A.D. 230.

A comprehensive view of the Son of David in the New Testament requires facing the following problem: on the one hand, Davidic quotations, metaphors, and the descent theme are derived from the Old Testament royal tradition as it is channeled through Jewish texts; on the other, the title Son of David is found only in the synoptic gospels and is associated primarily with a figure who is so addressed by people in need of exorcism or healing. The usual solution to this problem in works on Christology is to say that a) miracle working is not associated with the Jewish royal Messiah in general or the Son of David in particular in contemporaneous Jewish literature, and b) it is early Christian tradition and/or redaction which has transformed the traditional royal conception and linked it with miracle working.

Though often remembered for something he never said, Tertullian did contribute a few bold lines to his own caricature. Take for instance the famous, “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?” It has come to symbolize Tertullian's wholesale rejection of philosophy. In fact, his indebtedness to the matter and methods of his classical heritage is profound. Today, by the same token, his ability to coin a striking phrase is earning for Tertullian yet another reputation he does not deserve. In the first book of De cultu feminarum, a withering attack on female fashions, Tertullian invokes the curse of Eve by means of a cruel and impressive metaphor: “Tu es diaboli ianua,” he writes; “You are the devil's gateway.” At once provocative of timely indignation and attractive as a foil, this single utterance is alone responsible for perhaps as much popular notoriety as Tertullian has ever been afforded. The following is offered in the hope that a more extensive examination of his attitude toward women may serve both to correct such misconceptions as have been drawn from the famous “gateway passage,” and also to clarify some of the ambiguities inherent in the Frauenfragen for early Christians.

In the official formulation of Tillich's theology, the ontological polarity of dynamics and form, together with the other polarities, provides the basic symbolic material for the description of the divine life. In that life dynamics and form are balanced, with the tensions and disruptions characteristic of finite life wholly overcome. “Being comprises becoming and rest, becoming as an implication of dynamics and rest as an implication of form. If we say that God is being-itself, this includes both rest and becoming, both the static and the dynamic elements” (ST I 247). At the same time, however, we find that Tillich identifies God or being-itself with the power of being (ST I 110, 180, 2O5f., 230, 236f., 272; ST II 10f.). Although he does not and perhaps would not identify dynamics with the power of being, we find that they have extremely similar characteristics. In fact we are driven to ask why the element of dynamics within the divine life is not identified with the power of being, and to speculate on the consequences of such an identification. It is our contention that the internal logic of Tillich's analysis of this polarity is such that he cannot finally avoid identifying divine dynamics with the creative power of being. This, in turn, entails that God is a being rather than beyond being, himself an instance of the power of being pervasively inherent in all beings. In the first section we shall consider the polarity of dynamics and form as it functions in finite beings. Then we shall examine its role in the divine life and its relationship to the power of being.

This stichometric list is almost altogether unknown to Western scholarship. Yet it is a rather accurate translation of a Greek stichometric list of the same character as the Stichometry of Nicephorus. The text has been published four times in Armenian, each edition based on a different manuscript or manuscripts. The edition of Ter Movsessian was based upon one manuscript—olim Etchmiadzin 154, a Bible dated 1308, and that of Fehratʿian upon two—Vienna No. 30 and No. 130. Murad based his edition upon four Jerusalem manuscripts, No. 773 (1359 C.E.), which served as his text, and Nos. 343 (1450 C.E.), 835 (1640 C.E.), and 936 (1703 C.E.), which he listed in his apparatus. The text was most recently edited by A. G. Abrahamyan. He did not consult Murad's edition, but based his own work upon two Erevan manuscripts, Nos. 2180 (1644 CE.) and 699 (16th century). He has listed all the variants of Ter Movsessian and of Fehratʿian in his apparatus.

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.

In Kierkegaard's hands the story of Abraham and Isaac is clearly a story about the relationship between the life of sacrifice and the religious life. By leading us on to deeper and deeper levels of sacrifice, he aims to make us grasp the essential nature of faith and, with it, the right relationship between the individual and God. He does this by means of a dialectic involving Abraham's response to God in contrast to (1) the other possible responses he might have made, and (2) Kierkegaard's own response to what he believed was the divine command to break his engagement to Regina Olsen.

Legal historians have given considerable attention to the question of intention in rabbinic law. Solomon Zeitlin, in the early years of the present century, published a number of articles touching on this matter, in which his chief purpose was to show that the legal significance of intention was one of the central points of contention between the two great Tannaitic schools, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. A little later, Michael Higger wrote a doctoral dissertation for Columbia University which he entitled Intention in Talmudic Law. Still more recently, Louis Finkelstein sought to push the dispute over intention back to the days of the Pharisees and Sadducees, attributing to the Sadducees the view that intention by itself has no legal consequence, and as usual explaining this view in terms of the Sadducees' social position.

Because the notions of finitude and temporality often get associated with the concept of “existence,” theologians have sometimes found cause to worry about what we are doing when we assert the existence of God. Perhaps the most radical expression of this worry occurs in Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology where he claims, paradoxically, that “God does not exist.” Despite the fact that the remark appears in a book written both within the tradition of, and about, Christian theology, Tillich spends considerable effort trying to convince us why the affirmation that God does exist must be stricken from Christian discourse. Tillich tells us, for example, that “however it is defined, the ‘existence of God’ contradicts the idea of a creative ground of essence and existence.” Therefore, “to argue that God exists is to deny him.” Not only would it be “a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words ‘God’ and ‘existence’ were very definitely separated”; indeed, theology “must eliminate the combination of the words ‘existence’ and ‘God.’” In short, “it is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it.”

In 1919, Cuthbert Butler, abbot of Downside abbey and one of the major figures in Roman Catholic intellectual life in England in the early years of this century, published an interpretation of Benedictine history which stressed the cenobitical spirit of the Benedictine Rule. Butler felt that Benedict avoided the excesses of physical asceticism and lonely competition found in earlier, more eremitical forms of monasticism and emphasized instead a life of obedience and stability within the monastic family. This interpretation has so dominated more recent scholarship on medieval monasticism that few students of the Benedictine Rule have noticed how little discussion of community it actually contains.

In the continuing debate over the question of the independence of morality and religion there is a set of issues pertaining to the relation of moral obligation and the expressed will of God which would benefit from some further conceptual clarification. Most often the debate amounts to a defense of one form or another of the following alternatives: either it is true by definition that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an expression like “ought to be obeyed” means “willed or commanded by God” (in which case morality is entirely dependent on religion) or it is only a contingent truth that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an antecedent moral judgment as to the goodness of God's will is required for its assertion (in which case morality is entirely independent of religion). It is my contention, however, that so long as the debate is carried on in these limited terms we will necessarily be dissatisfied with whichever way the argument goes, for neither alternative can be made fully to harmonize either with our common moral and religious sensibilities or with the facts of our moral and religious usage.

The suggestion that there was meaningful contact between Christian heretics and Jews during the middle ages is entirely plausible, quite significant, and generally unproved. That the existence of heresy had some impact upon the status of medieval Jews is, of course, beyond question. Inquisitorial proceedings aimed at heretics affected not only crypto-Jews (whether real or alleged) but members of the established Jewish community as well. Jews were accused of harboring heretics, encouraging them, and even of leading orthodox Christians into heresy. On several important occasions, procedures usually directed against heretical works were turned against the Talmud, the works of Maimonides, and certain sections of the Jewish liturgy. By the end of the middle ages, Jews were very well aware of the Church's lack of affection for heretics.

Most analysts acknowledge that guilt is a pervasive element in modern society. Possessed of a strong sense of impending doom through nuclear warfare, crises of ecology or overpopulation, modern man is haunted by an overriding sense of fear and guilt, wondering what quality in himself caused such an imminence of death. But surely this sense of guilt is not a creation of the modern world. Indeed guilt in the form of sin is even more comprehensible in earlier periods of history, where the culture was religiously oriented and where the wrath of a personal God could be visited upon a population in the form of plague or famine because of the sins of the people. Theories of guilt as applied to history, however, are much too sparse. One reason for this deficiency is that in order to use the psycho-historical technique, historians would be removed from the factual world and would be forced to probe the labyrinthine internal world that is illogical, devious and intangible. A few brave souls have explored the uncharted realms of the unconscious in the study of religion, both past and present. Yet, strangely enough, no one has ever focused upon guilt as an impetus in perhaps the most important aspect of religion—at least of Christian religion—the role of witness, better known as martyrdom.