The question of revelation is a formidable question in the proper sense of the word, not only because it may be seen as the first and last question for faith, but also because it has been obscured by so many false debates that the recovery of a real question in itself constitutes an enormous task. My lecture today will be devoted to just this enterprise.

The MS published here in all its extant fragments represents the remains of 3 successive columns, about 30 letters to the line, 34 lines to the column, from a scroll written at about the turn of the era. Contrary to the writer's earlier published impression, its text is not such as can be supposed to underlie the form presented in later Septuagint codices; it is instead a considerable reworking of the original LXX to make it conform both in quantity and in diction to a Hebrew consonantal text nearly indistinguishable, within the limited scope of our evidence, from that of MT.

In a recent, extensive article in this Journal, J. T. Milik made public some of the conclusions which he had drawn from his studies of the Qumran Enoch fragments, conclusions which have serious implications for the history of Jewish literature in the last centuries before the destruction of the Temple. Two of Milik's conclusions about the Enochic literature will be examined here: first, that there was at Qumran an Enochic Pentateuch, and second, that the Similitudes of Enoch (chaps. 37-71 of the Ethiopic Enoch book) are a late, Christian composition.

In the extant fragment (corresponding to 10:3-11:2 of the Greek text) of the Coptic translation of the Didache, after the prayer over the bread and the permission for “prophets” to improvise the benedictions if they so wish (10:7), there is a passage which has no parallel in the Greek. It has much potential importance for the early history of the liturgy; however, none of the several interpretations which have been offered to date is entirely satisfactory. The text and a provisional translation of the passage will be first presented, followed by our own analysis and interpretation.

As many of you know, I have been engaged for some time in a study of Islamic conceptions of life after death. It was for purposes of research in this area that I spent last spring in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. There I had the opportunity not only to consider contemporary writings on this subject but to talk with a number of persons who have been concerned with Qurʾānic exegesis and the formulation of Islamic theology. With reference to this modern perspective I would like to think with you today about some aspects of the Islamic experience of the divine in relation to the human—in this world as well as in the world to come.

It is an irony and something of an enigma that the Bible, one of the shaping forces in the theological development of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), has largely been ignored in the assessments of this colonial divine. Edwards himself acknowledged its influence, especially during his youthful years. “I had then,” he wrote, “and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever.” From his meditation on its pages he derived great personal pleasure as well as guidance and substance for his preaching. His enthusiasm for scriptural study never failed. Six months before his death he disclosed to the trustees of the College of New Jersey that he had undertaken two major exegetical projects with the hope of publishing “an explanation of a very great part of the holy scripture; which may…lead the mind to a view of the true spirit, design, life and soul of the scripture, as well as to their proper use and improvement.”

Tillich is widely held to be among those Protestant theologians who proclaim considerable scepticism about the arguments for the existence of God. This particular form of scepticism is not an attack on any individual argument or set of arguments, but rather is a wholesale rejection of the possibility of there being any “argument” for the existence of God at all.

A crucial issue in contemporary theology is the doctrine of God and especially the nature of the divine reality. What kind of reality is God? How is God's reality like, unlike, and related to other kinds of reality? There are many ways to talk about the reality of God. I want to focus on one way, namely, God as being or beingitself, not because I believe that it is the best way to talk about God but because it is one of the oldest ways, because it seems to be undergoing something of a revival, and because I am baffled and intrigued by it.

Maurice Friedman, the leading scholar of Martin Buber's work, notes that “the question must even arise whether the philosophy of dialogue, the I-Thou relation between man and man, cannot stand by itself as an autonomous ethic, grounded in Buber's anthropology, but not necessarily tied with the relation between man and God.” Friedman then suggests that Buber's philosophy of religion and interpretation of the Bible do provide an important source of his ethics. An examination of Buber's thought reveals, however, that the tie between his philosophy of dialogue as an ethics and his view of the relation between man and God is indeed not necessary in some ways and perhaps not even possible.