This survey will consider introductory works, and then apologetic and finally theological and devotional studies.

Let us start with Professor Alfred Wikenhauser’s New Testament Introduction. The publishers are to be congratulated on this production which now becomes the best recent manual in English. The translation is made from the second, revised and enlarged German edition; and the bibliography is brought up to date by the author himself up to the spring of 1957. Thus it is good to see an adequate note on Papyrus Bodmer II and references to the principle articles thereon. Among other good points we could single out the admirable summary on form-criticism. There is a wealth of information concisely set out. Altogether a fine example of sound Catholic scholarship is now made available to a much wider public of theological students and educated layfolk.

For seemingly the same sort of public, but this time non-Catholic, and in a very different style is a new work on the Gospels by Professor Frederick Grant. Here we have the work of a well-known scholar and life-long lover of the Gospels: yet we cannot avoid the impression that this work is redolent of past rather than present and future trends of New Testament study. True, there are wise lessons. Nothing can replace method and hard personal work in the reading and close comparison of gospel with gospel. Yet we would hesitate to urge, as our author does (pp. 41-50) the marking of our texts (even in red and blue!), as if that was the only way to enter profoundly into synoptic and other problems.