Eighteen years ago, when Emerson Hall was nearing its completion, the motto chosen for its portal was that insistent query of the psalmist, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” No words could have been more appropriate for a building devoted to philosophy and psychology; and if we knew the answer to the question they propound we should have at least the key to the more fundamental problems of Natural Religion.

Kakuso Okakura died in Japan September 2, 1913. He was an “Admirable Crichton” in his way, a man of vast learning, which covered both sides of the world. He was graduated from the Tokio University in 1880 with honors in philosophy and English literature, to which he might have added honors in Oriental philosophy and literature had not the drift of education in Japan at that time been all in the direction of the Occident. He always kept in close touch with the Occidental world, and was for ten years the head of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In spite of all the volumes written about the Synod of Dort, one looks in vain for a comparison between the condemned Remonstrants and Calvin, either in doctrine or in those other distinguishing features of the Calvinism that flowed from Calvin and Geneva, and formed the working program among Huguenots, Dutch, Scotch, English, and the descendants of all four in the American colonies.

In the older, as well as in the current, books on church history, and at some points in New Testament introduction, patristics, and the history of doctrine, a certain work is referred to under the name of “Stephanus Gobarus.” The problems arising out of the quotations from this book are of great interest; but we are given virtually no information about the author beyond his name, and the book itself remains a complete mystery. Only the industry of Walch, in Part VIII of his “Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Ketzereien” (1778, pp. 877 ff.) has analyzed it, or, rather, made unsatisfactory and incorrect extracts from it, to which he has added a few observations of his own. With this exception, it seems as if ever since the tenth century scholars had entered into a conspiracy to maintain complete silence about this work, or at least to content themselves with a few scanty remarks.

In the following pages I shall endeavor to come closer to the work and its author. I do not undertake to give a commentary, for that would require a book; but shall confine myself to the main points, going into detail only with reference to passages that relate to the literature of the first three centuries.

In the numerous discussions of the Greek of New Testament documents with reference to the question of translation from Aramaic originals, the Fourth Gospel has generally been left out of account. The language of the Synoptists has been examined very diligently from this point of view, especially during the past two or three decades, and at least one competent Semitic scholar has published material of high importance. Wellhausen, in his “Evangelium Marci” (1903) and especially in his “Einleitung in die Drei Ersten Evangelien” (1905; 2d ed., 1911), argued, perhaps not quite conclusively, for an Aramaic original of our Gospel of Mark; and he and many others have discussed, in a somewhat desultory fashion, the question of possible written Semitic sources for portions of Matthew and Luke. To the majority of New Testament scholars it probably would seem superfluous, to many perhaps even ridiculous, to raise similar queries in regard to John, whether it be proposed to regard it as a formal translation, from beginning to end, or as “based on Semitic sources”—whatever this vague and unprofitable formula may mean. Since the time when the origin and authorship of the book first began to be discussed, its essentially Hellenistic character has rarely been questioned. It is generally taken for granted at the present day, even by those scholars who are most inclined to look for “translation Greek” in the New Testament. The reasons for this are obvious, and good as far as they go.

In an article entitled “Recent Tendencies in Roman Catholic Theology,” in the number of this Review for July 1922, Dr. George La Piana has criticised my interpretation of the history of mediaeval philosophy.

My fundamental thesis is that in the thirteenth century there is a distinction between philosophy and theology, and that philosophy has an autonomous value. For Dr. La Piana, on the contrary, there is properly speaking no “consistent and independent philosophical system” (p. 251). Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, and a view such as mine is an artificial construction, abandoned by mediaevalists, and in process of disintegration.

In spite of the fact that Singer, Epstein, and, somewhat later, Charles, and Schechter have dealt with the Book of Jubilees, no apology is required for attempting to study it from a somewhat new angle. It is well known that much light can be thrown on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha by a comparison with rabbinic sources. It may be true that the Jewish traditions were not compiled till a comparatively late date, and that they were probably put in writing still later, yet much that is contained in them is of very ancient origin, and the authorities in whose names statements are quoted are a help, if not an infallible index, to fixing their date. Especially the Book of Jubilees must be viewed in the light thrown upon it by the Talmud and kindred sources, since it was doubtless written in Hebrew, contains numerous laws and allusions to Agadic statements, and presents generally the appearance of a targum or a midrash.

The title of this article suggests the difference between our oldest gospel and our latest. The importance of the theme lies in the fact that this difference is not one of development, such, for instance, as the difference between the laws of Elizabeth's England and the common law of the United States, but is rather the difference of deep and pervasive contrariety and even of sharp and sweeping antagonisms. To the task of setting forth this fateful difference, which affects our common loyalty to the Master, and on the full recognition of which by the church depends in no small measure the future of our Christian faith, the following study is devoted.

“‘The fashion nowadays is to speak of the God in the heart and the God in the Universe.’ ‘Is it the same God?’ ‘Leave it at that,’ said Peter. ‘We don't know. All the waste and muddle in religion is due to people arguing and asserting that they are the same, that they are different but related, or that they are different but opposed. And so on and so on.’ & But the name of God was to Oswald a name battered out of all value and meaning.” So Mr. H. G. Wells, in “Joan and Peter,” muses over the present floating theology, where everybody talks about God, and nobody knows what anybody else is talking about. Mr. Wells himself has done his share of the battering, too. If scrupulous scholars of today have difficulty in determining the meaning of ‘Messiah’ and ‘Lord’ in the beginnings of Christianity, what will the twenty-fifth-century scholars think of the term ‘God’ as used in the twentieth? It is curious, though, that along with this confusion of meaning — in fact the thing which itself adds most to the confusion — is an assumption that ‘God’ is “a distinct and familiar kind of entity, like a dragon or centaur; its existence alone being problematical” (Perry, “Approach to Philosophy,” pp. 108 f.). As a matter of fact, what is now problematical, every time we read the word ‘God,’ is what that word means to the man who has written it. Of course it is a large concept, vague around the edges, and variable with varying moods; but what is central and constant in it? Supposing one says that God suffers, or that God cannot suffer, one needs to have some fairly clear idea what it primarily is that suffers or cannot suffer. We can argue indefinitely and disagree eternally about what qualities God has, unless at least we can agree on a primary definition of the subject — what we mean by God in the first place. Several such primary definitions are now current: it is our purpose here to suggest that Christian theology at any rate, and probably most of our theism, tends to a use of one of these, and that it would be well to use it more clearly, consciously, and consistently in the future.

By the death, on November 22, 1921, of Émile Boutroux, France lost one of her most distinguished sons; the world, a mind of rare philosophic insight and power. Born, July 28, 1845, in a period of materialism and scientific dogmatism, Boutroux was a courageous and far-seeing leader, recalling men to the life of the spirit, and to a true estimate of the human soul.

In the number of this Review for January 1921, Dr. George La Piana discussed, in the light of the most recent discoveries at Rome, the several hypotheses which have been put forward in regard to the ancient tradition connected with the church of San Sebastiano at Rome. He there controverts the view proposed in my Petrus und Paulus in Rom (1915) that a translation of the relics of Peter and Paul to the Catacumbae, that is to the site of the later basilica of San Sebastiano, took place on June 29, 258, and defends the opinion, held also by eminent archaeologists in Rome, that what took place ad Catacumbas in the year 258 was only the establishment of a memorial festival in honor of the two apostles. His acute argument skilfully detects the weak points of my position, and at the same time contains so much that is new as to give me a welcome opportunity for a reëxamination of the evidence.

Despite the admirable “Licht vom Osten” of Adolf Deissmann and the more recent studies of Cumont, Bousset, Norden, and Reitzenstein, the student of the history of religions can still set his plough to much fruitful soil in the field of the papyri. Even the intensively cultivated domain of church history could be broadened and enriched by studies derived from such data in their application to problems of Christian institutional and constitutional development, of monasticism, and of the sociological aspects of the church's expansion. In another quarter, that of the persecutions, the papyri have helped to an understanding of the genre littéraire of the Acts of the Martyrs, and to a more accurate conception of the relations of Roman state and Christian church. This last we owe particularly to the finds of Libelli from the period of the Decian persecution.

In the January number of the Harvard Theological Review for this year I published a review of the recent “Life of Jesus of Nazareth,” by Rabbi Joseph Klausner and of a criticism of the volume by Doctor Kaminka of Vienna.

In a letter from Doctor Klausner he replies to some points in my criticism and restates his own position. It is proper, therefore, that this part of his letter should be put before the readers of the Review and Professor Wolfson has been kind enough to translate it for that purpose.

A new and not unfruitful stage in the literary criticism of the gospels seems to be marked by the recent publication in Germany of three important books. For nearly a century the Synoptic problem has absorbed the attention of scholars. The fascinating riddle of likeness and difference in our first three gospels challenged them to find a solution. It became clear that this was a question of written sources, and for many minds the “two-document hypothesis,” that Mark and some other common written Greek material (Q) are embodied independently in Matthew and in Luke, has come to provide a working basis of investigation, although the categorical denial of this view by the Papal Biblical Commission makes it impossible for Roman Catholic scholars to accept it in its current form. There remain, however, the question of other Greek sources, as, for example, the sources for Mark's and for Luke's special material, and the question of the possibility of Semitic originals, on which no conclusion has been attained and on which perhaps more light may soon be expected from further studies.

Since the time of Griesbach it has been generally recognized that the main problem of textual criticism in the New Testament is due to the existence of three distinct types of text, the Neutral, Western, and Syrian (or Antiochian). The great contributions of Westcott and Hort were the clear delineation of this problem and the establishment in considerable detail of the Neutral text. The Western text they only indicated in outline, and the Antiochian text was left with little further definition than that already provided by the Textus Receptus.

Folio 504 of Codex Bezae, containing part of Acts, chap. 21, has suffered mutilation by an irregular tear, or cut, so that on the Latin side a part of verse 7, the whole of verses 8 and 9, and a part of verse 10 are now lacking; correspondingly, on the Greek side a part of verse 16, the whole of verse 17, and a part of verse 18 have been destroyed. Fortunately, however, the manuscript was examined at dates when the mutilation was less extensive than at present, and from the reports still preserved the contents of the lost portion of the Greek can be recovered with almost complete certainty. In the Latin lacuna the results are less satisfactory.

In 1901–1906 the publishing office of Hubert Welter in Paris issued a new edition of the well-known “Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio,” edited in 1759–1798 by J. D. Mansi. This “new Mansi” is a mere reprint, which allowed no correction or enlargement of Mansi's text, the pages being reproduced almost photographically. Did the publisher of this reprinted Mansi and his advisers give a “testimonium paupertatis” to modern scholars, by thus reproducing a collection which appeared one hundred and fifty years ago? Not in the least. The modern manner of editing ancient texts was rather recognized than disregarded by assuming that a really new edition of Mansi's collection was impossible. It was indeed quite impossible; for while all scholars who have made use of Mansi's collection have perceived its defects, yet at the same time they have seen that to correct them would require more time than can be spent on a new edition.

Jesus Of Nazareth. His Times, His Life, And His Teachings. By Joseph Klausner, Jerusalem, 1922.

The author of this Life of Jesus is a well-known scholar, who has written much, especially in Hebrew periodicals such as “Ha-Shiloh,” of which he became editor in 1903. To Christian scholars he is best known by “Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten” (Berlin, 1904), a work distinguished to its advantage from the ordinary literature on the subject by the limitation of its field to a definite period, the first two centuries of the Christian era, and to sources recognized as authoritative. In that volume he showed himself amply acquainted with the modern Christian literature on Jewish messianic beliefs and expectations. In his Life of Jesus the same familiarity with New Testament criticism and discussion, down to the most recent, and with writings that deal at large or incidentally with the life and teaching of Jesus, appears on every page. It is, as he says, the first time that a Jewish scholar, writing in Hebrew and primarily for Jewish readers, has attempted to present the life of Jesus in the light of historical criticism and with the methods of the modern historian; previous lives of Jesus in Hebrew having been written either for the purpose of converting Jews to Christianity or of combating this propaganda.