The development and consistency of Luther's attitude to religious liberty is still the occasion of much diversity of opinion. By some it is contended that he broke radically with an earlier liberalism. By none is a measure of change denied, but certain writers would minimize the change by insisting that Luther was essentially intolerant from the beginning, others by representing him as fundamentally tolerant to the end. Still others find him incurably inconsistent.

New Testament critics have waited more than half a century for an explanation of the following strange ending of a Syriac writing of the fifth century after Christ, first published by William Wright in The Journal of Sacred Literature for April 1866. We quote from his translation in that journal for October of the same year:

But Joseph and Mary, when they saw the treachery of king Herod and the envy of the Scribes and Pharisees, arose and took the Child, and went to a foreign country and of a barbarous tongue; and there they dwelt for the space of four years, during which Herod continued to reign after (their flight). And at the commencement of the reign of Herod's son, they arose and went up from that land to the country of Galilee, Joseph and Mary, and our Lord along with them, and the five sons of Hannah (Anna), the first wife of Joseph. But Mary and our Lord were dwelling together in the house in which Mary received the Annunciation from the holy Angel.

Shortly after the publication of my study on the Inscription of Solomon I learned of the new Canaanite inscriptions recently brought from Sinai by Professors Lake and Blake and published by them and Professor Butin in the Harvard Theological Review for January, 1928. Having attempted several years ago, in the Revue Archeologique (1921 and 1922), to explain the earlier ones, I naturally wished to see if I might not read these also and get at their meaning. In this I think I have succeeded, at least to a moderate degree. The first steps in deciphering the ten or twelve documents discovered at Serâbît, near Sinai, were taken by the English scholars A. H. Gardiner and A. Cowley. The former identified the name of Bahalath, the latter that of Tanit, as well as the pronoun ןא (Hebrew ינא ‘I’) and especially the expression םענ לע, which means ‘because of favor.’ Several other words, including ןכ ‘son,’ ןתנ ‘give,’ were recognized within a short time, so that a goodly number of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet were thus identified.

Recent investigations into the law of fugitives and suppliants in hellenistic Egypt, a law which was based upon the procedure of classic Greece and so was generally like hellenistic law throughout the east, have thrown much light upon the subject, and suggest a reconsideration of the case, of Onesimus and his relations with Paul and Philemon. According to the law of Athens a slave whose life was in danger might flee to an altar and claim sanctuary. The first altar available was frequently the hearth of some private family, with its associations of the family religion. If a refugee rushed into the house and claimed sanctuary, the householder was under legal obligations to give him protection, at least temporarily, while following one of two possible courses. Either he must reconcile the slave to going back to the master, probably by giving the wretch some assurance that the master's wrath was mollified, or, if the slave persisted in refusing to trust himself with the master, the householder was obliged to put the slave up for sale in the market, and pay to the slave's owner the price received. The latter alternative was fraught with serious possibilities for the slave, since in a sale of this kind the circumstances would prejudice prospective buyers against him, and he would probably be purchased only for the roughest sort of service, such as the galleys or the mines. Rather than face such an uncertainty the slave would certainly be glad to go back to the first master if there were any reasonable hope of clemency.