From the earliest times we hear of doubts and difficulties in the Book of Ezekiel which have beset alike the pious and the inquiring student. In patient love, like that of the talmudic sage of old, generations have poured jars of oil into their lamps hoping to illumine in that prophecy what seems but an impenetrable gloom. Jerome often confesses his inability to grapple with the ‘obscuritates’ of a book known to be difficult in the tradition of the Hebrews. Especially he gives voice to utter consternation when on the threshold of the restored sanctuary envisioned by the prophet in his last chapters; there he is like one knocking at a closed portal. The chapters, tenebrous and trackless, are not unlike the catacombs he used to visit when studying in Rome: a glint from above would cast a swift light and then vanish, leaving him even more hopeless in the dusky cave. In like manner he often thinks he has found the way through a dark and difficult chapter only to discover that he has sunk into even denser darkness. Not in temerity, therefore, but in faith and the fear of God will he venture his guesses about Ezekiel's temple, shrouded in the mystery and silence of the centuries (“quod saecula cuncta tacuerunt”): others may contribute more and, he hopes, will not despise his little portion.

The belief in miracles has played a very important part in all the great historical religions. In primitive religions the intervention of powers supposed to be beyond ordinary human control and acting for purposes of their own did not assume the character of supernatural events, for natural and supernatural were not two distinct categories in the primitive religious experience of mankind. It was the process of moralization of religions and the growing knowledge of the consistent working of natural laws that gradually led to a classification of phenomena into the two great divisions of those which were natural and those above nature, a distinction that very soon became an opposition and gave rise to that dualistic conception of life and of the universe which we find at the basis of all the great historical religions.

Some years ago there was discovered in the monastery of Iveron on Mount Athos a curious paper manuscript of the sixteenth century, “filled with all kinds of theological extracts.” It was catalogued by Lambros, as the work of “Matthew a monk” (Mατθαíου μονάχου). Rendel Harris, to whom New Testament students are indebted for many valuable and penetrating judgments, questioned the justice of this identification. The Matthew referred to was, he held, not an obscure mediaeval monk: he was none other than Matthew the apostle.

It is a common fallacy to regard great movements in history as the work of one great prophet, to think that he alone changed the current of human events by the force of a single dynamic personality. As a matter of fact, great movements, such as the Reformation, have been produced because an unusually large number of prophets arose at the same time. Though the names of only a few have been illumined by fame, the deeds of the rest were just as necessary for the success of the movement.

Modern critics understand by ‘The Book of the Covenant’ the miscellaneous collection of laws found in Exodus 20, 22—23, 19 and its appendix (23, 20–33). This title is taken from 24, 7, a verse that is manifestly redactional and post-exilic. We may surmise that this verse and, indeed, the whole account of the ratification of these laws (24, 3–8) were inserted here very shortly after the code of laws was placed in its present context.

One of the achievements of recent scholarship forever to be identified with Ludwig Traube's name is the combination of history, palaeography, and textual criticism as an indispensable guide to the understanding of early mediaeval culture. The investigator of the course of politics and of letters works at second hand if he knows not the characteristics of those manuscripts in which contemporary events are recorded, or of those in which the treasures of the past were handed down to the Middle Ages. The palaeographer must consider his books not only as specimens of script but as witnesses for the text of the works they contain and as monuments of the culture of the times. The textual critic ploughs an arid field if the codices of an author are to him but A and B and C, to be hung from a stemma according to the value of their readings and their interrelations. These separate studies, which indeed call for diverse methods and diverse trainings, are but parts of a single science—a harmonious and comprehensive view of the life of an epoch. Traube of course had precursors in this complicated art, but his brilliant pursuit of it entitles him to what he himself would disclaim—the rank of a founder.

The perennial debate as to the nature of the church must always seem to those who are more interested in ideas than in institutions one of the irrelevancies with which theology is so often charged. It is not the church that matters, but religion.

The Armenian version of the works of Athanasius is known to European scholars from four sources: (1) the list in Karekin's catalogue of early Armenian translations, (2) Conybeare's edition of the pseudo-athanasian “Dialogue between Athanasius and Zacchaeus,” (3) an article by the same scholar, ‘On the Sources of the Text of St. Athanasius,’ with accompanying collations of the Armenian of De Incarnatione et contra Arianos and Qvod unus sit Christus, and (4) the Venice edition of Armenian Athanasiana made by E. Tajezi and published with Conybeare's help at the Mechitarist press in 1899. This edition contains all the material then available in the Mechitarists' library at Venice but is not based on a complete survey of the sources. Furthermore, the manuscripts employed are (with the one exception of Cod. Venet. 818) collections of various patristic writings, and do not contain corpora of Athanasius's works such as are commonly found in Greek.

The contribution to christology made by Leontius of Byzantium (fl. 520–543 A.D.) lies in his doctrine that the manhood of Christ is ‘enhypostatic’ (ἐνυπόστατος)—the doctrine of Enhypostasia or Inexistence. The Council of Chalcedon (451) defined the person or hypostasis of Christ as consisting in the union of two perfect natures, the nature of God and the nature of man, without division or confusion. On the principle laid down by Aristotle and accepted by all disputants, that there can be no such thing as a nature or substance without hypostasis (ϕύσις, οὐσία ἀνυπόστατος), the question arises of how it possible to avoid the conclusion of two hypostases, corresponding to the two perfect natures, in Christ. Such was the problem set by the definition of Chalcedon and the logic of Aristotle.

Liberal Christians have affirmed their faith in religious certainty on the strength of two basic claims: namely, that Jesus revealed the character of God—a morally good God; and that Jesus revealed God's purpose for the world—a morally perfect humanity in accord with God's own character. The outlook of liberal Christianity, embracing both its theology and its ethical program, centres in its certainty concerning these two doctrines which form its sources.

Among New Testament apocrypha few have been more consistently neglected by modern scholarship than the so-called Apocalypse of Paul. This represents a strange reversal in the fortunes of the book, since at one time it ruled an almost universal favorite. Diverse tokens of this its original popularity still exist. The first will be found in the multiplicity of its ancient versions, manuscripts of which have been coming to light with some regularity since the eighteenth century, when Assemani indicated the existence of Syriac and Arabic codices in the Vatican Library.

In the last number of the Harvard Theological Review I gave what I believe to be a definitive identification of the Gothenburg Papyrus 21. By way of demonstration I reproduced the text of the papyrus as reported by Frisk, with textual corrections and illustrative restorations of my own. I appended to the text a discussion in which I sought to establish its relations to other Greek versions of the Letter to Abgar. In my desire to bring to the attention of scholars a new Greek version of the Letter, the text of which presents remarkable departures from the traditional Eusebian version, my examination was restricted to the better known Greek sources. A subsequent examination of four additional Greek specimens of the Letter and of all the copies of the Coptic version, while necessitating no essential modification of my conclusions, has revealed in the Gothenburg papyrus important textual filiations which I did not then suspect.

The importance of determining the type of text used by patristic writers in their New Testament quotations is universally understood, and the difficulties due to the tendency of copyists, especially in the lemmata of commentaries, to substitute readings familiar to themselves have often been stated.

Armenian dogmatic literature is rich in creeds, some of which remain unpublished. The two which follow have a claim on general interest because one bears the name of Athanasius, and is an Armenian counterpart to the famous Latin spurium, while the other is a curious commentary on a well-known text.