If he knows where to look for them, the traveller may find among the suburbs of London two Mohammedan mosques — one about thirty-six years old at Woking in Surrey, the other only a year or two old at Southfields near Wandsworth. Here, every week, come English worshippers, and from these centres of Islam, with their resident missionaries, go forth various types of propaganda aiming to present Islam in favorable and convincing fashion to the modern western world. Both of these headquarters are controlled by branches or sub-sects of the Ahmadiya Movement — a recent heretical offshoot of Mohammedanism. The study of its origin and present teachings, therefore, has more than academic value, for it will reveal the history and aims of the only branch of Islam which is seriously trying to convert western Christians.

The historical investigation of the origins of Christianity began with the English deists, who, being philosophers and not professional historians, were for that very reason able to give the first forward impulse to the historical study of Jesus and of primitive Christianity. No purely historical interest could have induced Christian Europe to apply criticism to its sacred books, the facts of salvation, and the divine person of the Saviour. A new and philosophic conception of religion was required, directly opposed to the older view, if any serious effort was to be made to find in the writings of the New Testament and in the earliest Christian history the evidence for critically tested historical statements, and if these writings were to be read and the history studied from any other point of view than that of traditional dogmatism, Protestant or Catholic.

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.

The brilliant light thrown upon the Pharisees and the Sadducees by the careful studies of Geiger and Wellhausen, and their many disciples, has not completely dispelled the obscurity whieh surrounds the origin and being of these ancient groups. Geiger, whose views have in the main been accepted by Graetz, Detenbourg, Weiss, and Klausner, conceived of the conflict between these sects as intrinsically similar to that which developed in his own day between the reform and orthodox Jews in Germany.

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.

In the thirteenth book of his Ancient History of the Jews, Josephus relates (Ant. xiii. 1–5) the doings and fortunes of Jonathan, the brother of Judas Maccabaeus and after the death of Judas (161 B.C.) the leader of the rebellious Jews in their struggle with the Syrian rulers. In the sequel of Jonathan's embassies to Rome and Sparta, and not long before he fell into the hands of Tryphon and was put to death, we read (Ant. xiii. 5, 9):

About this time there were three philosophical schools (αἱρέσɛις) among the Jews, which entertained different opinions about human affairs. One of them was called that of the Pharisees, one of the Sadducees, and the third of the Essenes.

Georgian literature, if it must yield the palm to the Armenian for extent and variety of content, is in at least one respect distinctly superior to its neighbor. A large body of extremely ancient manuscripts have survived, which have preserved to us a highly diversified series of texts. And in general the oldest Georgian manuscripts usually contain the most valuable material. This is true of the Old Testament; the most complete, and on the whole the best, surviving manuscript of that is likewise the oldest. About this manuscript much has been written, but hardly anything has been published from it, and, strangely enough, no detailed description of it has ever appeared. The account herewith presented rests on a careful personal study of the entire codex in the original and in photographs.

Among the parchment leaves which formed a large part of a purchase made by the late Professor Francis W. Kelsey early in 1927 I later found one of the missing leaves of the Freer Psalter, published in 1917. The bundle was made up of parchment and paper leaves, all, with this one exception, comparatively late and not of great value. Most of them are more or less damaged and have no connection with one another, evidently representing a variety of finds or purchases. They came from M. Nahman, an antiquity dealer of Cairo, and were bought by Mr. Kelsey without examination and on the chance that although the bundle looked like the rejected numbers from many sales, examination might reveal something of value.

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.

In the edition of the Georgian text of Fourth Esdras from the Jerusalem manuscript (I), published in this REVIEW, vol. XIX, 1926,1 presented such information as was then available about the other and older Ms. containing this text, namely, that of the lavra of Iveron on Mt. Athos (O). In the summer of 1927 my hope of gaining access to this precious MS. was fulfilled, and the first volume of it was photographed by Professor K. Lake, the Rev. A. W. Johnson and myself. Permission for this was kindly granted by the epitropoi of the monastery, to whom we desire here to express our sincere gratitude. The photographs, developed by the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, N. Y., proved to be excellent. A detailed description of the MS. is given in the preceding article of the present number of this Review.

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.