Already in the first part of the eighth century, as one may judge from the reports of teachings to which Wāṣil (d. 748) was opposed, there arose in Islam the belief that certain terms which are attributed to God in the Koran stand for real incorporeal beings which exist in God from eternity. There is nothing in the Koran to warrant such a belief. Nor is there any warrant that at that early stage in the history of Islam the belief originated spontaneously by that kind of reasoning by which later Muslim theologians tried to defend it against opposition. The appearance of that belief at that time can be explained only on the ground of some external influence. Such an external influence could be either Greek philosophy or Judaism or Christianity. Greek philosophy is to be eliminated, for we have the testimony of Shahrastānī that it was not until later, among the followers of Wāṣil, that the problem of attributes came under the influence of Greek philosophy. And so also must Judaism be eliminated, for the kind of Judaism with which Islam was in direct contact at that time contained nothing in its teachings which could have inspired that new belief. By a process of elimination it is to be assumed that Christianity was that external influence.

The Reverend Barzillai Frost, minister of the Unitarian church in Concord from 1837 to 1857, does not loom large in the biographies of Emerson. Cabot does not even mention him; Rusk refers to him but once. His name seldom appears in the Journals, and in the published letters there are only a few unimportant allusions to him.

The sumerians failed to develop a systematic philosophy in the accepted sense of the word. In particular it never occurred to them to raise any questions concerning the fundamental nature of reality and knowledge, and therefore they evolved practically nothing corresponding to the philosophical subdivisions commonly known as metaphysics and epistemology. They did, however, speculate on the nature and, more particularly, the origin of the universe, as well as on its method of operation. And there is good reason to infer that in the course of the third millennium B.C. there emerged a group of Sumerian thinkers and teachers who, in the course of their quest for satisfactory answers to some of the problems raised by their cosmic speculations, evolved a systematic cosmology and theology carrying such high intellectual conviction that they became the basic creed and dogma of much of the ancient Near East.

When recently going through the second edition of Nilsson's Geschichte der griechischen Religion, Volume I, I came across a passing remark which seems to me to raise an interesting question not merely of Homeric criticism but concerning the attitude of the Greeks, at the time when their classical tradition regarding the gods was in process of formation, towards the question of the shapes assumed by those gods when they partly reveal themselves to mankind. Nilsson is speaking of Odysseus when disguised as a beggar, and says (ed. 2, p. 370, taken over unaltered from ed. 1, P. 346),

Kirke verwandelt Menschen in Bestien, und Athena den Odysseus in einen alten, armen Mann. Jenes ist echte Volkssage, dieses in Anlehnung daran geschaffen; denn in der älteren Form des Gedichts war Odysseus nicht verwandelt, nur verkleidet. So ist er noch bei der Fusswaschung, und der Freiermord und der Kampf mit Iros (σ 67 ff.) fordern dasselbe.

VI.4 (p. 74.18 ff.). The discussion of ‘the Good’ completed, theconcept of ‘the Beautiful’ was introduced, of which (so one may, byconjecture, fill in the lacuna) certain reflections, however faint, appearin this bad world, giving a hint of the perfect Beautiful which is withGod. ‘For’ — so the preserved text continues — ‘the summits of thingsbeautiful reach up into the neighbourhood of the essence of God; maybethat they appear purer and more definite (scil. than other, inferiorreflections) (because) they, too, αἱ οὖσαι ἐκείνου. Which sense is hiddenin the corrupt last words? How could anything like to, or at leastreminding of, ideal perfection appear in this evil world? The authorhas given his answer in his previous discussion of the same questionwith reference to the Good: μετουσία πάντων ἐστὶν τῇ ὕλῃ δεδομένη.‘Participation’ is the concept which bridges the gap between the Intelligibleand the Material. We may therefore restore 〈μετ〉ουσ〈ί〉ᾳ ἐκείνου.

It has been conjectured that παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας in Matthew 5:32, which reflects the view of the School of Shammai with respect to the permissibility of divorce, is an addition of the editor. It is perhaps not without significance in this connection that in the Sermon on the Mount there seems to be agreement with the view of the School of Shammai in another important respect, namely that an evil intention is tantamount to an evil act (Matthew 5:22, 28). In Mishnah, Baba Metzia 3:12, it is stated: “If one intends (חחךשב, literally, thinks) to convert a deposit to his own use, the School of Shammai says: He is liable (for its value in case it is lost or damaged). And the School of Hillel says: He is not liable until he has converted it.”