Christian interest in Jewish literature has always been apologetic or polemic rather than historical. The writers of the New Testament set themselves to demonstrate from the Scriptures that Jesus was the expected Messiah by showing that his nativity, his teaching and miracles, the rejection of him by his people, his death, resurrection, and ascension, were minutely foretold in prophecy, the exact fulfilment of which in so many particulars was conclusive proof of the truth of his claims, and left no room to doubt that his own prediction would be fulfilled in the speedy coming of the Son of Man to judgment, as Daniel had seen him in his vision. In the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews and in the Gospel according to John the aim is not so much to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish expectation as that the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom Christians believed that they had salvation from their sins and the assurance of a blessed immortality, was a divine being, the Son of God, the Word of God incarnate; and this higher faith also sought its evidence in the Scriptures. The apologetic of the following centuries, especially that which addresses itself to Jewish objections, has the same chief topics: Jesus was the Christ (Messiah), and Christ is a divine being. Others, which also have their antecedents in the New Testament, are accessory to these, particularly the emancipation of Christians from the Mosaic law, or the annulment of the dispensation of law altogether, or the substitution of the new law of Christ; the repudiation of the Jewish people by God for their rejection of Christ, and the succession of the church, the true Israel, the people of God, to all the prerogatives and promises once given to the Jews.

Since the last biographies of Luther in English appeared, nearly ten years ago, a vast amount of light has been shed on the subject by the discovery of new documents and by the intensive research of a great army of the learned. A special stimulus was supplied to their zeal by the celebration of the Reformation quadricentenary in 1917; and the fact that America was cut off from Germany for four years out of the last ten, and that the books of her production have only begun to reach us in large numbers, may add another reason, were it necessary, for offering an extensive review of the outstanding work in this field since the end of the year 1910. For the sake of convenience the more detailed studies will be taken up first, in the chronological order of events in Luther's life; the more general collections of works, bibliographies, biographies, and estimates, will follow after.

As an effective philosophic concept, applicable to all forms of being, Immanence takes its start from Stoicism. It was a growth, rather than a first principle or formula. It did not start as a scientific hypothesis, but rather as an attractive figure or guess, which gradually grew into a theory, and was elaborated into a body of doctrine. The assumption out of which it sprang was that the world was an ordered unity, as Pythagoras had declared—a Kosmos. Whence came the Order of the Unity, and how imposed?

In the preparation of the following survey two methods were possible. I might select for fuller notice certain of the most important productions and by means of them illustrate the progress in this branch of historical science during the period of the war, or I might endeavor to give as complete an account of the literature as possible, including notices of less significant but nevertheless useful publications. I decided upon the second course, partly because the mass of production seemed to me too large and varied to be satisfactorily exhibited by the more or less arbitrary selection of a few works, partly because it often happens that a seemingly unimportant note may be of worth to some scholar who happens to be pursuing research in that particular field—something which in the many years during which I edited the Theologische Jahresbericht I have often found true in my own experience and that of others. Unfortunately the Jahresbericht, which seemed to us indispensable, as well as the Theologische Rundschau, edited by Bousset, whose untimely death we mourn, have both succumbed to the unfavorable conditions of the times. All the more necessary does it seem to create at least a partial substitute for them, and I embraced the opportunity offered me by the editors of this Review the more gladly because in my own country it will for the present be quite impossible to publish such a survey.

In 1895 there appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Prussian Academy an account of Eine bisher unbekannte altchristliche Schrift in koptischer Sprache, by Carl Schmidt, at that time a scholar of the German Imperial Archaeological Institute in Egypt. Schmidt was helped in further research on this document by Pierre Lacau, the Egyptologist, but a full publication was delayed in the hope of further knowledge. This has come, slowly but satisfactorily from new discoveries and the friendly coöperation of French, English, and German scholars.

The article ‘Chronology of the New Testament’ by C. H. Turner in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible marks an epoch in this important subject. Its astronomical and calendar data are indeed not unimpeachable, for the more recent studies of Fotheringham make it highly probable that A.D. 30 should be taken as the year of the crucifixion, rather than Turner's date of A.D. 29. But Turner's careful survey of ancient sources proves that from a very early time “the year of the two Gemini” (A.D. 29) was fixed upon by tradition, and became the accepted starting-point for primitive reckonings in both directions. Convenience of adjustment to the paschal cycle had probably much to do with the adoption of this particular year, which facilitated harmonization; but at the very early period to which it can be carried back tradition is not likely to have varied more than a year or two from the correct date for so all-important an event. While, then, a slightly earlier or later absolute dating, such as A.D. 30, may obtain the preference of modern chronographers it seems not impossible that the traditional date of 29 A.D. for the crucifixion may go back to the period of Luke himself.

Among the many problems which confront the historian of Christian thought and life in the early centuries one of the most complex and difficult is that of the relations, practical as well as theoretical, between Christianity and asceticism. Since the age of the Reformation there has been incessant controversy over the question whether the anthropological assumptions which underlie ascetic morals—the dualistic conception of the constitution of human nature and the conviction that there is an irreconcilable opposition between body and spirit—are really identical with the principles of Christian anthropology so that there can be no experience of the gospel message apart from a radically pessimistic estimate of the possibilities of good inherent in human nature, and without the acceptance of a scale of ethical values based upon the progressive stages of an ascetic discipline.

After centuries of acrimonious theological controversy fomented by prejudices on both sides, we are now perhaps for the first time in a position to consider objectively the historical relations between the development of ascetic ideas and the propagation of the Christian piety, and consequently to solve satisfactorily the problem of the interaction between asceticism and Christianity.

The very multiplicity of the attempts which have been made to solve the exegetical problem presented by the difficult Logion of St. Matthew 11, 12 is in itself a strong indication that no one of the proffered interpretations can claim for itself a pre-eminent position; and inasmuch as all the thought that has been expended upon the Saying has not succeeded in discovering in it a meaning that by its inherent probability compels us to accept it as the true interpretation, it is inevitable that we should wonder whether some error can have crept into the text.

This verse contains a textual problem which has perplexed editors of the New Testament since the days of Erasmus and the Complutensian edition. The question is, What pronoun should be read after καθαρισμοῦ? — αὐτῶν, or αὐτοῦ, or αὐτῆς?

Αὐτῶν is attested by אABLWΓΔII etc., by nearly all the minuscules, by the Peshitta, the Harclean, and the Palestinian Syriac, and by three minor ancient versions (Ethiopic, Armenian, and Gothic). The Arabic Diatessaron also has the plural pronoun, agreeing with the Peshitta at this point. Origen found αὐτῶν in his text of the Gospel, and, so far as is known, he was acquainted with no other reading in this place. He quotes Luke 2, 22 in his Fourteenth Homily on Luke, which deals with the Circumcision and Purification, and he discusses the difficulty involved in the plural αὐτῶν without mentioning any variant reading. If he had known of such, he would certainly have made some reference to it. The Homiliae in Lucam were written at Caesarea, after Origen's withdrawal to that city from Alexandria in the year 231. We may therefore assume that αὐτῶν formed part of Luke 2, 22 in the text current at Caesarea and Alexandria in the early part of the third century, and that there were no rival claimants for the place. It was also the Antiochian, or ‘Syrian,’ reading, as its predominance in the minuscule manuscripts proves.

The editors of the Harvard Theological Review have asked me for an article on “the state of religion in Germany as affected by the war, and its outlook in the period of reconstruction upon which—we may hope—the world is now entering.” With some hesitation I comply with their request; but I must beg my readers to allow me first a word of very frank introduction.

The problem of the existence and nature of God, remote and oppressive though it is to some minds, to others is of all questions the most urgent and engaging. It has had its fascination for the mind of America, as for that of all intelligent peoples.

In reading various American periodicals I have noted the interest with which French affairs are followed on the other side of the ocean, but American observers seem to be somewhat uncertain in their opinions about contemporary France and particularly to be baffled by the internal policy of France. For this policy differs profoundly from that which was pursued before the war. The attitude of the French government in religious affairs has been considerably modified. It may therefore interest American readers to learn something about the great currents by which the religious and moral spirit of France are today borne along, and to try to divine their probable outcome.

Among the parchment and papyrus manuscripts and fragments brought to this country by the University of Michigan Expedition under Professor Francis W. Kelsey, only one is of paramount interest to the Biblical scholar. There are indeed lectionaries and parts of lectionaries dating from the eleventh century and later, and even a single papyrus fragment of a Psalm, but the former are uninteresting textually, and the latter is too small to give much evidence.

Recent archaeological discoveries have contributed in many ways to enrich our knowledge of the early periods of Christian history. It cannot be denied that the results of these investigations as a whole have given testimony in favor of the conservative historical tradition, rather than of the aggressive criticism of the last century. In many cases archaeological evidence has verified or confirmed traditions to which historical criticism had denied any positive value, and solved what had been regarded as insoluble problems. Where literary evidence was lacking or inconclusive, archaeology and ancient liturgy have furnished the historians of the early centuries of the Church new sources of knowledge of inestimable value.

In his note ‘Simon, Cephas, Peter’ in this Review (January, 1921, pp. 95–97), Professor Kirsopp Lake, calling attention to the existence of early evidence that in some quarters Cephas was thought to be a different person from Peter, wonders why “Christian tradition has so completely lost sight of these doubts, which were clearly present in various forms to Clement of Alexandria and to the still earlier writer of the Epistola Apostolorum.”

It is generally held that these three names apply to one person, who was the chief of the Twelve Apostles and the first witness to the Resurrection. It is, of course, recognized that there was another apostle named Simon, but he plays only a small part in Christian tradition.