In 1907, His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII appointed a Commission to revise and re-edit the text of St. Jerome's Latin version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate and accepted by the Roman Church as its standard text of Holy Scripture. The undertaking was assigned, most appropriately, to the Benedictine Order, which from the days of Cassiodorus to those of Mabillon and from Mabillon to the present time has a record of scholarly achievement that for depth and continuity no other organization, sacred or secular, can match. Far-reaching plans were formulated, and a veritable laboratory of textual research was established at the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm on the Aventine. The methods employed for listing and assorting the manuscripts and for securing collations and photographs are described in two reports, entitled “The Revision of the Vulgate,” published at St. Anselm's in 1909 and 1911. The present writer had the pleasure of visiting the monastery in 1912, under the guidance of the learned Abbot, now Cardinal, Gasquet. An imposing amount of material had already at that time been collected, but the stupendous character of the undertaking hardly promised definite results, certainly not a final and authoritative text, within the limits of the present generation. And yet Dom Quentin, to whom the task of editing the text was assigned in 1907, has succeeded after nearly fifteen years of unremitting toil, in presenting a new survey of the history of the text of the Vulgate and a precise method for determining its original form.

The problem of the genesis of Acts involves various questions so intimately connected that they can scarcely be considered separately. Definite judgments are necessary on the distance between Acts and its sources, on the methods of the author compared with those of a modern historian, on the dates respectively of the composition of the book and of the events themselves, and, especially, on the difference between the author's portrait of the Apostle Paul, its background and setting, and the real Paul as disclosed by his own letters.

The centuries which we designate politically by the names of the dominant powers of the age successively as the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods of Jewish history constitute as a whole an epoch in the religious history of Judaism. In these centuries, past the middle of which the Christian era falls, Judaism brought to complete development its characteristic institutions, the school and the synagogue, in which it possessed, not only a unique instrument for the education and edification of all classes of the people in religion and morality, but the centre of its religious life, and to no small extent also of its intellectual and social life. Through the study of the Scriptures and the discussions of generations of scholars it defined its religious conceptions, its moral principles, its forms of worship, and its distinctive type of piety, as well as the rules of law and observance which became authoritative for all succeeding time. In the light of subsequent history the great achievement of these centuries was the creation of a normative type of Judaism and its establishment in undisputed supremacy throughout the wide Jewish world.

In treating the history of the Reformation, I am especially indebted to the material gathered by Dr. Preserved Smith under the title, ‘A Decade of Luther Study,’ in this Review for April, 1921 (pp. 107–135). This enables me to be brief in dealing with the general literature of the subject, but as Dr. Smith in many cases gave only references without comment, and as he was not able to include the Scandinavian literature, at least a few works of special value must be noted here.

Ever since it became necessary for religious belief to adjust itself to the views established by natural science concerning the structure of the world and the course of Nature, the actuality of a reign of law throughout Nature, or at least through broad tracts of phenomena, has been one of the most important scientific generalizations of which theology has been obliged to take account. And inasmuch as progress in philosophical knowledge concerning both the structure of science and the grounds of theistic belief cannot but cause some change in the mode of adjustment of the scientific and the theological interpretations of the world, it follows that each generation needs to find, to some extent, a new formulation of its answer to questions which science inevitably raises for the theologian. Among such questions are these: Is the actuality of a reign of law compatible with divine government? And if so, how is the relation of law, or of law-abiding things, to God, to be conceived, for prima facie several alternatives would seem to be open. And further, compatibility being granted, is it possible for theology to advance to an argument that in Nature's regularity we may see ground for theistic rather than for any form of nontheistic belief, or to such “proof” as theology can reasonably allege for its fundamental dogma? Such are the questions with which the present essay will deal. But before these theological issues can profitably be discussed, it is necessary to determine what shall be understood by terms such as law, Nature, and reign of law; or in what sense, and within what limits, it is warrantable to speak of law as obtaining of Nature. This preliminary and prerequisite inquiry, then, shall first be prosecuted.

The enigma of the world is the existence of evil or imperfection. Though a deeper insight discloses relative perfection, yet the relative perfection of finite things discloses imperfection. If good of the kind, yet the kind is bad. There is no compliment more distasteful than to be told that one is good of his kind, for it implies that the kind may be bad.

While it is obvious that the world, as a whole, is under the sway of one principle, yet the problem is how can a perfect being originate and sustain a world of imperfect beings, endowed with the capacity to develop towards perfection, and likewise with the capacity to resist such development?

It is a characteristic of German scholarship to see problems and to work with them in the solution of intellectual and spiritual questions. Certainly it is a praiseworthy trait in the field of history that it follows the inner relation of events and cannot rest until all the subtlest threads are discovered. Such a problem is presented in the rise of the modern world of thought and the inquiry as to the factors which have contributed to it. In von Below's book on the causes of the Reformation, referred to at the beginning of my third article (HThR, Jan. 1924, pp. 5f.), the question is discussed, among others, whether the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times is really to be found in Luther and his work.

Evidence for the existence of ancestor worship among the uncivilized peoples of Africa is varied and abundant. Outside the limited range of Mohammedan and Christian influence, there are few tribes whose religion has been reported with any care that do not appear to practice ancestor worship in some form. Without any attempt to provide a complete volume of testimony, and with the purpose only to indicate the wide range and diversity of these practices, we shall review geographically a portion of the facts available, passing across the map somewhat irregularly from northwest to southeast.

Sir James George Frazer is a well known authority on the subject he has made his own, and his voluminous works are familiar to every student of anthropology and the history of religions. The fact that he has put his extensive knowledge at the disposition of the Old Testament student is to be welcomed. This he has done in the works mentioned below, the larger one in three volumes, the smaller one by condensation and omission giving the main points of interest. That the larger work meets a felt want is indicated by the fact that a second printing was called for the year after the first publication, a symptom of the present interest in the comparative study of religions.

In illustration of Matt. 7, 3–5 the commentaries are accustomed to quote from Jewish sources the Talmudic treatises ‘Arakin 16b and Baba Batra 15b. Thus A. H. McNeile, The Gospel according to St. Matthew (1915), says with reference to Matt. 7, 3: “An illustration of the warning in v. 1. It was perhaps another current proverb. R. Tarphon (beg. 2d cent, A.D.) lamented that men in his day could not accept reproof; if one said to another, ‘Cast the mote out of thine eye,’ he would answer, ‘Cast the beam out of thine eye’ (Erach. 16b; cf. B. Bath. 15b); but this was possibly an attack on the New Testament words.” W. C. Allen, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to S. Matthew (1907), remarks on the same verse: “Cf. Arachin 16b, where R. Tarphon (end first cent. A.D.) says: ‘If one says, Take the mote from thy eye, he answers, Take the beam from thine eye.’” J. A. Broadus in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1886), says: “The illustration our Lord uses is found several times in the Talmud; e.g. ‘I wonder whether there is any one in this generation who is willing to receive reproof. Nay, if one says to another, Cast out the splinter from thine eye, he will reply, Cast out the beam from thine eye.’” The list could be continued at length.

A group of German biblical scholars have presented to Professor Hermann Gunkel of Halle, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (May 23, 1922), a volume of studies on the religion and literature of the Old and New Testament.

The first part comprises eleven papers and relates to the Old Testament. In the first two articles H. Gressmann and P. Eissfeldt discuss some of the patriarchal stories of Genesis from two different points of view, that of “Stoffkritik” and of “Quellkritik” respectively.

During the last three years there has been unusual activity in the study of the Apostles' Creed. The purpose of the present article is to draw attention to the significance of the main points which have been recently discussed.

In the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. XV, 1909, pp. 259 f., and again in my essay entitled ‘The Translations made from the Original Aramaic Gospels,’ in the Studies in the History of Religions presented to Crawford Howell Toy, 1912, pp. 290–292, I attempted to show that the curious phrase εἰς πόλιν Ἰούδα in Luke i.

The following extract is from a homily attributed to a certain Ananiah, who was bom about 380, and died about 450, or even later. He was ordained about the year 420 bishop of Sinni, a province of Great Armenia, and was associated with Mesrop and Sahak Catholicos in the great Christian revival which took place at the beginning of the fifth century. Father Basil (Dr. Sargisean) in 1899 edited this homily at Venice along with another, also attributed to him, upon Jonah.

In the last year or two the Gospel of John has received unusual attention from English and American scholars, particularly with respect to its place of origin and language of composition. Several scholars, notably Burney, Montgomery, and Torrey have independently reached the conclusion that the book was composed by an author who either spoke and thought Aramaic or actually composed his work in that tongue. Burney contends that the writer was born and raised in Palestine, where he knew Jesus in his youth, and that he later went to Antioch, where he composed the book in Aramaic, or at least in a Greek which constantly reflects his Aramaic thought. Montgomery supposes that the writer was a Jew who gained his life-experience in Palestine during the first half of the first century, and who thought in Aramaic, though he leaves open the question as to whether he actually wrote in that language. According to Torrey, the book was written in Aramaic by a Palestinian author.

Eberhard Nestle's Einfūhrung in das Griechische Neue Testament, vierte Auflage, vōllig umgearbeitet von Ernst von Dobschütz. Mit 20 Handschriftentafeln. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Rupreeht, 1923.