For the first two centuries of its existence Christianity was, even in the West, a Greek thing. Domitian might find Christian victims among members of the reigning family, but Tacitus could still regard the Christians of Rome as the off scourings of the eastern provinces. The language of the Roman Church was Greek throughout the second century A.D., the language of Bible, Creed and Worship. However Roman in feeling Clement might be his letter to the Corinthians was in Greek; and Hermas' Shepherd was meant for home consumption. During the century nearly all the leading Christians from the East appear to have visited Rome bringing their ideas as to a sort of clearing house; and towards the end of it Bishop Victor of Rome, a genuine Roman, had still to struggle with Theodotus the Tanner from Byzantium, and Blastus and Florinus from Asia. Under his successors Zephyrinus and Callistus theological controversy was still carried on in Greek, but their opponent Hippolytus seems to have been the last Greek-speaking Father of the Roman Church. Similarly in Gaul the Christians of Lyons and Vienne were Greek migrants from Asia, and their bishop, 180–200, Irenaeus, was a product of Asia, the authentic voice of Christian Ephesus.

In most Protestant denominations of the present time there is growing interest in the possibility of healing by spiritual means. Those who speak and write on this subject make it clear that it is no new thing they desire to do: their aim is to recover the lost healing ministry of the Early Church.

It is exactly twenty years since I attended my first meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study here in King's College Hostel. The late Professor A. C. Welch was in the Presidential chair and I remember very clearly that at one of the sittings a very distinguished-looking man was seated at the end of the table on the President's right. There was something commanding in his appearance that at once arrested my attention and I was anxious to know who he was. Later I was introduced to him and learned his name, a name still held in honour, Claude Montefiore. It may very well have been the last occasion on which he attended a meeting of this Society. At least I never

In his recent important book, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, Professor W. D. Davies, discussing St. Paul's doctrine of the Second Adam, writes: ‘Probably … this conception played a far more important part in his thought than the scanty references to the Second Adam in I Corinthians and Romans would lead us to suppose.’2 A similar importance has been attached to the idea by Dr A. J. Rawlinson in his New Testament Doctrine of the Christ; it has provided Paul with some of his most characteristic Christology. It has also been claimed more than once that the Second Adam is St. Paul's substitute for the Gospel Son of Man, while both have been traced to a widely spread myth of the Urmensch, or primeval Man, the origins of which are obscure, but which was revived in the Gnostic Anthropos.

The word with which we are concerned is variously trans-lated in the E.VV. as ‘Parable’ (e.g. Ezek. 17.2), ‘Proverb’ (e.g. Ezek. 12.22, 23), ‘By-word’ (e.g. Ps. 44.15; so Ezek. 14.8 should be more appropriately translated). The last two groups are obviously related and it would be reasonable to suppose that ‘By-word’ would be a particularised meaning of ‘Proverb’, i.e. the use of a person (individual or group) in a proverbial way, as an example of disaster. The relation of this kind of meaning to that of ‘Parable’ is not so obvious, except in so far as there is a common idea of likeness. But this is less obvious when some of the instances of Māšāl—‘Parable’ are noted. Thus the term is used for Taunt song: Isa. 14.4; Hab. 2.6; Mic. 2.4; its use in the Balaam story seems at first to mean little more than an oracle and its use in Job 27.1, 29.1 appears to mean ‘Theme’.