The scientific study of religion which has gone on for the past fifty years has reaped a rich and varied harvest; but a thoughtful observer might hold with good reason that its most important result is this, that all investigators, whether themselves religious or not, have come to recognize candidly the tremendous motive power of religious emotion and the actual validity of religious experience. Yet singularly enough comparatively little attention has been paid to ancient religious feeling for its own sake. Classical scholars have made fruitful researches into the objective phenomena of ancient religion, particularly Greek and Roman cults; they have considered the relation of religion to philosophy and morals; and after many aberrations they have even found firmer paths through the morass of mythology. But we still await an adequate study of the subjective side of ancient religion.

Some manuscripts of the Harclean Gospels contain a subscription which gives certain important information concerning the origin of the Philoxenian and Harclean versions of the New Testament. According to the subscription the Syriac translation of the Four Gospels was made from the Greek text in the city of Mabûg in the year 507–508 after Christ. This was in the time of Mar Philoxenus the Confessor, who was bishop of Mabûg from 485 to 519 A.D. Later the translation was carefully compared with two (or three) approved and accurate Greek codices and revised accordingly. This was done in 615–616 A.D. by Thomas of Harqel (or Heracleia) in a convent situated at the Enaton near Alexandria. The subscription was written by Thomas himself.

In the Journal of Theological Studies for October 1935 I discussed certain of the more interesting readings of the Chester Beatty Papyrus in John on general grounds, endeavouring to discover how far the evidence of the papyrus might reasonably be allowed to modify the conclusions of particular editors in particular passages. It became obvious in that study that the text of the papyrus in John does not belong specifically to any of the recognised groupings, and that in many cases it would appear not to have retained the reading which is intrinsically probable, or which is the best attested.

In the course of a valuable discussion of the Di Indigetes, Koch seeks to prove that the epithet means Stammväter, using as his material certain passages of Greek authors which seem to equate indiges with γενάρχης. Of these the chief is the famous fragment of Diodorus Siculus preserved in a Vatican MS. and first published by Mai, Scriptorum Veterum Noua Collectio, ii, p. 116.