The last editor of Fourth Esdras, Bruno Violet, in summing up the literature which had appeared on the subject between the first and second parts of his edition, observes with regret that he is unable to add anything more to his original discussion of the Georgian version. In substance his conclusions were as follows. The Georgian printed text of Fourth Esdras is an eighteenth-century translation from the Latin. Only two manuscripts of the original version exist, one of the year 978 in the monastery of Iviron on Mt. Athos, the other dating from about the year 1050 at Jerusalem. In the latter the mutilated text ends, according to Tsagareli, with chapter 9, 1–2. This latter manuscript Violet was unable to find during his visit to Jerusalem in 1901. Furthermore, upon hearing that Professor N. Marr of Petrograd possessed a manuscript of Fourth Esdras, he applied to him for information, but without success. Violet was thus unable either to make use of the text in extenso or to obtain any clear conception, whether of its character, of its importance, or of its position in the textual tradition of the work. Among the pia vota which are set up in the course of the introduction is included the wish that further light might be forthcoming on the Georgian version. The present essay is an attempt to meet this need, at least in part.

A methodological discussion of the value and use of parallels from the history of religion retains its value, especially to-day, when the ‘religionsgeschichtliche Methode’ is rejected even by some scholars of genuine insight. Deissner, a conservative theologian, recognizes in principle the justification of the method, and aims to set the New Testament in its relation to the history of civilization and of religion. He holds the comparison of Christian traditions with kindred non-christian facts to be indispensable, but criticizes the usual method, as employed for instance by Bousset, on the ground that it pays too much attention to the connection of the New Testament with the world of religion outside and too little to the specific nature of Christianity itself. To him, comparison with other religions is a means for determining the connection and contact of the New Testament with the world at large (for example, in the field of language) with the object of showing how incomparable is the New Testament, how underived, real, original — dogmatically speaking, of showing its supernatural character, built up of elements which the conception of a purely immanent cause leaves unexplained. His book is intended to be conciliatory, and formulates in detail various sound principles, such as the distinction between adopting alien religious terminology and filling it with new and distinctive contents. He errs in making the problem too simple and trying to solve it by a dogma. The relations of primitive Christianity to the development of religion in general are too complicated to be covered by the mere distinction between form and contents. It is also a mistake to identify the individual and distinctive with the essential. To the essential elements of primitive Christian tradition belong in fact those which find complete analogy in syncretism and Judaism, and it is dangerous to rest the character of Christianity as revelation on those elements only which a scholar thinks not to be derivative or to have no analogies. Others may think differently, or the missing analogies may be found to-morrow! (See also Bultmann, ThLZ, 1922, no. 10.)

Greek Papyrus 1570 of the University of Michigan Collection is a leaf of a papyrus book written on both sides. The preserved portion measures 4¾ by 9 inches (121 by 224 mm.). One entire line is lost at the bottom, and over half of each of the four lines immediately preceding. Of the top line only eight or nine letters are preserved. All other lines are somewhat damaged at one end or the other. Such loss often amounts to five or six letters. Eight lines in the middle of the leaf are damaged at both ends. Originally the size of the leaf must have been about 6 by 10 inches. There were 33 lines, which varied from 40 to 50 letters in length. The text covered is Matthew 26, 19 συνέταξεν to 26, 52 ἀπολοῦνται.

So large a papyrus fragment of Matthew's version of the Lord's last supper and betrayal is certain to be of special importance, as well for its content as for the bearing it has on the problem of the New Testament text.

The controversy as to the historical existence of Jesus, after abating in Germany, England, and America, has recently been revived in France, where it had not before been acute, and has there appeared under a new form, entirely distinct from the theories of Drews, J. M. Robertson, and W. B. Smith. It is of some interest to describe this new aspect of the thesis that the history of Jesus is a myth, and to try to explain the genesis of the contention.

The present writer visited the Wâdi Naṭrún in February 1923, and at the monastery known as Abû Maḳâr he found the fragment which is here published.

The following lectures were delivered in March, 1926, at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Only the opening sentences have been slightly altered. I had originally intended to give a general survey of the numerous tendencies and movements in present-day German theology, but the situation is so complicated that such a survey would necessarily have been superficial. I therefore preferred to follow a single trend of thought and direct attention to a movement which seems most characteristic of the present situation, and which is likely to command the interest if not the assent of American theologians. I must say at the outset that this movement is entirely opposed to what we older men have been taught and have ourselves been teaching. Yet it is only fair to acknowledge that the leaders of the movement have something to tell us, and that they know how to impress the younger generation. At this moment we are actually speaking of a “Theology of Crisis.” That is the subject which I have attempted to elucidate in these lectures. And since the subject has not hitherto been treated in English, I have thought fit to append a complete bibliography. In that bibliography works or papers mentioned in the course of the lectures are marked with an asterisk.

Twenty years ago it was possible to regard the Synoptic Problem as virtually solved. There might still be difference of opinion on a number of details, but the main conclusions seemed to be unassailable. The sources of the three gospels, like those of the Nile, had been hidden in mystery, and the discovery of them was justly hailed as the chief triumph of nineteenth-century scholarship.

For some time it has been apparent that the rejoicings were premature. Those matters of detail which had yet to be settled have turned out to be serious, and we are now realizing, with something of a shock, that the Synoptic Problem is still with us. Instead of reaching a solution we have only come in sight of the real difficulties. If the confidence of twenty years ago is ever regained it will only be after another long spell of patient labor.

We certainly owe much to the great scholars of the last century, though their claim to discovery has been found wanting. They gave us the clues which we have still to follow. The materials they collected and the observations they made will always be valuable. Their theory itself, although it calls for drastic revision, will continue, in some essential points, to stand. It will remain certain that Mark is the earliest of our gospels and has been used by the other evangelists. It seems equally impossible to doubt that along with Mark there was another source, now lost, on which Matthew and Luke must have drawn for their record of Jesus' teaching. These results, however they may be qualified, must always form the starting-point for critical investigation. But we now recognize that the older scholars conceived of their task too narrowly. The problem before them was far more intricate than they supposed, and has to be solved not merely by comparing the editorial methods of the several evangelists but by a deeper analysis, affecting the substance as well as the formal structure of the gospels.

One of the most important contributions to the textual criticism of Athanasius was published last year in the Revue d' histoire ecclésiastique, xxi, pp. 525 ff., by Professor J. Lebon. In it he announced the discovery in a late manuscript on Mt. Athos (Dochiariou 78) of a text of the De Incarnatione of Athanasius which differs so much from the ordinary text that it amounts to a separate recension. He pointed out that the antiquity of this recension is proved by conclusive evidence that it was known to Theodoret and to Leontius of Byzantium, and that it appears to have been akin to the Greek translated into Syriac in Cod. Vat. Syr. 104 in Rome, a manuscript of the sixth century. By the time that this number of the Review is published it is probable that Professor Lebon's edition of Dochiariou 78 will have appeared in the Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense.

The Greek Catenae to the Bible, of which a great number of manuscripts are preserved in numerous libraries of Europe and the East, are of great importance because they furnish the sole tradition for about one-half of all the extant remains of the exegetical writings of the Greek fathers. From them all editions of most of the Greek patristic writers who commented on the Scriptures must draw a large part of their contents. For the textual criticism of the Greek Bible, for the history of Christian thought, and sometimes for the understanding of the biblical writers, they have much to offer. In order, however, that these resources may be used securely, the complete investigation of the whole body of catena-manuscripts is indispensable, and the highly complicated relations of the witnesses to one another make this study peculiarly difficult. Commentaries of all ages are a growth, and in most instances not independent creations. The individual copies of the several catenae almost always differ somewhat, and often very largely, in contents, although they yield unmistakable evidence of relationship in origin; while in details of expression the ancient excerptors and copyists allowed themselves greater freedom than might have been permissible in continuous texts of authors.

One of the great glories of the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington is the MS. of the Four Gospels, commonly cited as W, which was bought in Egypt in 1906, and may have been found in the ruins of an Egyptian monastery. With regard to it Professor A. S. Hunt, after again looking at photographs of the MS., writes me: “A date within the fourth century seems to me quite possible, but the early fifth century is not to be excluded. Personally I should incline to put it towards the end of the fourth century…. But… the first quire of John is obviously considerably later.” Thus W is probably the third oldest MS. of the gospels in Greek. Yet on account of the extraordinary variety in the types of early text contained in it, W is of all MSS. the most enigmatic. I hope in this article to contribute something towards the solution of the enigma.

The edition of the “De Virginitate” of Athanasius by Eduard von der Goltz (Texte und Untersuchungen xxix, 1905) is one of the most important contributions made in modern times to the knowledge of the text of Athanasius, because of its full discussion of the variant readings of the manuscripts. The work, however, was handicapped by incomplete knowledge of the Patmos MS. (P), which von der Goltz regarded as the best, and by almost complete ignorance of the two Vatopedi MSS. quoted by him under the symbols W1 and W2, but in the present article designated A and K, since that nomenclature was adopted in the first article on their contents in the Journal of Theological Studies, vol. v, 1903, pp. 108 ff.

A visit to Athos and Patmos in 1925 has made it possible to build a little further on von der Goltz's foundation, and to correct some of the errors inevitable to the conditions under which he worked. We shall here give:

(I) A fuller account of P.

(II) A list of corrections to be made in von der Goltz's collation of P.

(III) A collation, with von der Goltz's edition, of the text of the two Vatopedi MSS. A and K, and of a third MS. in the same library, which we call Q.

(IV) Some discussion of the general problem of the text of the “De Virginitate.”

One of the most important questions in ancient Georgian literature has to do with the old Georgian versions of the Bible. The problems in this field are very complex. Not only is the history of the translation of the Old Testament entirely distinct from that of the New, but in each of them the translations were made by various hands from different languages and different types of text.

The publication in the “Harvard Theological Studies” in 1918 of Macarii Anecdota, consisting of seven new homilies attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, has revived interest in the mystery surrounding the authorship of the Macarian writings, and this renewed interest has given birth to a discovery. The controversy over the authorship of these writings is—at least in main outline—at an end. We now know in what age, in what region, and in what school of thought they were produced. The actual individual who penned them remains unknown. Hopes of completing the discovery by tracking him down have led the present writer to defer the composition of this article until now. These hopes however will probably not be realized until a good many years of research have been expended. It seems therefore fitting to publish the discovery in its general form. In brief, the Homilies attributed to St. Macarius are really the work of an heretical sect of mendicant monks and mystics called Messalians, or Euchites.

No city has had so many desolations as Jerusalem, no land has experienced so many devastations. They are so many that it is not easy to register them all, nor to say which is exactly the fluctus decumanus that submerged most completely the national life and prosperity. We can, however, see that all the series of disasters have a similarity; each of them is written in terms of wholesale slaughter, deportation, and slavery; if at any time a decree of restoration is issued, the document is a palimpsest with the under-writing betraying a decree of exile.