The Manuscript. This extraordinary tale survives in a single Coptic manuscript from the Gnostic Library of Nag‘Ḥammadi. Acquired by the Coptic Museum of Old Cairo in 1956, the manuscript bears the inventory number 10544 and in current nomenclature is designated codex Cairensis gnosticus II (CG II). In earlier scholarship it was codex I (J. Doresse, Vig. Christ. 3 [1949] 133–134), codex III (H.-Ch. Puech, Coptic Studies…Crum [1950]), and codex X (Doresse, Les livres secrets des gnostique d'Egypte, vol. I [1958].

In his suggestion of a “concatenous literary pattern” in Amos 1–2, S. Paul has drawn attention once again to the prosodic structure of the oracles against foreign nations preserved in Amos. His argument is most provocative but is seriously weakened by that troublesome verse, Amos I:II. As Paul has implicitly noted, the key to a proper reconstruction and interpretation of Amos 1–2 lies in a more accurate understanding of its prosodic structure.

The middle decades of the thirteenth century saw a remarkable upsurge in Christian missionizing activity. While efforts to spread the regnant faith by eloquent persuasion had never been totally lacking in medieval Christendom, widespread interest in proselytizing and the creation of effective missionizing techniques are especially prominent during this period. Old and new ecclesiastical institutions channeled their energies towards evangelizing, and some of the most learned and original minds lent their talents.

Considerable attention has recently been given to the subject of radical ideas in English religion, especially in the period of the Civil War, as Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution perhaps best illustrates. Nonetheless, much of the story of English radical religion—its sources, milieu, and impact—remains obscure, especially in the Elizabethan period, and the modern investigator is scarcely satisfied with the comment of the seventeenth-century heresiographer, Daniel Featley, who argued, in explaining the rise of heresy, that “it is moste certaine, that where there is a propension in any mans minde to any olde heresie, the malice of the Devil easily supplyeth the want of reading.” Did the radical religious ideas of the Civil War period spring up suddenly out of the tensions of Puritanism or had such ideas long flourished on the margins of the Puritan movement? To what extent were such ideas indebted to continental influences such as the Anabaptists? If indigenous, to what aspect of English religion should one turn for the context and basis of such developments?