Έπερωτηθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν Φαρισαίων πότε ἔρχεται ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς καὶ εἶπεν Οὐκ ἔρχεται ἡ βασιλεία μετὰ παρατηρήσεως, οὐδὲ ἐροῦσιν Ίδοὺ ὡδε ἤ Έκεῖ ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστίν

Among the Graeco-Oriental cults that shared the loyalties of the Mediterranean peoples during the first four centuries of our era, the religion of Sarapis occupied a commanding position. Throughout his career Sarapis was a worker of miracles, but no miracle of his doing ever equalled in historical significance the political thaumaturgy by which he was brought to life. A composite figure created in the last years of the fourth century B.C. by the first Ptolemy, for the purpose of binding together the divergent ethnic elements of Egypt, he was the Greek Pluto imposed on Apis, the Egyptian bull-god of Memphis, who became at death another Osiris, and specifically Osiris-Apis. The identification was of the usual syncretistic type, since Pluto and Osiris were both gods of the dead. As a newcomer Sarapis underwent a long probation at the side of Osiris and Isis, and although with characteristic inconsequence Sarapis never wholly supplanted Osiris, by the second century A.D. he had become, together with Isis, the most beloved figure of the native pantheon, while outside Egypt he was receiving the reverent attention of Greeks of the rank of Plutarch and Aristides. In great measure, the prestige of his magnificent temple at Alexandria and the unceasing flow of propaganda literature account for his eminence at this time. His greatest glory, however, was still to come. In the fourth century, when the approaching victory of the Christian cult threatened all pagan beliefs with extermination, Sarapis took on the rôle of a universal solar deity.

The words of Jesus in Matt. 12.39–41 gave the story of Jonah an important place among Christian symbols, establishing it as a type of the resurrection of the Christ, and, through him, of all mankind. Its influence upon Christian thought is attested by the church writers from Justin on (Dial. 107–8). Tertullian supports the doctrine of resurrection in the flesh by various scriptural texts, among them the deliverance of Jonah, saying: “… quod Ionas devoratus a belua maris, in cuius alvo naufragia digerebantur, triduo post incolomis expuitur … cuinam fidei testimonium signant, nisi qua credi oportet haec futurae integritatis esse documenta?” Similarly Augustine, “Ut quid enim exceptus est ventre beluino et die tertio redditus nisi ut significaret Christum de profundo inferni die tertio rediturum?”

The progress of modern studies toward an exact edition of St. Athanasius, De incarnatione, is notably advanced in this double volume, by Professor Ryan of the College of William and Mary, and by Professor Casey of Brown University. We shall turn to their work with readier appreciation if we first recall several previous contributions. One of these was the edition by Archibald Robertson, published more than fifty years ago (London, 1893), based on the Codex Seguerianus (S), a twelfth century parchment in the Bibliothèque Nationale, first collated for the Benedictine edition of Athanasius in 1698. Casey and Ryan were well advised in adopting Robertson's text as the constant norm of their collations. A great boon is conferred on their readers by Casey's reprint of Robertson, page by page and line by line, as an appendix of Part II.

Most students of history or literature have had at some time the experience of encountering statements or generalizations made by a writer of an earlier generation and then finding them repeated without question by his successors working in the same field of inquiry. What is more, if dissentient voices have been raised, they have often been overlooked or disregarded. The prevailing estimate of Cassiodorus' Ecclesiastical History affords an excellent example of the manner in which erroneous opinions have been repeated ad nauseam from one generation to the next, although more than thirty years have passed since two scholars of the first rank, Bidez and Parmentier, provided at least some of the evidence needed for a more just evaluation of Cassiodorus' book. There are two essential questions which seem to call for fresh investigation. The first is concerned with the value and accuracy of the compilation, the second with its diffusion during the Middle Ages and its popularity as a work of reference.

The problem of judging the dogmatic tendency of mixed patristic corpora is often a delicate one. As I have pointed out elsewhere such collections appear often to have been made up for general theological or devotional reading and were probably valued more for the variety of their contents than for any consistent principle of selection. This point is strikingly confirmed by an anecdote in John Moschus's Pratum spirituale c. 46 (P. G. 87, 3, col. 2900):

We once approached Father Kyriakos, a priest of the Laura of Kalamon on the holy Jordan. And he related to us,

“Once I saw in my sleep a woman of honorable appearance and dressed in purple and with her two venerable and worthy men, standing outside my cell. And I assumed that the woman was Our Lady the Mother of God and that the two men with her were John the Divine and John the Baptist. Therefore, leaving my cell I invited them to enter and pray in my cell. But she did not consent. I stayed therefore a while beseeching her and saying, ‘Let not the humble man be turned away and put to confusion’ (Ps. 74:21) etc. And when she saw me pressing my request, she answered me severely saying, ‘You have my enemy in your cell and how do you expect me to enter?’ And saying this, she departed.