The discussion of the Caesarean text, like so much in the textual criticism of the gospels, really begins with Griesbach, who in 1811 pointed out that Origen used different texts in his commentaries on Matthew and on John. About 1896 either Hort or, more probably, Sanday made the further statement that Codex I resembled the text of Origen. This led to the editing of Codex I and its allies and their identification as part of a larger family, which included Codices 565, 28, 700, and the Ferrar group. The editor was very doubtful whether the connection with Origen and Caesarea could be maintained, and he did not discuss the point in that volume. He had mentioned it in the first edition of his “Text of the New Testament,” but dropped it in later ones, though it has now been restored, thanks to Streeter's investigations, in a new edition. The reason for his missing the facts was that he was secretly enamored of a suggestion, which he could not prove and therefore did not make, to the effect that the text of family I was a degenerate representative of the Greek which underlies the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe.

In the spring of 1927 a small expedition, consisting of Professors Lake and Blake, Mrs. Blake, and the Reverend A. W. Johnson, went to Mt. Sinai to study the manuscripts in the Monastery of St. Catherine. Some results relating to our more immediate aim will be published later, but the most important outcome was entirely foreign to the original plan.

In his article published in the issues of the American Journal of Theology for January and April 1919 (Vol. XXIII), under the title ‘Fact and Fancy in Theories Concerning Acts,’ my respected colleague Professor Charles C. Torrey appears to resent my characterization as “philological” of the type of criticism displayed in his able articles. The term, however, bears no disparaging connotation, and was not so intended. It was, and will be, employed by the present writer simply to distinguish a particular mode of approach to this outstanding problem of New Testament criticism. The mode chosen by Torrey to the exclusion of all others is ‘philological,’ as distinguished from the mode exemplified in the ‘historical’ (or, as Torrey prefers to call it, the “theologico-conjectural”) type represented by such scholars as Harnack, Schürer, Windisch, Preuschen, Loisy, and others. The present reply to his strictures has been long delayed, awaiting Ropes's “Text of Acts” in Volume III of “The Beginnings of Christianity,” in which the long-debated question of the ‘Western’ Text is discussed with what may be hoped to be advance toward its settlement, If in the present essay the type of criticism which Torrey brings to the common problem is still designated ‘philological,’ it must be understood that the term implies no minimizing of Torrey's great attainments in the fields both of textual and higher criticism.

Perhaps in nothing, not even in scientific outlook, is the contrast between the Modern Age and the Middle Ages more striking than in the changed attitude toward money and money-making. In the Middle Ages trade was frowned upon and the money-lender despised. In this attitude church and society generally agreed. The church was always castigating the sin of avarice. The making of money was designated by Thomas Aquinas as ‘turpitudo,’ even though he admitted its necessity. The thesis that the shop-keeper could only with difficulty please God was introduced into canon law. Usury, which meant not only extortionate interest but interest of any kind, was prohibited by several councils of the church, and to a usurer the privileges of the sacraments were often denied. Even in those days there were, to be sure, practical qualifications of these theoretical judgments, due to the need of money— a need often as keenly felt by the lords spiritual as by the lords temporal. Nevertheless the generalization is safe that money-making was regarded as socially degrading and morally and religiously dangerous. Today all this is changed. Money-making has become the chief aim of modern civilization. In countless ways, gross or subtle, it determines our lives and thinking. It entices into its service many of the best minds of our college graduates. Even our professions, law, medicine, the ministry (witness the vast development of ecclesiastical advertising), are more and more entangled in its net, while the commercialization of amusements, including our college sports, is notorious.

The philosophy of Josiah Royce speaks often of the Absolute and of God, but has left his readers somewhat in doubt as to his exact theistic position. Those who have expressed their doubts attack the Royce an conception of the Absolute from two directions. Some find it not unified enough, others too unified, to be theistic. The former of these call attention to certain discussions in which Royce explains his world unity as a unity of meaning, or a mathematical infinite, or an all-inclusive concept, drawing there from the inference that the unity which he intended was only that of a logical possibility. Or, further, it is insisted that even if Royce may have intended real unity, there is serious question as to the success of his philosophic achievement. The Absolute is made to comprise such contradictory and discordant features that its harmony at least seems incongruous or forced. A unity composed of vigorously conflicting selves must be an aggregate rather than an organic whole.

There are four lists of the Apostles in the New Testament—one in each of the Synoptic Gospels containing the names of the Twelve, and one in the Book of Acts giving those of the Eleven only. Each list differs from the others in some respects.

Peter naturally stands first in each of the New Testament lists, and Judas Iscariot comes last when he is mentioned at all. The one occupies the position of honor at the head of the series; the other is named at the end on account of his treachery. The two sons of Zebedee, with Andrew and Philip, all being prominent members of the apostolic company and early disciples of Jesus, form together with Peter the first five in each of these lists. Below this point there is considerable difference in order and some variation in the names of the Apostles.

Beginning with Flinders Petrie scholars have been struck by the similarity between the script of these inscriptions and the Egyptian hieroglyphs. As the inscriptions were found in the neighborhood of numerous Egyptian monuments, an attempt was naturally made to read them as in the Egyptian language; but this proved unsuccessful, and it was evident that although the signs show close relationship with hieroglyphs, the language is not Egyptian. On Sinai, it was natural to think of a Semitic language. Further, the Egyptian phonetic value of the signs does not yield Semitic words, so that it appears that not only the language but the phonetic value of the signs is Semitic, not Egyptian.

The use of statistics in textual criticism is always attractive to the student, but is apt to be disappointing in application. It resembles the attempt of Raymond Lull in the thirteenth century to convert the Mohammedans by a mathematical demonstration of the truths of Christianity: in both cases the insights have been chiefly gained through other and more direct processes, and the figures can seldom do more than provide interesting illustration, or the test of an hypothesis; they seldom lead to much new knowledge. Moreover, it is very difficult to make the statistics either complete or perfectly accurate. Nevertheless, in textual criticism something can be learned from statistics both by way of verification and of suggestion; and the following study of the chief versions of the Book of Acts seems to the writers to yield some profitable fruit.

In the catalogue of manuscripts at the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos by Eustratiades and Arcadios there is a curious error in the description of No. 236. The manuscript contains a variety of patristic treatises, letters, and fragments, four of which are thus described: