During recent years the trend of New Testament textual studies has been toward the identification and establishment of local texts. If these be old, they serve as witnesses to the original text, if late, they are helpful in showing the trends of textual development and add to our knowledge of the history of the Church. We are far removed from the New Testament studies and problems of 1898, when Grenfell and Hunt published the first papyrus fragment of the New Testament, Oxyrhynchus 2 containing Matthew 1, 1–20.

Le tome X du recueil des “Papiri della Società italiana,” où ont déjà paru tant de morceaux précieux, contient sous le n° 1162 le texte mutilé d'un serment que son éditeur, M. V. Bartoletti, a jugé “plutôt juif que chrétien.” Evidemment ce caractère lui a paru résulter des premières lignes, restituées par lui avec une grande vraisemblance et où il s'agit d'un dieu créateur. Mais les fonnules employées n'ont qu'une analogie très vague avec les premiers versets de la Genèse. Elles s'en rapprochent beaucoup moins que la teneur de certaine cosmogonie hermétique, où l'influence juive se décèle immédiatement. Comme j'avais suggéré à M. Vitelli, sous toutes réserves, la possibilité d'une autre interprétation, ce maître incontesté de la papyrologie m'a courtoisement invité dans les additions au tome X à exposer moi-même cette explication nouvelle. Je cède donc à son exhortation, malgré certains doutes qui, on le verra, subsistent dans mon esprit, car, si je comprends bien ce texte tronqué, il prendra une valeur singulière et méritera qu'on s'attache à l'étudier.

Within the theory of two sources, Mark and Q, by which most modern critics explain the composition and interrelations of the Synoptic Gospels, certain questions still remain unanswered which deserve attention in spite of the present tendency to study the history of the tradition rather than the composition of the gospels.

In many fields of activity Robert Grosseteste was an important figure in thirteenth-century England. Bishop of Lincoln for nearly two decades (1235–1253), he pursued a vigorous policy as statesman and churchman. He was already a distinguished teacher and chancellor of the University of Oxford. His voluminous writings were more acceptable to his contemporaries than those of any other author. His scientific achievements were such that Professor Sarton has styled a volume of his monumental History of Science, From Robert Grosseteste to Roger Bacon. In death his memory was revered as that of a saint.

The fragments published in the present article were obtained during a visit to the Coptic monasteries in the Wâdi Naṭrûn, which was made in February, 1923. They are all of paper, and they are all in the Bohairic dialect. One of them (Fragment IV) was written in the thirteenth century, and the rest are of the fourteenth. Fragments I, II, III, V, and VI were once parts of lectionaries; and Fragment IV may also have belonged originally to a book of lessons, but in this case it is impossible to speak with certainty.

A New era in Septuagint studies began in the autumn of 1891. In November of that year Hort drew up a scheme for the larger Cambridge edition: a few days later Lagarde, just before the operation from which he died on December 22, showed to his young pupil Alfred Rahlfs the works on which he was engaged, and explained his plans for their completion and publication. In these two schemes three scholars have found an arduous and self-sacrificing life-work. When A. E. Brooke and Norman McLean undertook the preparation of the Cambridge edition in 1895, they hoped that the Octateuch might be completed in five years: the final part of this first volume did not appear until 1917. But strenuous and untiring as their toil was through long years, it is now bearing rapid fruit. It is astonishing that the intricate editions of Samuel and Kings should have been published within the four years 1927–30, and Chronicles at the beginning of 1932.

In the Expository Times for November 1927 Dean C. A. Webster revived an explanation of the saying of Jesus on the mote and the beam made by Karl Furrer (Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, 1890). Furrer held that we have in the saying of the mote and the beam an incorrect Greek translation of an Aramaic word which signified both ‘eye’ and ‘well,’ and that the Greek translator made a mistake and chose the former instead of the latter meaning. Webster offers an argument in support of this contention, which, again, is combatted by P. L. Hedley in the Expository Times for June 1928.

In the present article, which continues the critical studies of the literature on Church History, published in this Review in 1921–1925, I cannot attempt to cover so wide a field as before, both because of my own advancing years and because, with the enormous yearly increase in the material, no single scholar is any longer in a position to treat it with adequate knowledge. I shall, therefore, limit myself to the field of patristic literature, the subject in which I won my spurs almost half a century ago and with which I have never ceased to occupy myself. Now that the literature of the countries formerly at war with Germany is again accessible to me, the survey can, as in old times, be international. In all these countries, especially in France and Belgium, the investigation of early Christian literature has in recent years had a powerful development, and Germany, under present economic conditions, in spite of unrelaxed industry, is in danger of falling into the rear.

The problem of Philo's Exposition of the Law and of its relation to the treatise De vita Mosis has, it seems to me, not yet been solved.

The Exposition is one of Philo's three great series of commentaries on the Pentateuch. It comprised originally De opificio mundi, De Abrahamo, De Isaaco, De Iacobo, De Josepho, De decalogo, De specialibus legibus, De virtutibus, and De praemiis et poenis, of which all are preserved but De Isaaco and De Iacobo.

The following Armenian text of Athanasius's Letter to Epictetus is found in two manuscripts of the Mechitarists at Vienna:

A. Cod. 629, ff. 66a–73b, 19th century, notragir, copied from an 18th century archetype at Ispahan.

B. Cod. 648, ff. 102b–105b, paper, 14th century, bolorgir, without word division and badly worm-eaten.

The version is different from that published by Tajezi, and belongs to an Armenian corpus of Athanasian writings compiled early in the eighth century. I have added a collation with Ludwig's edition of the Greek, but have deliberately refrained from discussing at length its relation to other textual authorities.