The ever-increasing respect for Luther among Roman Catholic theologians and historians of Christian thought is not only a sign of but also a significant contributing factor to contemporary ecumenical openness — especially so in Germany. Yet at the same time we should realize that this more positive evaluation of Luther is based on the conviction that the reformer was born under the star of heresy. While it is granted that he articulated the biblical message of sin, grace and forgiveness in Christ within the context of the late medieval nominalism in which he was reared, it is exactly this context which is regarded as essentially a-catholic or even as anti-catholic to the extent that it obstructed Luther's grasp of the full and true catholic tradition in the Middle Ages. Therefore, from the very beginning, access to the specifically Catholic tradition had been denied to Luther.

The name of Feuerbach is usually associated with the philosophic critique of religion. Feuerbach is seen, and quite rightly so, as the spokesman par excellence for the philosophic attack of religion — an attack launched from the anthropocentric viewpoint of modern cultural awareness against transcendental religion. There is no question but that Feuerbach has given a most vivid, forceful and persistent expression to this philosophic critique. But it should be also clear that his contribution here is precisely this and nothing more. The substance and basic outline of the critique are not the unique or distinctive contribution of Feuerbach. They had been formulated long before Feuerbach and expressed repeatedly throughout the history of Western philosophy before and after Feuerbach. Thus, while Feuerbach still remains an excellent representative and spokesman for this critique, he is by no means the only one.

The remarks which follow are aimed at revealing the magic power which Confucius saw, quite correctly, as the very essence of human virtue. And it is finally by way of the magical that we can also arrive at the best vantage point for seeing the holiness in human existence which Confucius saw as central. In the twentieth century, this central role of the holy in Confucius' teaching has been largely ignored because we have failed to grasp the existential point of that teaching.

The discussion about “oral tradition” in Israel seems to have yielded at least one result, namely, that scholars now talk about traditions rather than sources. This is certainly very often to be preferred, because we really do not know what sources have been used in the composition of a given text, and the text itself is, of course, also a source. It should be pointed out that the word “tradition” can be seen under three main aspects: first, denoting a “literary” tradition — written or not — such as a saga, legend, law, prophetical oracle, myth, psalm, etc.; second, signifying the growth of these smaller unities of traditions as they are handed down by some circle of tradents, priests, disciples of prophets, scribes, minstrels, etc.; and third, denoting the way of doing something, of living, the traditional way of thinking. In discussing oral and written tradition in the Old Testament we deal mostly with the two first aspects. One of the main emphases in the discussion has been the technique of handing down the traditions through generations, though this cannot be separated from the literary tradition itself. The concern of this article will then be with this technique, the transmission.

Fragments of biblical psalms have been found at Qumran in Caves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and ll; and there is the Psalms Scroll from Cave ll. There were undoubtedly more texts of the Psalter in the Qumran library than of any other biblical literature — 27 accounted for to date. By and large, the biblical psalms recovered thus far from Qumran are in very close textual agreement with the psalms of the early medieval Ben Asher manuscripts from Cairo and Aleppo (the textus receptus). In fact, all witnesses to the texts of the biblical psalms, whether in Hebrew or in early Greek, Latin, Aramaic, or Syriac translations, are in broad general agreement, that is, are of one basic recension. It is because of this that it was possible, in a comparatively short time in 1961–62, to construct a supporting critical apparatus for the scientific edition of the Psalms Scroll. The texts of the 38 biblical psalms in the Psalms Scroll are, with some interesting exceptions, the texts we have always known; the order of the psalms and the presence among them of nonbiblical psalms, however, are very surprising.