In the University of Michigan collection of papyri is a fragmentary codex (No. 917) of the Shepherd of Hermas, much damaged, yet with many pages almost intact. The portion preserved is confined to the Similitudes. Its range is from Sim. II. 9 (χορηγοῦντες τοῖς πένησιν) to Sim. IX. 5, 1, ending with ἐδόκει, so that it covers a little more than one fourth of the whole work. The book is undoubtedly older than most of the fragments of the Shepherd previously published. So far as I can judge from the available facsimiles, it is the oldest of all texts except the Berlin fragment (P. Berlin 5513) and, possibly, P. Oxyrh. 404, which would probably now be given an earlier date than that assigned to it in 1903 (late third or early fourth century). As far as the new MS. goes, it has preserved most of the sentences missing from the Athos manuscript and heretofore supplied from the Latin versions, and it has a large number of variant readings, of which many are of interest and value. Thus for extent, age, and textual importance, the Michigan codex seems likely to assume a position of great significance in the study of the Shepherd, and especially in the preparation of the much-desired new critical edition.

The story of Quakerism in Norway and the story of Norwegian immigration to America have been told more than once, each by its separate historians, but they need to be dovetailed together. The following paper is an effort to make some combination between them, appropriate to the current centennial year of 1925.

During the latter part of the second century Irenaeus of Lyons, at the beginning of his treatise “Against All Heresies,” did not hesitate to state with great emphasis that Christianity had fully succeeded in keeping intact the original Christian faith, in safeguarding the unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition, and in maintaining the unity of belief and of sacramental practice throughout all the churches scattered in the Roman Empire. One might easily remark that the very treatise which Irenaeus had set himself to write offered clear evidence that the Christian unity so emphatically affirmed by him did not really exist. Far from being united, Christianity was rent by serious doctrinal and disciplinary conflicts. Evidently Irenaeus was speaking of the oneness of the Christian faith without taking into account the divergent beliefs and practices of those groups which had been cut off from the communion of the Great Church. So understood his assumption was true: by the end of the second century the καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία did possess unity of essential belief and even a certain degree of uniformity in its organization and practice. How such a unity had been achieved is one of the most important problems in the history of early Christianity.

The older and younger contemporaries of Gamaliel II and their disciples and successors in the next generation are the fundamental authorities of normative Judaism as we know it in the literature which it has always esteemed authentic. One main division of their learned labors was the definition and exact formulation of the rules of the unwritten law (Halakah), as they had been received through tradition, or were adapted to meet new conditions, or were developed by biblical exegesis or casuistic discussion. Along with this ran the minute study, in course, of the written law in the Pentateuch from Exodus to Deuteronomy, in primary intention a juristic exegesis with constant reference to the Halakah.

One of the most fruitful branches of recent patristic study has been the effort to determine the relation between early Christian theology and Greek philosophy. Starting from the assumption that the affinities between the two were many and close, scholars have found themselves able to draw detailed inferences of literary and intellectual dependence, and in the case of many Christian authors to discover the exact sources from which they drew their philosophic ideas, or at least to assign these to some contemporary school. Without such work an accurate estimate of the fathers' views and ways of thinking is impossible, but it must be remembered that an author is not explained, or even fairly represented, by showing how much he may have derived from others, for in the last analysis his finished thought is his own, however extensive the foreign material employed in its construction. It is not, therefore, at the end but at the beginning of his work that the historian of thought can expect most help from the investigation of sources, since even an author who differs from his contemporaries in his answers to current problems must usually begin by seeing them as they do. The background of an author's thought must have supplied the starting point for many of his ideas.

The cult of family ancestors in Japan is of fundamental importance in the religious life of the people. Though less deeply rooted than in China it still remains of vital consequence, for a large majority of the Japanese people continue to observe its rites, and even in 1911 official measures were taken for the purpose of encouraging ancestor worship as essential to the perpetuation of the national ideals.

The so-called Roman question — that is, the question whether the situation caused by the Italian occupation of Rome in 1870, whereby the Pope was deprived of his territorial possessions, is compatible with the freedom required for the exercise of his high office by the head of the Catholic Church — was a matter of deep concern, in particular to German Catholics, during the World War. It was hoped in all seriousness that the victory of the Central Powers would bring about a positive solution to this question and restore the political independence of the Pope. Such works, among others, as those of Hoeber and Sägmüller, and especially Bastgen's three thick volumes, bear witness to this feeling. But the last-named work is a disappointment. The author has, to be sure, assembled a vast amount of material in contemporary documents, covering the whole period from the rise of the Papal temporal power until to-day. He is also to be commended for devoting but few pages to the period before the French Revolution and laying his main stress on the restoration of the Papal State in the nineteenth century and its development down to the present, so that the second half of the second volume is entirely devoted to the years of the World War. But he has been criticized on all hands for giving his documents and extracts from periodicals and newspapers with no such fullness as the size of his work and his own announcements gave reason to expect. He has also taken his task too easily — for instance, merely copying out the articles of the “Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung” (important as that organ is for ecclesiastical questions), instead of going to original sources or citing other journals, as he ought to have done. And his reproduction of the material does not conform to the standards of scholarship. Taking the work, however, for what it is, it is not to be denied that, especially in the last parts, it brings together a great deal that cannot be so conveniently found elsewhere; and in spite of the defects named the book is well worth buying and deserves a place in every considerable library. — That the problem of the status of the Pope in international law has also been under consideration by the Catholics of Holland, is shown by Schneider's discussion. He views the temporal sovereignty of the Pope as inseparable from his spiritual authority; and consequently sees in the Italian law of guaranty a mere act of violence, and in the exclusion of the Pope from the Peace Conference and the League of Nations not only a gross injustice but a bad blunder.

There is no danger that anyone will overlook the importance of Mr. Bonner's article on the Michigan Papyrus of the Shepherd of Hermas in the number of this Review for April, 1925. The publication of a manuscript of the Shepherd of Hermas dating from the third century will be a real event in the history of the interpretation of early Christian literature. But there is one point in his statement which, though it will appeal at once to those who have worked on the Shepherd, is likely to escape the notice of others unless attention be drawn to it.

Vogels, in his new “Handbook to New Testament Criticism,” has started some interesting and important enquiries, by a consideration of the changes that can be marked in the copies and versions of the New Testament by an investigator who understands not only how to register various readings but also how to detect the causes of such differences. The evangelical stream is demonstrably discolored by the media through which it passes. The Bible of any given church becomes affected by the church in which it circulates. The people who handle the text leave their finger-prints on the pages, and the trained detective can identify the criminal who made the marks.

The note-books of the late Professor Caspar René Gregory were given after his death to the University Library at Leipzig, and are there accessible to scholars; they contain much more information about the manuscripts of the New Testament which he had explored than could be included in the lists of the Prolegomena and the Textkritik, and since the task which I have assumed of completing and continuing the list of New Testament manuscripts has given me occasion to examine the note-books, I hope in the future to be able to publish valuable matter from them.

The long-accepted theory that Hebrew literature is largely the product of Babylonian influences is now discredited, both because of the unquestionable originality of Hebrew thought, in general, and in particular because the use of cuneiform models and materials is recognized to have been greatly overrated. Eventually Amurru or Khatti or Caphtor may be found to have made important contributions in the intellectual realm, as they have in the material, but at present the most powerful antidote for Pan-babylonianism is to be found in Egypt. Not that the view is returning which once prevailed among the Greeks, that all culture and wisdom came from the valley of the Nile, but the extent and importance of its influence, especially in Palestine, is becoming more and more evident.

The “Oratio ad Graecos” is to be found in the third volume of Otto's “Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum,” and in Harnack's “Die pseudo-justinische Rede an die Griechen.” It represents itself as a defence for turning from the religion of the Greeks to the religion of the Logos, and presents its case most vigorously. The document opens with the traditional denunciation of the immoralities of the Greek gods and heroes, a purely Greek polemic which was begun at least as far back as Xenophanes. To this subject the author adds nothing, but presents an excellent epitome of the usual arguments. He then discusses the current way of living among the Greeks, and says that he rejected it with loathing; he justifies his opinion with a half-dozen vivid statements about Greek practices. From commenting upon the Greek religion and morality he turns in contrast to describe with equal pithiness the high moral and spiritual character of his new faith, exhorting his former associates to find the same peace and exaltation which the change has meant to him. The writer has remarkable power of going to the heart of what he discusses.

The papyri edited by Bell and Crum in the volume Jews and Christians in Egypt are among the most important that have been published. Apart from their palaeographic and diplomatic interest they are of immediate concern to historians of the empire and of the early church.

Aristides 15, 1–16, 1 has been recovered from the British Museum Papyrus 2486, and was published by H. J. M. Milne in the Journal of Theological Studies, October 1923, pp. 73–77. Some conclusions may be arrived at by comparing J. R. Harris's translation of the Syriac into Greek, as found in Text and Studies, vol. i, p. 25, with the Greek of the papyrus.

In the Harvard Theological Review, July 1923, pp. 280–283, Professors Lake and Blake have again drawn attention to a certain scrawl on the inner side of the back cover of the Koridethi Codex. I may be allowed to quote Blake's remarks in order to controvert them:

The extreme importance of the picaresque inscription on the inner side of the back cover has not been sufficiently appreciated. We have here a mélange of Georgian and Coptic letters, and one Coptic word, viz. ḥêppe (ἰδού). Oscar von Lemm is right in holding that Armenian letters are not present. Now the very appearance of Coptic letters is an important and significant fact.