Eighteen years ago, when Emerson Hall was nearing its completion, the motto chosen for its portal was that insistent query of the psalmist, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” No words could have been more appropriate for a building devoted to philosophy and psychology; and if we knew the answer to the question they propound we should have at least the key to the more fundamental problems of Natural Religion.

In the numerous discussions of the Greek of New Testament documents with reference to the question of translation from Aramaic originals, the Fourth Gospel has generally been left out of account. The language of the Synoptists has been examined very diligently from this point of view, especially during the past two or three decades, and at least one competent Semitic scholar has published material of high importance. Wellhausen, in his “Evangelium Marci” (1903) and especially in his “Einleitung in die Drei Ersten Evangelien” (1905; 2d ed., 1911), argued, perhaps not quite conclusively, for an Aramaic original of our Gospel of Mark; and he and many others have discussed, in a somewhat desultory fashion, the question of possible written Semitic sources for portions of Matthew and Luke. To the majority of New Testament scholars it probably would seem superfluous, to many perhaps even ridiculous, to raise similar queries in regard to John, whether it be proposed to regard it as a formal translation, from beginning to end, or as “based on Semitic sources”—whatever this vague and unprofitable formula may mean. Since the time when the origin and authorship of the book first began to be discussed, its essentially Hellenistic character has rarely been questioned. It is generally taken for granted at the present day, even by those scholars who are most inclined to look for “translation Greek” in the New Testament. The reasons for this are obvious, and good as far as they go.

Despite the admirable “Licht vom Osten” of Adolf Deissmann and the more recent studies of Cumont, Bousset, Norden, and Reitzenstein, the student of the history of religions can still set his plough to much fruitful soil in the field of the papyri. Even the intensively cultivated domain of church history could be broadened and enriched by studies derived from such data in their application to problems of Christian institutional and constitutional development, of monasticism, and of the sociological aspects of the church's expansion. In another quarter, that of the persecutions, the papyri have helped to an understanding of the genre littéraire of the Acts of the Martyrs, and to a more accurate conception of the relations of Roman state and Christian church. This last we owe particularly to the finds of Libelli from the period of the Decian persecution.

In the January number of the Harvard Theological Review for this year I published a review of the recent “Life of Jesus of Nazareth,” by Rabbi Joseph Klausner and of a criticism of the volume by Doctor Kaminka of Vienna.

In a letter from Doctor Klausner he replies to some points in my criticism and restates his own position. It is proper, therefore, that this part of his letter should be put before the readers of the Review and Professor Wolfson has been kind enough to translate it for that purpose.

The textual condition of the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius is unfortunately very defective. The only existing manuscripts appear to be copies of the great Paris codex 469, and the beginning and end of this manuscript are now missing.

In this edition of The Secrets of Enoch in “Texte und Untersuchungen,” 44, 2, Professor Bonwetsch has provided a new translation of the Slavonic text, with an apparatus criticus of all known materials. He shows that there are two recensions of the text, of which the longer, known as A, is not an expansion of the shorter, and that the shorter, B, is an epitome of the original. Both these recensions are therefore derived from an original Slavonic translation of a lost Greek text, of which no trace remains.