In return for contributions to aid in excavations at Oxyrhynchus in the 1920's Sir Flinders Petrie sent to Washington University, St. Louis, several hundred papyri, very fragmentary for the most part, and ranging in date from the second century B.C. to the fifth or sixth century A.D. Following the death of Professor Frank Debatin of that university who had done some preliminary work on the collection, permission was given me to publish it. Many of the pieces had never been cleaned and remained creased and covered with dirt, evidently in the condition in which they had been found. After the collection had been cleaned, photographed and examined the five fragments that make up the present text seemed to be by far the most interesting and the most important of the lot. Though no continuous text was provided, their religious content was apparent from such words as προϕήτης, ἱερόν, ἱερεύς and μυστηριασθῆναι.

At the Council of Nicaea all the bishops but two signed the creed and canons. This virtual unanimity must have been very gratifying to Constantine, and it represents no mean achievement in reconciliation on the emperor's part — for it is not what anyone would have expected after the dramatic events leading up to the calling of the Council. The creed appears to have been on every ground acceptable to Alexander of Alexandria and to Ossius of Cordova. If it was not, they had only themselves to blame, since they had been chiefly responsible for its form and had previously agreed, at a meeting of the Council's steering committee at Nicomedia, on the crucial word homoousios. It is not so certain that the creed was equally acceptable to the extreme anti-Arians, Marcellus of Ancyra or Eustathius of Antioch. Eustathius seems to have been ill content that the Nicene fathers had not had the courage of their convictions and had failed to confirm the decisions of the Council of Antioch held shortly before it; in his view they should have roundly condemned the rank Arianism of Eusebius of Caesarea and his two friends, Theodotus of Laodicea and Narcissus of Neronias. We may reasonably doubt whether any document that Eusebius was conscientiously able to sign would have been regarded as satisfactory by Eustathius. But neither Eustathius nor Marcellus would themselves have found difficulty with the content of the creed. And there is no reason to suppose that the nineteenth canon, regulating the terms for the admission of members of the congregation loyal to Paul of Samosata, represented any policy other than that which Eustathius would have been happy to implement. So far as his own position was concerned, he could sign both creed and canons with an untroubled conscience.

In Anglo-Saxon as in Christian history, many roads lead to Rome. This has been correctly and at times overemphasized in matters ranging from Augustine to Whitby, from numismatics to law, from banners to Bede. Indeed the Roman road has been so broad and so well marked with recorded miliaria that we may have missed the growth-ridden Germanic by-paths which were actually trod by the tribes in England. But surely the impact of culture on cult is as important in history as the reverse, and the terms in which the newly converted Anglo-Saxons interpreted the Christian religion were shaped by the tribal culture, impregnated, as it was, by the heathenism of the old religion. Gregory the Great's famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus, advising that pagan temples in England be used for the worship of the Christian God that the people “ad loca quae consuevit, familiarius concurrat,” and that the sacrificial animals of heathenism be now devoted to Christian festivals, agrees with the responsa of the same pope to Augustine concerning the choosing of local customs best suited to the conditions of the converted. In a way, this study is a scandalous footnote to that wise anthropological advice, with the intention of setting forth some of the similarities of the old and new religion which allowed a syncretic merging. Thus many features of the Conversion period which have been interpreted post eventum as Christian were undoubtedly seen with other—and familiar—overtones by the Woden-sprung rulers and their people.

That a new richesse of comparative material is offered by Walter Bauer's fifth edition of his celebrated Wörterbuch (Berlin, 1958) is exemplified by his article on αὔριον. He notes that Epictetus too rejects care περὶ τῆς αὔριον. Indeed a sentence in Epictetus I.9.8 (καὶ πόθεν ϕάγω, ϕησίν, μηδὲν ἔχων) is in one respect an obvious parallel to Matthew vi.25 (μὴ μεριμνᾶτε τῇ ψυχῇ ὑμῶν, τί ϕάγητε ἢ τί πίητε.). Bauer cites an interesting instance of a Pythagorean exhortation which, in a manner exactly opposite to the injunction of Matthew vi.34, advises one to be constantly thinking of the morrow: διδάσκει ἀεί τι τοῦ παρόντος εἰς τὸ μέλλον καταλιπεῖν, καὶ τῆς αὔριον ἐν τῇ σήμερον μνημονεύειν.