It is by no means fortuitous that our contemporary world is deeply occupied with the problem of time. The literature which has gathered about this problem is not only abundant but also notable for the ways in which various disciplines have sought to wrestle with it. The natural scientist, the philosopher, the theologian, the historian, the sociologist, the poet, and the writer of fiction and drama have all engaged in a common encounter with the mystery of this basic givenness of our human existence. Yet, while it is true that periods like our own incite reflection on time's meaning, the problem plays a role in the history of human thought quite beyond that of the pressures and hazards of eras of social crisis.

Among the sensational Oxyrhynchus finds from the turn of the twentieth century were several mutilated papyri which contained non-canonical sayings of Jesus. Because of the fragmentary nature of much of this new material, scholarly reconstructions often were necessary to fill the lacunae and give sense to the larger fragments. In many cases, there was no known parallel material by which such restorations could be guided.

Hans Lewy's posthumous book, the fruit of many years' devoted study, should arouse fresh interest in one of the most tantalizingly obscure of ancient Greek texts. The Chaldaean Oracles were a divine revelation in bad hexameter verse; its authors were believed to be gods (speaking through the lips of entranced mediums?), but it was given to the world, as Lobeck guessed and Bidez finally proved, by one “Julianus the theurgist,” who lived under Marcus Aurelius. It is of serious concern to historians of religion, as the last important Sacred Book of pagan antiquity, and to historians of ideas, as one of the major influences which shaped the later development of Neoplatonism from Porphyry to Psellus. Unfortunately it has come down to us only in fragments.

I am not the first to detect in recent scholarship dealing with the “Transcendental” period of New England a tendency toward vindicating, or at least toward putting in a good word for, the hitherto regularly berated opponents of Emerson and Theodore Parker. Because in the 1830's and 1840's and well into the 1850's the phalanx of those most outspoken in resistance were the Unitarian clergy, the custom has been for chroniclers of the literary and theological radicalism to heap derision upon the men who occupied established pulpits in the neighborhood of Boston and who spoke for the substantial portions of the community.