The Georgian Manuscripts of the Cambridge University Library, described below, might properly be called Georgian manuscript fragments. They are without exception individual leaves of different codices which have come into the possession of the Library at different times and from various sources. The date of the documents varies over a wide range, from the earliest period of Georgian literary activity down to the last century, and the type of scripts employed is equally varied.

The Slavonic version of Josephus’ History of the Jewish War, extant in some fifteen Russian MSS. of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was first brought to light in recent times by A. N. Popov, the discoverer of the Slavonic Book of Enoch, who in 1866 called attention to passages contained in this version, but unattested elsewhere, relating to John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Popov published the Slavonic text of parts of these passages. The Preface to Niese and Destinon's edition of the Greek text of the Jewish War (1894) contains a reference (p. xxii) to the existence of the version, but the text was then still inaccessible. For our further acquaintance with the Slavonic version we are chiefly indebted to the Esthonian scholar, Alexander Berendts of Dorpat.

One of the incidental, but, as it proved, important results of the Harvard Expedition to Mount Sinai in 1927 was the rediscovery of the Sinaitic inscriptions on Serabit el-Khadim, a desolate mountain in the interior of the peninsula, rendered famous by the ruins of a temple of the Egyptian goddess Hathor and by many exhausted turquoise mines.

Ferdinand Kattenbusch has said: “I am more convinced than most that in the investigation of the beginnings of Christianity a great many problems are likely to prove insoluble. But we have no right to acquiesce in that conclusion before all means have been exhausted, all possible combinations tried.” Following this suggestion I would here present some observations on Peter's Denial, and would propose an hypothesis.

The district which constituted the field of our investigation is situated on the western slope of central Sinai facing the Gulf of Suez. The remains of ancient mine-workings are divided into two groups of unequal importance: the northern group, of which the numerous openings lie north and south of the upper course of Wadi Baba, and to which belong the mines of the plateau of Serabit, and the southern group, confined to the turquoise galleries of Maghara. The two groups are included in a rectangle which measures about 35 kilometers from east to west and 25 from north to south.

These words in criticism of Fra Lippo's vivid and realistic painting of sacred subjects admirably typify the attitude of theology to art. In the ages when the masses were still unable to read, the church took advantage of the work of the painter to impart instruction in the Bible stories. But after all, mere enlightenment is comparatively useless, sometimes even dangerous. It is always inferior to devotion. As long as the masses could be inspired by art to perform more fully their religious duties, so long was art rendering to the church the services that were its due. If the actual facts, even as recorded in the Scriptures, stood in the way of the theological object, they had to be neglected, obscured, or denied. If by a false depiction religious feeling were aroused, there could be no doubt as to the value of such depiction.

Among the innumerable fragments and scraps of manuscripts which have percolated through to Western Europe from the renowned Rümpelkammer at Cairo, there have been found not a few palimpsest leaves bearing the marks of other milieus and having traced upon them characters in tongues other than Hebrew. Chance brought the writer on the trail of one such vagrant parchment during a visit to Oxford in the summer of 1921; an investigation of the hand-list of Georgian MSS. at the Bodleian Library showed that this institution possessed a “fragment of Jeremiah in capitals.” As soon as I glanced at it, I realized that a perplexing puzzle had been solved. In 1902 Professor P. K. Kokovtsov of the University of St. Petersburg published a facsimile and collation of the Hebrew text on a Hebrew-Georgian parchment palimpsest leaf, a photograph of which had been sent anonymously to Professor N. Ya. Marr. The Hebrew text proved to be a portion of the Jerusalem Talmud; from the photograph it was difficult to tell which was the original writing. The late Sir A. E. Cowley kindly informed me that the fragment had been acquired in 1894 along with several others from Rabbi S. Wertheimer in Jerusalem, and that its provenance from the Genizah collection was almost certain. Professor F. C. Conybeare had already identified the Georgian text as a fragment of Jeremiah, and presumably had at the same time sent the photograph to Professor Marr, the covering letter probably having been lost.

Under the Roman empire cremation went out of fashion and burial gained in popularity as the usual means of disposing of the dead. The cause of this change has been much discussed, and the explanation has often been given that it was due to religious influences and to a shift in ideas of the hereafter. The rising influence of Christianity has sometimes been suggested as a cause, but chronology and the distribution of the phenomena are fatal to that supposition. More recently an alternative has been sought in the growth of the mystery religions. If this could be established, it would form a new and important criterion for the division of the religious history of the empire into periods. Clearly the question deserves full consideration. For that and for many other reasons a full collection and sifting of the evidence for funerary customs throughout the Roman world in the first three centuries of our era is greatly to be desired. This paper does not pretend to fill such a need, and the archaeological data on which it is based are in the main drawn from Rome; the conclusions which can be drawn from these data are limited, but they seem to possess some degree of certainty and they have their bearing on the general nature of the mystery religions.

On one of the relatively flat projections of the plateau which forms the top of the mountain of Serabit el-Khadim, three days’ journey by camel from the nearest point of the coast into the interior of the peninsula of Sinai, stand the ruins of the Temple of Hathor. Near it are turquoise mines exploited by the Egyptians from the third to the eighteenth dynasties, and probably also worked intermittently by the local tribes. But the mines were not the raison d'être of the temple, although the goddess of the temple was certainly worshipped by the miners. In the Wadi Maghara also there are Egyptian turquoise mines, and until they were either destroyed or taken away to museums there were inscriptions, carved to record Egyptian expeditions to them. But there is no temple at Maghara.

In a joint article on the Koridethi Gospels, published by K. Lake and the writer some years since, attention was called to the eclectic character of the Greek alphabet employed in the Koridethi codex, and emphasis laid on the mechanical and unnatural ductus of the writing. I there advanced the hypothesis that these peculiarities, when taken in connection with certain others, tended to show that the scribe was not a Hellene by birth, but probably a foreigner, and that the presence of a Coptic word in one of the adscriptions would show that the MS. was written in an area not too far removed from Egypt. Sinai was suggested as the possible place of origin. My arguments were attacked by J. de Zwaan and, although on certain fundamental points I felt obliged to differ with his interpretation, I could at the time adduce no further data in support of my contentions.

The Armenian Vita here translated, of Marutha, a Syrian bishop of the fifth century, has an interest because of Marutha's activity as mediator between the Byzantine emperors, Arcadius and Theodosius II, and the Sassanian king Yezdegerd I.

The ancient sources for the life of Marutha are scanty nor does the biography here translated add greatly to our knowledge of him. From the Greek and Nestorian sources it is known that he was present at the important councils of the church in the last decades of the fourth century; was sent to the court of Persia, probably at least twice, once on the accession of Yezdegerd in 399 A.D. and again about 408 A.D., when Theodosius II became emperor of the eastern Romans; and that he was present at the Council of Seleucia in 410 A.D.

The death of Dr. Henry St. John Thackeray in June 1929 was a great grief to his many friends on both sides of the Atlantic. As a man and as a scholar he had rare and admirable qualities, and it is typical of him both as a man and as a scholar that when he undertook to make a translation of Josephus, of which four volumes have already appeared in the Loeb Classical Library, he first prepared a special lexicon for his own guidance, with no thought of printing it. The wise liberality of the Alexander Kohut Memorial Publication Fund, to which the work was introduced by Professor Cadbury, has now made possible the present publication, which has a form worthy of its contents. The first fascicule was seen through the press by its author, and arrangements have been made for the completion of the enterprise. It is of uncommon excellence.

For some time past I have been impressed with the importance of the so-called gnostic gems, more accurately called syncretistic amulets, as an aid to the study of Greek magical papyri, and have examined them wherever I could find them. During the summer of 1931 I was permitted to study the large collection in the British Museum, a favor for which I am indebted to the courtesy of Dr. George F. Hill, the Director, and Mr. Sidney Smith, the Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Mr. Smith and his associates in the Department gave me every facility for a minute examination of the stones and allowed me to have casts made from several of them. I have in preparation a group of studies of some amulets in the British Museum and others in various American collections, which I hope to publish with illustrations and interpretations. A preliminary account of two of the British Museum specimens seems to fall within the province of this Review.

The present article was begun with the limited purpose of making known the new inscriptions discovered by the Harvard-Catholic University Joint Expedition to Serabit in the spring of 1930. In the course of this study, I perceived that some signs doubtful in the inscriptions already published were made clear by the new slabs, and I decided to go over the entire field again.

Do the majority of the Greek lectionaries of the gospels agree with one another so consistently that it is possible to speak of their text as “the lectionary text”? It has generally been assumed that the text of lectionaries does not merit serious attention, and that even if they should agree in text, the quality of that text would not justify its study. But the discussion of the quality and significance of this text may reasonably be postponed until its existence has been established.

Up to this time there have appeared three notices of the great treasure of biblical papyri in the possession of Mr. A. Chester Beatty — the first by Sir Frederic Kenyon in the London Times (November 19, 1931), the second by the same writer in Gnomon (January 1932, pp. 46–49), the third by Professor Carl Schmidt in the Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft. I have seen the last only in an undated offprint which reached America about March 15; the communication was sent to the printer in December 1931. Since a small part of the now famous find has come into the possession of the University of Michigan, it seems desirable to offer more precise information about these pieces.

In the excursus on the ‘Ecclesiastical Text,’ appended to the study of the Caesarean Text of Mark, it was pointed out that four MSS., 1169, 1173, 1204, and 1385, form a closely related group. A visit to Sinai and Patmos this year has made it possible to collate the gospel of Mark in all four codices and to photograph the three at Patmos. The relation between the three Patmos MSS. now reveals itself as much closer than was supposed, but the Sinai MS. has evidently been copied from two archetypes.