ear and would revise thereby the New Testament in the most radical manner, claiming a Latin original for Mark's Gospel and regarding the present accepted New Testament text as the result of a systematic corruption by the hierarchy in a semi-rationalistic sense. Whatever may be the final verdict of criticism, it seems certain that the deeper study of the Old Latin texts is both imperative and hopeful. Hardly less, nay, even more important than Grenfell and Hunt's unearthing of New Testament texts was their discovery (1896) of seven 'Logia' or Sayings of the Jesus, copied in the 3d century and referred directly to the Jesus by the recurring formula: "The Jesus says" (ó 'Inoovs λéyet), seeming to indicate high antiquity. Several such were already known from extra-canonical sources; but the newest seemed to form part of a handsome volume and breathed a more mystical speculative spirit than prevails in the Canonic Gospels. In 1903, Grenfell and Hunt, on returning to Oxyrhynchus, exhumed five more such ancient Oracles (42 lines), written on the back of a list of land-surveys not later than 300 A.D., oracles of highly Christian but not quite canonic tone, veering still more from the Synoptics toward the mystical Fourth Gospel. In collected form these Logia' seemed to be not later and most probably much earlier than 140, in fact, quite as primitive as any Gospel, if not indeed presenting the very earliest known form in which "The (Doctrine) concerning the Jesus" (тà TEрì TOÙ 'Inood) was reduced to writing.

This momentous find has been supplemented in various directions. It had long been known that Tatian, the Syrian rhetorician and friend of Justin Martyr, had produced about the year 170 (180?) a 'Diatessaron,' a kind of Gospel Harmony, which in spite of criticism and in spite of the virtual absence of the human in its Jesus, almost displaced the Canonics in the Syrian Church (especially at Edessa) and was laid by Ephraem Syrus at the base of his Gospel Commentary (4th century), though itself displaced in the 5th century by the Peshitta version of the Edessan Bishop Rabbula (411-35). But Tatian's 'Diatessaron' was known only from one incomplete manuscript of an Arabic version (14th century), a Latin version (Fuldensis, 6th century), and the Commentary of Ephraem till 1888, when Ciasca published, with Latin translation, a far better Arabic text (11th century) translated from Syriac in the 9th century, which omitted the last 12 verses of Mark as well as the Lucan incidents of the bloody sweat and prayer on the cross (xxii, 43-44, xxiii, 34). The Diatessaron,' by its early testimony to a Fourfold Tradition, has brought the orthodox much satisfaction not untempered with keen regret that in stressing the divinity it has slighted the humanity of the Saviour. Far more important the discovery, announced 1875 by Bishop Philotheus Bryennios, in the library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in the Phanar of Constantinople, of a parchment volume (copied and dated 11 June 1056, by

*The Syrian Theodoret of Antioch, bishop of Cyrrhus, wrote in 423, referring to the 'Diatessaron': "I have found more than 200 such books highly esteemed by the churches in our part of the world. These I have collected and destroyed, every one, and substituted the Gospels of the Four Evangelists."

the "notary and sinner," Leon) of 120 leaves, containing besides the so-called Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians and other less interesting matter, 10 priceless pages written with the Teaching' (Didache), a long-lost document of two parts, often mentioned in early Christian literature, composed probably before 100 and containing matter far more primitive. Published in 1883, after a strangely accurate forecast by Adam Krawutzcky, 1882, it startled all Christendom with its voice, silent for 16 centuries. The earliest manual of Christian theory and practice, it is full of parallels to the teaching of the New Testament, agreeing strikingly in phraseology with the Gospels, but with hardly the slightest allusion to the familiar narrative element. Of course, it has been a storm-centre of discussion, but its witness remains unimpeached and unequivocal.

Scarcely less significant are the 64 leaves of Syriac discovered and published (1909) as Odes and Psalms of Solomon,' by J. Rendel Harris. Of these the Psalms are a Pharisaic collection (? 50 B.C.), long known in another form, but the Odes, unknown for 1,700 years, are Christian, at least in their recension, and recall the Palestinian soul of the 1st century in its deeper mystical musings, its higher poetic flights, and its wider spiritual visions, with frequent suggestion of the Fourth Gospel, as the Teaching' suggests the Synoptics. As a parallel to the New Testament these Odes are invaluable, though like the Didachè, they know little or nothing at all of the evangelic story. A dense cloud of books, pamphlets and articles, nearly 200 in number, has gathered and still gathers around this "Hymn-Book."

Somewhat similar in spirit, though far more artificial and less profound, is the 'Shepherd of Hermas, a vade mecum of 2d and 3d century Christians, a product of the Roman soul, known only as cited or translated till 1856, when Tischendorf discovered one-fourth of it in a manuscript of the 4th century, on Sinai, and 1888, when S. Lambros found the other 12 leaves, of the 3d century. But, in 1900, seven more leaves were published, and in 1907 Kirsopp Lake published Athos Leaves, etc.,' facsimiles of the Hermas-fragments found on Mount Athos, as well as the 'Codex Sinaiticus' in 1911. Taylor has translated all and striven hard to show that this Pastor (dating from near 100) is saturated with covert allusions to the New Testament and with its phraseology disguised,- all of which the natural eye fails wholly to discern and especially any reference to the Synoptic story.

Other early Christian documents have been unearthed, too numerous to mention, such as the Gospel of Peter,' a 'Revelation of Peter,' also various Acts, as of Peter, John and Paul (secured at Akhmim by Reinhardt, 1896), the Book of Revelation,' ascribed to Bartholomew, and various others,— all evidently products of religious fancy. Some were exceedingly popular in their day, like a modern "best seller," as also a noted book of devotion, The Ring of Pope Xystus,' written not later than 150, but first translated into English and edited, in 1910, by F. C. Conybeare.

Also certain long-lost works of the Fathers have come lately to light, as in 1904 the

'Apostolic Preaching' of Irenæus, notable for establishing New Testament incidents from Old Testament prophecies; also 37 passages from an unsuspected treatise of Origen on Revelation were found 1911 in the Meteoron Monastery in north Greece. Far richer, however, the wealth exhumed of Christian Sermons (250-600), bearing witness in general to a fervid imagination directed with rhetorical skill, to a highly mechanical and extravagant orthodoxy, and much more to an all-pervading tendency to symbolic interpretation* of Scripture stories, -a very clear indication of the atmosphere in which these were born. Deficient as they were in knowledge, the preachers of old do not yield in mental power to their successors of to-day. Numberless Amulets (bearing Gospel versions like beads, with prayers for healing) show that paganism and magic, especially in the use of the "Name" had departed not wholly from the first Christian centuries and returned powerfully in the later. Much of the phraseology of petition is dignified and impressive, eloquent with invocations still heard in Church service.

The great hymn of Clement of Alexandria, long accounted the oldest of Christian songs, consisting almost wholly of a succession of poetic epithets of the Jesus, is now at last rivalled in antiquity by one similarly discovered at Oxyrhynchus. Almost as old is the famous Syriac Hymn of the Soul,' quite extraordinary in its sustained symbolism and imagery. Complete Coptic Psalters (6th or 7th century) have been recently uncovered. These ancient hymns disclose a strong movement toward Mariolatry, as the devotee mused on the mystery of the Virgin birth. Many Christian letters recently deciphered give welcome and intimate glimpses at the early disciples; along with which are others pagan, but so nearly like the Christian in language and spirit as to be scarcely distinguishable. One gets the impression that these souls were Christian because they were noble, rather than noble because they were Christian. In the descent toward the 7th century the early simplicity degenerates into mock modesty and humbleness. Christian epitaphs, found in great numbers, are strangely enough often hard to discriminate from the pagan, though in general sounding a clearer note of hope. Some have established model forms in use even to this day. Least attractive of all such religious relics are the 'Libelli, certificates of Christianity disclaimed, of which Krebs detected the first (1893) in the British Museum, Grenfell and Hunt the fourth in 1904, dating from the Decian persecution (ca. 250), and Meyer published 19 others (1911); still later the number has risen to about 30, mostly from Theadelphia. It remains possible that such disclaimers may have proceeded from sincere pagans falsely reported as Christians. It is remarkable that the persecuting emperors, Trajan (112), Aurelius (176), Septimus Severus (202), Decius (250), were among the noblest that adorned the Roman throne; they regarded the new religion as anti-patriotic.

While Egypt has yielded papyri, it is Asia Minor, and particularly Phrygia, that has most enriched the fund of inscriptions. Palestine

*Often far-fetched, as when Athanasius identifies the laborers (Matt. xx, 1-16) with the long series of Scripture worthies from Moses to the Apostles.

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might indeed have been expected to speak most eloquently of early Christianity; but nay; though 11 cities have been excavated and called to witness, they are dumb; the decipherments of Dalman, Schmidt, and others do not hark back beyond the 4th century. The greatest single interpreter of Græco-Roman life is Pompeii, but its testimony is too early to illuminate Protochristianity. It is the stupendous excavations at Rome that shed light upon the 1st century, whence dates the earliest Christian inscription (72) of the oldest Catacombs (of Domitilla, Priscilla, Commodilla, (crypt) Lucina) while the majority are of the 4th century and the latest from the time of Alaric (410). The output of Catacomb-inscriptions has been enormous in number (15,000 of De Rossi alone) rather than significant or instructive. The temper of the people is revealed as peaceful, trustful, hopeful, their religion as centred in the worship of Christ as God (under form of a beautiful shepherd youth) and as abounding in symbols, their morality as pure, their ritual as simple, their art as classic and excellent. Connections with the New Testa ment or Palestine, if any at all, seem very

remote.

As yet the papyri bear no clear witness to Quirinius as governor of Syria before 6 A.D., but they have yielded decisive information touching the Roman census (Luke ii, 3), from which U. Wilcken has shown (Hermes, 1893) that the regular registration fell on each 14th year from 20 A.D., and possibly from 6 A.D., or even 8 B.C. The enrolment was by households, and naturally all members of a family were expected to be at home at the taking. An order to this effect, in No. 408 of the Greek Papyri in the British Museum, reads thus (translations of the supplied portions of the mutilated text being inclosed in brackets, and the initials of the lines capitalized): "G(aius Vibiu) s Maximus (pref) ec (t) (Of) Egypt (says) Because of the (im) min (ent census by) house (holds) Necessary (it is for all tha)t any time for a (ny) rea (son have departed from their own) Nomes to be no (tifi)ed to r(etu) Rn unto their ow (n he) arth stones tha(t) Also the accustomed (dis) pensation of the en) Rolment they may fulfil and to the farmland be (lon)ing to them may firmly adher (e)." This edict recalls to their own present homes the peasants that have gone out (ExoTâσ). In spite of learned attempts to wrest its meaning into the exact opposite, it gives not the slightest hint of going to "ancestral abodes" (Luke ii, 4),— as if a Kansas farmer should return to Vermont to register!

In Egypt also the symbolism of the Good Shepherd appears, the ancient burial rites were christianized and preserved, the figure and functions of Osiris are supplanted by similar ones of the Saviour, the two being sometimes indistinguishable, and Isis nursing Horus is transformed into the Madonna with the Child. The venerable swastika, welfare symbol of the Age of Bronze, is everywhere sanctified, and even Anubis and Apuat adorn the skirts of a Christian burial-robe. So tenacious of life were the mythologic motifs, and so they have remained. If one may trust the inscriptions, it was in Asia Minor, and mainly in Phrygia, that Christianity took its firmest and widest

hold. A region largely inhabited by Jews, many of them wealthy and prominent, descendants (says the Talmud) of the Ten Lost Tribes, 2,000 having been imported from Babylon by Antiochus Magnus (ca. 200 B.C.), who had become in large measure paganized and so were open to the universalism of the Gospel. Here, too, flourished the mystery-cults of Atys, Adonis and others, whose deep imprints on New Testament phraseology as well as ecclesiastic dogma and ritual are daily becoming more visible. This region has been the favorite haunt of excavators, conspicuous among whom, at least for zeal and production, is Sir William M. Ramsay, whose intense pursuits led him to the famous South Galatian Theory in answer to the puzzling query, Who were Paul's "foolish Galatians"?

a theory zealously advocated by archæologists and as earnestly rejected by linguists in favor of the North Galatian Theory. In northern Syria, also, numerous cities have been exhumed, as well as the extensive Christian cemeteries of Salona, the ancient Adriatic port of Dalmatia, but their revelations are more important in artistic and sociologic than in biblical bearings. Great interest has attached to explorations, notably the Austrian (18971913), at Ephesus, especially because of the uproar narrated in Acts. The title there (xix, 35) given to the city, "temple-warden of... Artemis» (VεwKÓPOV Αρτέμιδος),

is confirmed by a dedication exhumed, and Dr. Hicks (half-supported by Ramsay) fancies he finds the Demetrius of Acts xix, 24 at the head of Ephesian magistrates; an official inscription speaks of Julius Cæsar as "God made manifest saviour of human life"; a Christian tablet tells of a "deceiving image of the demon Artemis" and of a "God that banishes idols," where the identification of "demon" with heathen god sheds light on the Gospel "demons"; neither is it strange, in a city given to the worship of the "Great Mother" and the chaste Artemis, that many inscriptions attest an early reverence for the Virgin Mary.

Touching the moot question, Was any altar at Athens inscribed "To an Unknown God"? answered negatively by E. Norden in 'Agnostos Theos (1913), Deissmann has published (1911) a picture of an altar uncovered (1909) in Pergamon, "To Gods Unk[nown],"* where the added "s" makes a difference; but endless explorations at Athens have discovered nothing Christian of importance. At Delphi, however, a fragment (found 1908), inscribed with a letter of the Emperor Claudius, dates the Achaian proconsulship of Gallio from the summer of 51; Paul then would seem to have left Corinth the autumn of 51 and to have reached it early in 50 (Acts xviii, 11, 12): an important synchronism, throwing back the beginning of his mission almost to the received date of the pentecostal wonder. Remembering that Paul did not inaugurate the Gentile mission, but found it in full flood and was upborne by its current (Bousset, 'Kyrios Christos, p. 93), one sees that this mission dates practically from the first dawn of Christianity.

* The Greek is coay. This has been completed by Hepding into ȧy[vwoTois], uncertainly, as he admits (1910).

At Antioch (in Syria) some well-diggers exhumed (1910) a silver chalice or communion bowl of rude workmanship but covered with a silver sheet on which amid exquisite grapevine decorations are wrought "portraitfigures of Christ and 10 Apostles, said to be of exceeding excellence. Pious imagination has dated this sheet between 57 and 87 and has even thought to recognize in the central figure a genuine portrait of the head of Christ. From numberless other excavated cities various glints are cast upon the New Testament and Protochristianity, as when "life" and "light" are found on the door-post of Artemis' temple at Sardis, or at Assos an inscription of the soldiers' sacrament to Caligula (37): "We swear by the Saviour and God, Cæsar Augustus, and by the Pure Virgin," i.e., Athena Polias (Cityguard), to whom the temple was built. Very interesting and important are the revelations of the life and soul of the empire, which make plain that former notions of its depravity were gross exaggerations. Many centuries of war and conquest had indeed hardened the Roman in his native cruelty and bloody-mindedness,- much less time has sufficed in other cases, and licentious self-indulgence flourished then perhaps even than now in the ruling and predatory classes; but the heart of the people was still sound, the homely virtues were still prized and honored and cultivated, and public benefactors were not less numerous or generous than to-day. Civic spirit and social charity were indeed at their height, and almost a frenzy of philanthropy seemed to possess the empire under the Antonines, when philosophy sat upon the throne. Under a slight scarcity of provisions, in time of great national danger and endeavor, profiteering has run amuck among us, prices have doubled or even tripled, and ships offered earlier for sale at $65,000 and $60,000 have been patriotically sold to the government for $650,000 and $800,000. Compare herewith the Ephesian public inscription in honor of three wealthy men who had sold their stores of wheat at cost during a famine. Undoubtedly the Græco-Roman consciousness furnished a soil not unfit for the sowing of the Gospel.*

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Linguistically, it has come clearly to light that the language of the New Testament was not, as so long imagined, a more or less sacred tongue or dialect, but was the all-prevalent Kainé, the every-day speech of the people, not untinctured with the mystic phraseology of the mystery-cults, and soaring at times into solemn sublimity on the wings of a missionary spirit of religious zeal. The net result of these exhumations, which future researches are sure to enlarge and confirm, putting a quietus on all rationalistic attempts to derive Christianity from "The Carpenter of Nazareth," has been to delocalize and depersonalize our conception of the origin and early progress of the Christian movement. In the words of Professor Gurlitt, "The rapid spread of Christianity, hitherto an insoluble riddle, receives a startlingly simple explanation, and indeed the whole speech of the New Testament becomes

At this point epigraphy weighs down the scale of Pliny the Younger against Tacitus, Juvenal, Martial. Petronius, Consult Dill, 'Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aure lius,' written with equal fulness of learning, and sympathy.