he defends with great ardor in this essay, a thesis, which is accepted as proved by Professor Sayce, is to the effect that the vowel i(ai) is originally passive and the vowel u(au) originally active in the Semitic languages. And as it would seem that one of the strongest arguments which he could find in support of this contention would lie in the use of these vowels in the personal pronoun of the third person singular, it is all the more surprising that he should insist on appending the feminine ending of the noun to a form of the pronoun, which according to his own theory is feminine already by virtue of its vowel. This primitive form haiwatum consequently not only does not exist in Semitic, but is built up upon a false theory of the origin of the pronouns. Its existence in proto Indo-European is even more doubtful, if possible. His alva is clearly merely a graecizing of haiwath and its existence is inferred because it can be split up into al and Tó, a most remarkable demonstration! But since this is merely the feminine ending in Semitic which as we have seen has no place here, the argument rests solely on the identity of haiw (Munro's form!) and Old Persian hauv, from which al=n would be derived, an identification, which is to say the least very problematical, especially as haiw is a hypothetical form (see above) and hauv seems to be a demonstrative and not a personal pronoun.

Mr. Munro's argument for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is given in his "Samaritan Pentateuch", although he has furnished a few additional data in this "Essay". It is essentally the argument from archaisms, which was advanced by Keil a number of years ago. The great difficulty with it is our inadequate acquaintance with the essential facts. It may be that in early times the words for he and she were pronounced so much alike, viz. hu and hü, that they could be properly and as a matter of fact were written in the same way, viz. -this view has been ably advocated by König. And it may be that soon after the time of Moses the pronunciation of hü was modified to hî (written)—according to Mr. Munro, this change took place under the influence of the new Canaanite environment. If this is actually the case, the argument for the early date of the Pentateuch is undoubtedly a strong one. But unfortunately we are not in a position to affirm definitely the truth of either of these contentions and consequently cannot afford to make unguarded and unwarranted statements. Despite his great erudition, Mr. Munro unfortunately does not sufficiently distinguish between possibility, probability and proof and with the very best of intentions comes perilously near making the conservative view of the Pentateuch appear ridiculous.

OSWALD T. ALLIS.

Reden und Aufsätze. Von D. HERMANN GUNKEL. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. 1913. Pp. vii, 192. Mk. 4, 80, geb. Mk. 5.00.

Eleven essays are collected in this volume which is dedicated to the

Collegium Academicum of the University of Christiania in acknowledgment of the degree of Doctor of Theology conferred upon the author. Like everything that comes from Dr. Gunkel's pen, they are uniformly interesting and suggestive, some of them brilliant pieces of writing. All of them were published before in various periodicals such as the Deutsche Rundschau, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, Christliche Welt and other more technical journals. Dr. Gunkel's standpoint as a foremost exponent of the religionsgeschichtliche school is too well-known to need description here. It colors every page of this book. In the preface he seeks to correct the sense which has come to be widely attached to the term religionsgeschichtlich, as if it meant a method which dealt with the history of religions, whereas, he assures us, in its original intent it merely meant to emphasize the history of religion as an ideal development over against the excess of literary criticism, which had unduly forced the chief end of biblical science into the background. This note of protest against overdoing the critical side, especially in its analytical aspect, recurs in several of the essays. We are told that, while agreement in the main results has been attained, it ceases to exist, when an analysis is carried into the region of detail, the uncertainty increasing at each successive step. This is one of the points in which the school to which Gunkel belongs happens to coincide with the conservative opposition to the GrafWellhausen methods. That there are others will appear from the following brief survey of the main import of the eleven papers. The first is devoted to the memory of Bernhard Stade. It describes his eminence within the Wellhausen school, and characteristics as a scholar. It is pointed out that the interdependence along the whole line in his work between the view taken of the development of religious ideas and reconstructive literary criticism at times exposed his results and those of the Wellhausenians in general to reasoning in a circle. Stade's non-receptive attitude toward the recognition of extensive Babylonian and Egyptian influence is also remarked upon. Some of the "universally accepted" conclusions of the Wellhausen school are admitted to be on the point of supersedure, but this is coupled with the confident assertion that the basic structure will stand. The second paper deals with the Aims and Methods of the Exposition of the Old Testament. It takes a noble view of what the work of the Old Testament exegete at its best ought to be. The disconnectedness of the old method ought to give way to an organic attempt to penetrate beyond linguistic, textual, archaeological detail into the personality of the author. The exegete must, of course, be scholarly equipped, but his greatest requirement is that he shall be a creative or at least re-creative artist. These are golden words, but it is a pity that the whole procedure recommended is meant to stop short with the subjective personality of the biblical writers. For ascertaining through this the mind of the Spirit as auctor primarius Dr. Gunkel has no thought, for, as is once and again stated in these essays, the old theory of inspiration is hopelessly discredited. All that the ideal

exegete can hope to attain by his labors is a History of Biblical Religion not a Biblical Theology of the old-fashioned kind.

The third essay unfolds the principles underlying the author's article on Israelitish Literature in Die Kultur der Gegenwart. The ideal held up here is that of a Literaturgeschichte. It seems to us that the purely accidental view taken of the origin of the Biblical writings precludes not merely the attainment but even the projection of such an ideal. Such a history of literature is impossible not merely because of our ignorance in the most important matters, but also because of the limited material. A recognition of the factor of inspiration affords the only possibility of organic treatment. Dr. Gunkel has to content himself with the distinction between certain Literaturgattungen and the tracing of the history of the same, so far as that is possible.

In the next paper entitled Simson the theory that the Old Testament hero was originally a mythological figure, or Sun-God, is combatted. The stories are legendary in character and reflect the ancient hostility between Danites and Philistines.

The fifth contribution gives a popular exposition of the story of Ruth. It is held that the connection between Boaz and the Davidic family was not original to the narrative but subsequently introduced.

The sixth essay deals with the Psalms. A comparison with Babylonian and Egyptian Psalms yields the result that the production of Psalms in Israel antedates the exile. A comparison with the Psalms in the Apocrypha shows that there is no Maccabean element in the Psalter. The oldest Psalms are collective, not individual, for the Psalms ultimately derive from the cultus. None the less in the Psalms we possess the ego is very frequently individual not collective. But whereas the collective Psalm is pre-prophetic in origin, the individualizing spiritualizing Psalm (geistliche Psalmdichtung) stands under the influence of prophetism.

There follows a paper dealing with the Eschatology of the Psalmists. This too was learned from the prophets. But post-prophetic, we are warned, should not without more be confounded with post-exilic.

The two next essays deal with Egyptian parallels to the Old Testament, the eighth more in general, the ninth with special reference to the Egyptian Danklieder published in 1911 by Erman from memorial stones in the Theban city of graves. The similarity of the latter to certain Old Testament Psalms is pointed out, but the author is very reserved as to offering a theory for its explanation. A direct dependence on Egyptian models is not favored. It is held to be more likely that this type of songs was already known to the Orient in general from the period of 2000-1000 B.C., and so reached Israel through the mediation of the Canaänites. Whether the origin of the type was in Babylon and passed from there to Egypt is left an open question.

Paper ten deals with Jensen's "The Gilgamesch-Epic in the Literaure of the World". The phantastic, unscientific character of Jensen's comparisons is strikingly exhibited.

The concluding article deals with The Odes of Solomon. As in the previously published article in the ZNTW Gunkel here takes the view that the Odes are the work of a Jewish-Christian Gnostic about 150 A.D. Harnack's hypothesis of a composite origin, partly Jewish, partly Christian, is rejected. New translations of some of the Odes are given with several important conjectural readings. Two, defects in the Odes, from a Christian point of view, are emphasized: the consciousness of sin and of the need of deliverance from guilt is lacking, and the sacred history of the Old and the New Testament has almost entirely passed into oblivion. The singer of the Odes lives far from every thought of historical happenings in a world of spiritual concepts and transcendental processes. Hence the Church rightly cast off his work, "for the prophets and Jesus are more than the Odes of Solomon." Princeton.

GEERHARDUS Vos.

Kyrios Christos. Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Aufängen des Christenthums bis Irenaeus. Von D. WILHELM BOUSSET, Professor der Theologie an der Universität Göttingen. Göttingen Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. 1913. Pp. xxiv, 474.

A treatise on the term kúpos as applied to Jesus would seem to deal with a sufficiently specialized subject. But, as the sub-title of Dr. Bousset's work informs us, we receive in it no less than a History of Christological Faith from the Beginnings down to Irenaeus. And even this scarcely covers what the book actually offers, for in reality it approaches to being a sketch of the earliest history of Christian belief in general, including some aspects that are not technically Christological, although the author in the preface disavows this wider purpose on the ground that the time is not ripe as yet for describing the origin of Christianity in the milieu of the Hellenistic-Roman civilization. The value of the book-and it is great irrespective of one's agreement or disagreement with its conclusions-is due largely to this breadth of outlook proceeding from a point that by common consent was of central importance and of propelling force in the earliest development of Christianity, the view taken of and the relation sustained toward Christ as Lord. As might be expected Dr. Bousset writes as a consistent "religionsgeschichtler". He repudiates the distinction between Biblical Theology and History of Doctrine not merely, but is eager to obliterate the lines of demarcation between the Christian religion and the surrounding spheres of faith and practice in the midst of which it grew up. He further brings to the front more seriously than has been attempted by anybody before, at least in such a comprehensive way, the principle that the forms of religious belief to a large extent took their rise and shape from the cultus, in other words that doctrine grew out of worship, rather than the reverse, as is usually assumed to have been the case. If to this be added the fact, that the general principles just stated are applied on the basis of a thorough belief that Hellenistic syncretism (the mystery

religions, Hermeticism, early Gnosticism) most powerfully influenced the young Christian religion in several important aspects of its expanding life, and that thus for the first time the theory of the large indebtedness of Christianity to Hellenistic sources is here consistently worked out and placed in due correlation with the preceding historical development, enough will have been said to explain the uncommon interest attaching to the work under review. The book is bound to make for progress in the discussion of the themes it handles, first of all through bringing to greater clearness the implications and bearings of this most recent form of explaining the origin of many characteristic New Testament doctrines, and not less in the second place by rendering possible a mere intelligent criticism of a hypothesis which is fast becoming fashionable and in liberal circles will hold the ascendancy for some time to come.

In a history of Christology from the beginnings one not unnaturally looks for at least some discussion of the consciousness and teaching of Jesus in regard to Himself. But this beginning of the beginnings is deliberately slighted in Dr. Bousset's scheme of treatment. The belief of the early-Palestinian church with reference to Jesus forms the point of departure of the discussion and it is dealt with entirely as a given fact without any attempt to connect it with antecedent facts or convictions pertaining to the life-time of Jesus. To be sure this procedure is formally justified since in Bousset's opinion the Kúpos-title was first conferred upon Jesus after the church had passed over from its purely Palestinian to a Hellenistic environment, and therefore does not play a rôle either in the life of Jesus or in the earliest Apostolic belief. But on that very ground the first and second chapters dealing with the mother-church might have been omitted. And in a book which in other respects does not care to keep within the strict limits prescribed by the title, some digression at this all-important point might well have been permitted. A Christological history without some positive account of the life and mind of Him from whom the whole Christ-movement sprang, resembles a torso. Probably other than purely formal considerations have contributed to this. By scholars of the type of Bousset so much is declared unauthentic in the Gospels and put to the account of later dogmatizing that scarcely enough remains to reconstruct the original figure of the Saviour. Bousset, to be sure, continues to believe in the historicity of Jesus. But in the present work he does not use the Gospels to obtain information on that subject. They are simply treated as sources for the belief of those who as the oldest bearers of the tradition stand back of them, and in their later elements as sources of the subsequent dogmatic development. Even in regard to so fundamental a point as Jesus' own attitude towards the Messianic question, the author does not care to commit himself. There is so much Messianizing tendency in the Gospels that the problem how much of a nucleus there originally was for this later incrustation to attach itself into becomes difficult of