PAUL APART FROM HIS ENVIRONMENT

Few English religionists command larger and more respectful American audiences than T. R. Glover, public orator in Cambridge University. His reading constituency is even larger, and there is no discounting his literary ability. As literature, Dr. Glover's latest book on Paul1 would rank high. Some of its materials were first delivered in lecture form to American student audiences; but the lecture-room atmosphere is absent from the finished product. The author has succeeded well in producing a book that people will enjoy reading. Vigor of style, originality of expres sion, catholicity of thought are pre-eminently qualities of this production.

A feature of the work that students will particularly appreciate is Dr. Glover's complete at-homeness with Greek and Latin literature. His paragraphs are packed with literary allusions that suggest pertinent historical parallels or shed direct illumination from the immediate life of the times. In order to emphasize the miscellaneous and disorderly character of the swarms of Jews who came to Jerusalem the author recalls a statement of Jerome concerning the Holy City of his day, the pilgrim census reported by Josephus, the unbelievable enumeration of the army of Xerxes, and the credulousness of the Jew, Apella. All these allusions, together with references to Mark, Luke, and Acts, occur within the narrow limits of a half-page paragraph. This wealth of literary reference is typical rather than exceptional in the work as a whole.

To be appreciated to the full, the specific character of Dr. Glover's book should be held in view. It is not strictly a biography of Paul; nor is it merely a character sketch of the apostle. The author himself defines it as portraiture "the picturization of the man's mind and nature." A fresh and vivid portrait of Paul, the man, is here presented. He is shown as an impressionable, temperamental genius with yet a goodly supply of sound common sense. At some points the portrait is overdone, and Paul is depicted in proportions too heroic, "A Garibaldi in adventure and a Socrates in thought." Paul may have been the former. He was not the latter.

The serious student realizes his first disappointment when the author grapples with debated problems relative to Paul's indebtedness to environmental influences. In general Dr. Glover is a staunch defender of Pauline originality. He is sure that the apostle's debt to Judaism, even, has been much overestimated-as if Paul could divest himself of his na

1 Paul of Tarsus. By T. R. Glover. New York: Doran, 1925. 256 pages. $2.00.

tive Jewish heritage! In this connection the author shows himself distinctly unsympathetic with the modern vindication of Pharisaism by liberal scholars, Jewish and Christian. As for apocalypticism, Dr. Glover is certain it has received far more attention than it deserves, though he admits that the apostle's early preaching "did contain a reference (!) to the return of Jesus." It is easily possible to see in Dr. Glover's own reaction to Jewish eschatology an excellent modern illustration of the way a cultured Greek felt about Paul's preaching of the resurrection.

On the Gentile side the author allows vaguely for the influence of Hellenistic surroundings in leading Paul to his vocation. But this is as far as he will go. To be sure, Paul knew the Stoic vocabulary, but he was uninfluenced either by Stoic ideas or ideals. For his Kyrios concept he went to the Septuagint, but not to contemporary cults. Least of all would Dr. Glover admit any significant Pauline relationships with the mystery religions. On this point he assumes the familiar apologetic position that pagan religion was significant in preparing the world for Christianity, but not in preparing Paul to work in his world.

The interpretation of Paul presented by Dr. Glover can scarcely be considered critical or scientific. It is too subjective for that. The author is frank to state his conviction that only those who have experienced a certain radical type of religious experience, the conversion of evangelical Protestantism, are equipped to interpret Paul. By this criterion Martin Luther and John Wesley are singled out as pre-eminently trustworthy interpreters of the first-century apostle, and for a knowledge of his gentile environment Moody's Heathen Heart is recommended as on a par with the researches of Reitzenstein!

Paul of Tarsus is certain to be widely read and favorably received throughout the English-speaking world. It has popular qualities that will commend it to the general public. But the historical student who is interested to see Paul actually at work in the Graeco-Roman world of the first century will be disappointed; and his regret will be accentuated because of Dr. Glover's very evident mastery of ancient sources and his wide familiarity with modern literature.

"The hardest of all periods in church history to recover and to understand is that short interval . . . . that lies between the crucifixion and Paul's journey to Damascus." So declares Dr. Glover, and with real point. To reconstruct the social experience of the primitive Christian community in Jerusalem during these significant years is the endeavor of Father Knox in the opening chapter of his book on Paul. It cannot be

"St. Paul and the Church of Jerusalem. By Rev. Wilfred L. Knox. Cambridge: University Press, 1925. 396 pages. $1.85.

affirmed that the task is accomplished with success. The author's treatment of his important theme is brief and conventional and provides an altogether inadequate background for a study of the Jewish-Christian relationships of the apostle.

In general the author's account of Paul's Jerusalem connections is vitiated by his sweeping assumption of the complete credibility of Acts. While differing from Sir William Ramsay in his evaluation of the Bezan text, Father Knox agrees with him in ranking Acts as the trustworthy work of a first-rate historian. Accordingly he reproduces with confidence the narratives of Acts, even disregarding express statements to the contrary by Paul himself. The result is an incredible confusion in the sequence of historical developments.

Here and there in his perusal of these pages the reader is stimulated by the discovery of some novel theory advanced by the author. The leadership of James in the Jerusalem community is accounted for in the first instance, not by the involuntary scattering of the apostolic leaders during the persecution of Herod Agrippa I, but by an earlier and voluntary dispersion of the group in missionary endeavor. According to Father Knox the apostles left the city of Jerusalem two by two in order to supervise the work of the Hellenists. Later the summons to Paul to assist Barnabas in Antioch was due, not to immediate local needs, but to the official precedent which demanded that a new community be organized by two persons of apostolic rank. Such formal and mechanical suppositions, while they fit neatly into the viewpoint of Acts, are unconvincing historically and cannot be substantiated.

In a work dealing with Paul and the Jerusalem church one would not anticipate an extended consideration of Hellenistic influences, surely. Consistency of viewpoint on this question, however, might be expected. Even this is not found in the book at hand. On one page Paul is pronounced an out-and-out Palestinian Hebraist, whose parents moved to Jerusalem while young Saul was a mere infant. Over the page he is admitted to be a Hellenist whose training gave him an enthusiasm for the gentile mission, a mastery of propaganda method, and a knowledge of Greek literature. The author's treatment of the genetic problem as a whole is narrowly theological and literary, rather than vital and social. His general conclusion seems to be that apparent borrowings from gentile religions were either original growths in the Christian movement or straightforward developments from Judaism.

The title of this book is likely to mislead. It arouses the reader to expect a fundamental consideration of Paul's Jewish-Christian relationships

and of their significance for the development of nascent Christianity. This expectation is not fulfilled. From the pages of Father Knox one gets a very slight impression of the nature of Paul's initial contacts with the Hellenists of Jerusalem, and of his reaction to those contacts. The religious values championed so persistently by the Judaizers are ignored, and Paul's great fight for the universalizing of Christianity receives but slight attention. The ramifications of that struggle in Corinth and Rome itself are unnoticed, and there is no suggestion of how Paul's own religion developed in the stress of the conflict. In fact the book is not a study of Paul in relation to the primitive Christian community, but merely a narrative of the external events of his career up to the time of his last visit to Jerusalem. As such a narrative, moreover, it is wholly pointless and unfinished. “After duly performing the ritual prescribed for the occasion, Paul and his four Jewish companions entered the temple." Thus the story ends. But the reader is inclined to ask, "Well, what of it?"

HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

BOOKS RECEIVED

[The more important books in the list will be reviewed at length.]

HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

GRESSMANN, HUGO. Die hellenistische Gestirnreligion. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1925. 31 pages; 4 plates. M. 1.80.

The author surveys concisely and in masterly fashion the relation between Babylonia and Greece in the realm of astral religion. He shows that the debt was not wholly on the side of the Greeks, although the Babylonian influence was predominant.

KOLDEWEY, ROBERT. Das wiedererstehende Babylon. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1925. x+334 pages. M. 25.

This fourth edition records the results of the last season of excavations in ancient Babylon, concluded by the German expedition in the spring of 1917. It thus gives a complete account of that expedition's work from its inception in 1899. It is a first-class record of a fine piece of scientific excavation, and will be indispensable to all students of Babylonian archaeology. It will form a splendid memorial to Dr. Koldewey, who died before its publication.

HISTORY OF ISRAEL

JEAN, CHARLES F. Le milieu biblique avant Jésus-Christ. II. La litterature. Paris: Geuthner, 1923. xxix+614 pages. Fr. 50.

This volume completes the useful service begun in Volume I by presenting here in translation the more important documents of the ancient world from the period covered by Hebrew tradition and history. We read here the Assyrian, Babylonian, Hittite, Egyptian, Phoenician, Moabite, Aramaean, and Jewish documents which throw light upon the life and thought of the world in which the biblical literature was created. We are in great need of a similar work in English.

KENT, CHARLES F. The Growth and Contents of the Old Testament. New York: Scribners, 1925. viii+294 pages. $2.75.

This last work from the industrious hand of Professor Kent consists largely of the introductions already published with the various parts of his Student's Old Testament. The new material is in the last thirty pages, which give a brief introduction to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. This volume thus furnishes his many admirers a handy summary of its author's views on the origin and meaning of all the books of the Old Testament.

KITTEL, RUDOLF. The Religion of the People of Israel. Translated by R. Caryl Micklem. New York: Macmillan, 1925. 229 pages. $1.75.

A very good handbook, giving a concise summary of the religion of Israel by a recognized scholar who represents the more conservative element in the critical or historical school of interpretation. It passes over important problems too lightly to be of value to scholars.