mportant task Reitzenstein has undertaken in part in the publication before us.

The book falls into two divisions: the first, pp. 1-60, is an address delivered on November 11, 1909, before the Wissenschaftlicher Predigerverein für Elsass-Lothringen; the second, pp. 63-212, is made up of elaborate notes and excursuses in which the important points of the address are illustrated or established in detail. Some of these excursuses form almost articles in themselves. In his address Reitzenstein first discusses the spread and modification of Egyptian and oriental mysteries in the Hellenistic world, and shows how the idea of a universal religion, which was at the same time a personal one, was established and developed. In many, if not most, of these mysteries the devotee believed that through direct revelation he had received a call to divine service; that in the initiation he had been taken out of this world to a divine position in which he had seen divinity face to face and had received a direct knowledge which no teaching was needed to impart, and which, indeed, no teaching could impart; and that he had laid aside his mortal for a divine body and ever after was other than what he seemed to profane eyes to be.

Very interesting in this connection is Reitzenstein's view of Gnosticism, which he maintains belongs not exclusively to church history as an extreme Hellenization of Christianity, but rather to the general history of religion. The word yvôois he holds means "direct vision of God," that secret knowledge which can be obtained only through direct revelation and personal relation to divinity. This position he supports with proofs which seem to the reviewer at least convincing. He further discusses at length certain of Paul's words and phrases, the most important of which may be mentioned here. The terms στρατιῶται θεοῦ, κάτοχοι, δέσμιοι are handled in an interesting excursus; his treatment of πνεῦμα in connection with γνῶσις and ψυχή throws light on a number of passages in I Cor.; likewise illuminating are his elucidations of the opposite terms ψυχικός and πνευματικός and his discussion of Paul as a Pneumatic. The decision whether his interpretation of the words εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν (Ι Cor. 11:24) is correct must be left to more learned judges than the present reviewer.

To correct a possible misunderstanding it should be said that Reitzenstein naturally does not attempt to interpret Paul as a Hellenistic mystic, but simply to prove that the apostle to the gentiles was familiar with the religious literature and thought of his time and that he employed their speech and ideas in his mission, thus making himself a Greek to the Greeks as well as a Jew to the Jews.

This work thus forms a worthy sequel to Reitzenstein's earlier Poimandres and his Hellenistische Theologie in Ägypten. In spite of the fact that many will oppose the views here set forth, there is not a page which will not repay careful study by the general student of religion in the Hellenistic period and by the Christian theologian alike. But whoever would pass adequate

judgment on the work must be as thoroughly acquainted with the sources of our knowledge of the mysteries, with the Hermetic literature, and with the magical papyri, as is Reitzenstein himself.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE

The Aphrodito Papyri. [Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Catalogue with Texts, Vol. IV.] By H. I. BELL. With an Appendix of Coptic Papyri edited by W. E. CRUM. London: The British Museum, 1910. Pp. xlviii+648.

The 315 papyri described and printed in the fourth volume of the British Museum catalogue are without exception late and documentary; there are no literary pieces among them. They constitute nevertheless a very noteworthy collection, for all of them come from a single site, Aphrodito, the modern Kôm Ishgau, and from a single short period, A.D. 698-722. They comprise the bulk of the papyri discovered at Kôm Ishgau in 1901, and now divided between Cairo, Heidelberg, Strassburg, and London. The papyri throw a flood of light upon conditions in a town of Upper Egypt sixty or seventy years after the Arab conquest, and a melancholy picture it is. The ruinous financial system which later reduced naturally affluent Egypt to misery and decay is already operative in this period; it was indeed an inheritance from the Byzantine time, but it naturally became more and more ill-adapted to conditions in Egypt, driving out the peasantry by sheer pressure of taxation. The Arab governors of the years covered by these documents were 'Abd-allāh and Kurrah-ben-Shirāk. The notoriety of the former as an oppressive and inefficient ruler is not relieved by the papyri, but Kurrah, who has been rated one of the worst of tyrants, appears in them—and many of them are his own letters-as a vigorous and public-spirited man. Not the least value of these papyri will be found in the way in which they will enable the historical student of these Arab times to control the statements of Arab and other mediaeval historians. It has been customary to divide papyri into Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine, but the Aphrodito papyri of 1901 necessitate the recognition of the Arab period as one richly represented by Greek papyrus texts.

Mr. Bell's introduction deals with the Arab organization of Egypt, the taxes, the naval organization (cursus) of the Khalifate (that is, the regular raids made by the Khalif's fleets against the Empire), the character of Arab rule, etc. In printing the texts the custom of previous British Museum volumes is followed; there is no table of papyri, the documents are without descriptive titles, abbreviations are not expanded, and there are no translations. There are short, helpful introductions to the several papyri, and valuable notes. The mass of texts is helpfully organized, too: letters from the governor to the pagarch and to the taxpayers, pp. 1-80; accounts and

registers, pp. 81-413; protocols, pp. 414-23; and convenient titles at the top of the page help to guide one through the mass of material.

The Coptic texts are more varied. They relate to sailors and workmen, to fugitives driven away by the growing burden of taxation, to guarantees and presentments, and to financial matters. The longer Coptic texts are followed by translations. A full series of indices, including one of abbreviations, concludes this monumental volume. With Jean Maspero's recent publication of the Cairo pieces from the same deposit (Papyri d'Aphrodito), Mr. Bell's work annexes at least the early Arab period to the lifetime of the Greek speech in Egypt, and gives new evidence of the extraordinary persistence of Greek in one of the lands of its adoption. To the thousand years from Alexander to Omar, which we have been accustomed to regard as the Greek period in Egypt, something at least must be added, and the economist and the mediaevalist, as well as the lexicographer and the grammarian, will find material in Mr. Bell's new volume.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

EDGAR J. GOODSPEED

INDEX TO VOLUME VI