Religious Studles Review

A Quarterly Review of Publications in the Field of Religion

- and Related Disciplines Volume 8, Number 1
PuGished by the Council on the Study of Religion January 1982

to Kermode’s purpose: the biblical text is not unique; in-

THE GENESIS OF SECRECY: ON THE stead, it can be paradigmatic for narrative in general.
INTERPRETATION’ OF NARRATIVE Hence, this “outsider” to the circle of biblical scholarship
By Frank Kermode
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979
Pp. xii + 169. Cloth, $10.00; paper, $3.95

Reviewers: M a y Ann Tolbert and Justus George Lawler Contents

1 REVIEW ESSAYS
Revieuer: M a y Ann Tolbert
The Divinity School, Vanderbilt University Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the
Nashville, TN 37240 Interpretation of Narrative
Reviewers: Mary Ann Tolbert and Justus George
.If “for those outside everything is in parables” (Mk. 4: 1 l), Lawler 1
then how advantageous it is for the “outsider” to be a literary
critic. Frank Kermode, a self-acknowledged “outsider” to Arnold Gehlen, Man in the Age of Technolog
the biblical guild but a highly respected “insider” of the Reviewer: E. Doyle McCarthy 10
literary establishment in England, attempts in his Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University to study bibli-
cal literature, and particularly the Gospel of Mark, from the Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited:
standpoint of secular literary criticism. His intent is not The Making of American Pentecostalism
primarily to add yet another interpretation of the gospel to Taking Another Look at the Vision of the
the many volumes already in existence; rather, Kermode Disinherited
explores biblical material as a case study for problems that Grant Wacker 15
arise generally in the interpretation of narrative, be it the T h e Disinheritance of the Saints
Bible or Henry James. Although the lectures address liter- .Timothy L. Smith 22
ary critics, both their subject matter and their approach
draw them within the circle of biblical scholarship. From William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in
within that same circle this review proceeds. Such a “benign American Protestantism
distortion” (5) of Kermode’s intent is, as he himself argues, Reviewer: Charley D. Hardwick 28
at the very heart of hermeneutics.
A The Nag Hammadi Library: In English
“Outsider” though he may be, Kermode’s fascination with Reviewers: Robert A. Kraft and Janet A. Timbie 32
biblical literature spans more than a decade. An earlier
book, The Sense of an Ending, dealt with apocalyptic thought
in the Christian tradition and in Western literature, and NOTES O N RECENT PUBLICATIONS 52
more recently Kermode has contributed several essays on
works of biblical scholarship to the New York Review of Books.’ RECENT DISSERTATIONS IN RELIGION 99
The Genesis of Secrecy clearly builds upon this past.
While biblical critics are increasingly employing DISSERTATIONS IN PROGRESS 101
literary-critical approaches to the Bible, it is far rarer for “a
secular critic to work on the reserved sacred texts” (viii). Even
though Rudolf Bultmann argued many years ago that there ERRATA 102
should be no special hermeneutics for biblical texts (1961,
Vol. 2, 211-35), the reality of that argument in biblical PERSONALIA 102
scholarship has often been hard to find, for doctrinal preju-
dices cast long shadows. Yet, such an argument is axiomatic
4 / Religious Studies Review

may be more faithful to some of its traditions than the Before reviewing Kermo
“insiders” occasionally are-a situation not unknown to interpretation, let us-placehis par
readers of the Gospel of Mark. spectrum of modern New T e we-r -
&complish this task, we will perform another ‘%en, dis-
~ tortion’’ on a literary model that has proved helpful in
sorting out the history of esthetic theories. M. H. Abrams
Religious Studies Review proposes that most theories of literature can be compared
Published quarterly, in January, April, July, and October, by the on a framework that includes four elements: the work itself,
Council on the Study of Religion the universe, the artist, and the audience (1953, 3-7).For
Abrams, the dominance of one of these criteria over the
Editors other three in judging the value of a text provides the key to
CharlesJ. Adams, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, the critical approach being employed. Theories that
Montreal, Quebec H3C 3G1 evaluate a text primarily on how well it imitates the world
Henry W. Bowden, Douglass College/Rutgers University, New “out there,” its universe, he terms mimetic. Theories that
Brunswick, NJ 08903 value the spontaneity and feeling of the artist above all else
Donald Capps, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ are expressive. If effect upon the audience is the criterion of
08540 good art, then the theory is a pragmatic one. And, finally, if
W. Lee Humphreys, Department of Religious Studies, University
of Tennessee, Knoxville, T N 37916 only the work itself, judged on its internal relations and
John P. Reeder,Jr., Department of ReligiousStudies,Brown Uni- patterns, is the deciding factor, then an objective theory is
versity, Providence, RI 02912 being used (1953, 8-29).
Richard S. Sarason, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Although Abrams understands these four elements as
Religion, Cincinnati, OH 45220 criteria for evaluating a work of art, let us, in good Ker-
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, University of Notre Dame, Notre modian fashion, benignly distort his model to one for com-
Dame, IN 46556 paring, not the criteria of evaluation, but instead, the aim of
David Tracy, Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL interpretation. Given the work itself, in this case the New
60637 Testament gospels, does the interpreter aim to clarify,
Robert L. Wilken, Department of Theology, University of Notre
Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 through study of the text, its universe, the real world “out
Glenn Yocum, Whittier College, Whittier, CA 90608 there” to which it refers, or the artist/author whose genius
Mary Gerhart, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY created it, or the way in which the work affected and still
14456, Editorid Chair affects an audience, or, finally, the internal relations and
Harold E. Remus, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario patterns of the work itself, isolated from external factors?
N2L 3C5, Managing Editor Any comprehensive interpretation, just like any complete
Correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed literary theory, should, of course, consider all four factors,
to the Editorial Chairperson or to the Managing Editor. but it is the case for interpretations of the gospels, no less
than for esthetic theories, that one aim predominates. Our
Editorial Advisory Committee shift of Abrams’ model from judging the value of a text to
Leonard Biallas, CSR Bulktin clarifying the aim of interpretation reflects a similar change
Walter Conn, Horimns that Kermode sees in secular literary criticism generally.
William J. Danker, American Society of Missiology Whereas literary critics of ages past labored primarily in
Phillip E. Hammond,Journal for the Scientijic Study of Religion order to guide their followers toward good literature and
Joseph Jensen, Catholic Biblical Association away from bad, most scholars today are faced with a set of
James T. Johnson, J o u d of Religious Ethics literary works judged by the literary establishment to be
George Kilcourse, Catholic Theological Society of America
George W. MacRae, Society of Biblical Literature both good and serious (49). Hence, the task of modern
Martin E. Marty, Church History critics is more often one of interpretation rather than evalu-
Karl E. Peters, Zygon ation. In this task they parallel biblical scholars whose
Robert Scharlemann,Journal of the American Academy of Religion canonized texts centuries ago passed the test of the good and
Donald F. Williams, Association of Professors and Researchers in serious. The long experience of biblical scholars in this
Religious Education pursuit is, in fact, one major reason Kermode decided to
Graphics explore biblical material.
Michael Baldwin, MSIAD B
Most modern New Testament scholarship has concerned
Annual Subscription Rates itself either with the universe the text supposedly repre-
Individuals belonging to member societies sents-“directly or deviously” (Abrams, 1953, 6-r with
of the CSR $12.00 the artist/author. Form and redaction critics have inter-
Others (including institutions) $18.00 preted the gospels in order to construct a picture of the
Individual issues each$ 5.00 nascent Christian sect and its theological, christological, and
Make checks payable to Council on the Study of Religion. ecclesiastical debates. While the pre-critical period of bibli-
Copyright 0 1982 by the Council on the Study of Religion ’ cal scholarship assumed that the gospels directly proclaimed
(ISSN 0814485X) < ,
1
the activities of the historical Jesus, critics of the last two
centuries have slowly recognized the deceptiveness of the
surface narratives. Yet, for most modern scholars the gos-
VoL 8, NO. $1/January 1984 Religibus Studies;Riyiew 1 b

pels still reflect their universe, the objective situation “out Essentially for Kermode the New Testament gospels
there”; only now that universe is not the life of Jesus but, are fiction. He builds his case in several different ways; the
instead, the life of the early Christian community. Particu- characters are composed after the manner of fictional
larly in the work of redaction critics the gospels are often characters (for Judas, 75-90; for Pilate, 96-99); the plots
treated as historical allegories in which the characters of contain surface fractures, fortuities, and secrets similar to
Jesus, the disciples, and the Pharisees are almost ciphers for works of fiction (49-73);and the history-like narrative of the
the early Christian groups and their synagogue opponents gospelsis by its very nature fictional (101-23).Thus, aims for
(cf., e.g., Weeden, 1971; Kee, 1977). This dominant stream interpreting the gospels are similar to aims for any other
of New Testament scholarship posits a mimetic character works of fiction: to clarify the internal structures and de-
for gospel literature, although certainly a devious mimesis. signs present in them and to explore what makes them so
The point of interpretation, then, is to demonstrate or re- intriguing to their readers. Consequently, Kermode’s ap-
construct the world of the early church. proach to interpretation falls on the work-audience axis of
our model. In this position he is not alone, for a growing
number of biblical scholars are themselves beginning to look
seriously at the gospels as literature, examining both their
internal structures and their ways of affecting their audi-
ences (cf., e.g., Via, 1967; Petersen, 1978). However, many
of these writers, perhaps because of “institutional con-
straints” on their training or employment (4-5), are not yet
as bold or assured in their challenges as Kermode is. His
freedom is both exciting and disappointing: exciting be-
cause he suggests provocative possibilities for gospel in-
terpretation but disappointing because he leaves them only
The second major position in current research explores partially, and sometimes confusingly, developed.
the gospels in an attempt to glimpse their author. Yet, it is
not the evangelists, the direct authors, who are sought;
rather, it is Jesus, whose words and thoughts may occur C
obliquely in the texts. The evangelists are viewed by most For Kermode, narrative embodies interpretation. “Acts of
form critics as editors who exercise little control over their interpretation are required at every stage in the life of a
materials (cf., e.g., Bultmann, 1963), and though they are narrative; its earliest form must itself be an interpretation of
considered authors by redaction critics, they often appear as some precedent fable” (ix). Hence, new narratives are con-
corporate personalities, expressing the opinions of their structed by the interpretation of older narratives or a pre-
communities (it is this conception that has led some redac- narratival fable. Once interpretation by invention of new
tion critics toward sociological analyses; cf., e.g., Kee, 1977). narrative is halted by some formal, institutional f i t , like
Hence, the search for the author of gospel material is a quest canonization, interpretation still continues in commentary
for the historical Jesus. And it continues into the present form.
(cf., e.g., Jeremias, 31972;Crossan, 1973), regardless of the The source of such ubiquitous interpretation is secrecy:
fact that Albert Schweitzer wrote its epitaph almost eighty narratives conceal while they proclaim. Interpretation at-
years ago (1968). tempts to “penetrate the surface and reveal a secret sense”
Neither of these predominant orientations to the aims (x). All narratives are capable of darkness (14); in fact,
of gospel interpretation fits The Genesis ofsecrecy. Since they Kermode decides that ‘narrativity’always entails a measure
“

both necessarily regard gospel narrative as being at some of opacity” (25). Yet, this opacity or secrecy of narrative
point transparent on historical reality, Kermode’s absolute apparently arises only partially from itself, for first readers
denial of this possibility (62, 1 16-19) and his emphasis upon often see less mystery in a story than later readers (4,lO-12).
the fundamental secrecy of all narrative pose a radical chal- Therefore, some measure of the secrecy of narrative must
lenge to biblical historians. Although, to use Kermode’s own derive from the distance and “prejudices,” as Kermode calls
terminology, the munqest level of his book does not contest them, of interpreters. The role of the interpreter in forming
the assumptions of such scholarship, the Z&nt level cer- this secrecy is one Kermode never clearly delineates. He
tainly does. His gently ironic-and often well-deserved- does provide several hints: human beings are “pleroma-
pokes at the idiosyncrasies of some research (32,44,56-57, tists,” fulfillment-seekers, who prefer to see mystery and
68, 79, 130, 135) as well as his extensive treatment of the enigma rather than the muddle of existence; the trivial must
close relationship between fiction and history-writing (101- mean more than it seems (6-7,49,72-73). In addition, we see
23) serve as strong indicationsof this latent challenge. It may the book as we see the world, plural, arbitrary, impene-
well be that the biblical guild needs to be forced into rethink- trable, and we want to read as we wish to live, divining the
ing methodological assumptions too facilely or naively ac- inner connections and relations that make the “unfollow-
cepted. For this purpose, one might wish a more pointed able world” understandable, if only for a moment (144-45).
and rigorous approach on the part of Kermode than The More than these hints, however, are required to secure the
G& ofsecrecy provides, for the style of the book is neither case for a human yearning for secrecy, but Kermode’s easy,
argument nor contest; it is, rather, leisurely discussion. rambling style inhibits any attempt to pursue a disciplined
Nevertheless, the argument and challenge are there, but argument.* Thus, while Kermode clearly demonstrates that
they must be “divined (Kermode’s favorite term for in- the genesis of interpretation is secrecy,the genesis of secrecy
terpretation) in the latent sense of his text. still remains frustratingly opaque.
4 1 Religiow Studies Red&
-Assuming%he basic secrecy ofmarrative, Kermode de-
ve1ops.h chapter one a .vocabulary for acknow1edgir.g its
dual tlature: the manifest sense is the surface story, the old
literal level of biblical allegory, and the latent sense is the real
meaning of the story, the mystery, the secret. The key to this
duality Kermode finds in the “theory of interpretation” of
Mark& 11-12,Jesus’ problematic saying on the purpose of
parables (2). “Outsiders” get parables, stories, which are
intended to hide a secret knowledge meant for “insiders”(3).
Seeing only the manifest sense given to them, “outsiders”
often produce “carnal readings” (4-5,9) that tend to be quite
similar. However, what the “outsider” really wants is to
uncover the secret or latent sense and thus produce a “spiri-
tual reading.” Spiritual readings of the latent sense are
determined by acts of “divination” (4) and of necessity catch
only a momentary radiance of the secret. Hence, they are all
different. Moreover, spiritual readings, divining only a brief
radiance of the secret, can never know fully what the stories
mean, what the secret is. Such knowledge is given to “in-
siders” alone; for all others everything is in parables.
Who, then, are the “insiders”? That question raises
another conundrum in Kermode’s exposition. Chapter two
promises to address the issue by beginning with a restate-
ment of the sharp distinction between “outsiders” and “in-
siders.” Kermode then moves to a discussion of the New
Testament parables where, he suggests, this distinction is
most clearly shown. The “insiders” are the initiates; in the
gospels, the disciples. Yet, the disciples in Mark, those to
whom the secrets of the kingdom have been given, are often
less perceptive than the crowds outside, to whom everything
is in parables. Therefore, says Kermode, “beingan insider is
only a more elaborate way of being kept outside’’ (27),and
finally he admits that no “insiders” exist (45). This in-
triguing point, however, gets lost as Kermode begins to
chronicle some of the history of parable scholarship with
both its insights and absurdities (32-38). Yet, the vocabulary
of “insiders” and “outsiders” appears again in the last chap-
ter. There the “insiders” are the trained biblical exegetes or
literary critics, possessing specialized knowledge of their
texts. Are these “insiders” as deluded as the disciples in
Mark? Kermode’s earlier use of the outside/inside
dichotomy would certainly suggest such a conclusion. But
suggestions and hints are all he gives, and it is quite possible
that he uses the terms inconsistently. His enigma may well be
a muddle.
Chapters three through six’explore various aspects of
Kermode’s main case study: the Gospel of Mark. Mark is
used primarily to illustrate the nature of narratives that
conceal and proclaim at the same time. The choice is an
appropriate one, for, as Kermode notes, the gospel begins
with proclamation, the “good news of Jesus Christ,” and
ends in silence: “And they said nothing to any one, for they
were afraid.” Except for their common use of Mark, how-
ever, these chapters are only randomly connected. They
deal with quite diverse issues: the desire for narrative coher-
ence leading to the discovery of occult plot designs (chapter
three); the relationship between character and plot and the
ways in which characters develop through successive in-
terpretations (chapter four); the lfelationlhip between his-
fiction myd the issue o
s to be history (chapter
982
the unfollowable plot. €0116
tation to clarify hidden
In the course of these-
to be an extremely p
comparison of Mark‘
Joyce’s man in the Macintosh is excellent (50-57), as is the
proposal that the characters of Peter, Judas, and the young
man in the shirt are actually the developed plot functions of
Denial, Betrayal, and Flight (62,8492). Although his em-
phasis on midrash & the primary formative element in the
composition of the gospels is somewhat overdrawn, his dis-
cussion of the Christian use of the Hebrew scriptures as
oracles fulfdled by Christ is an elegant demonstration of his
whole approach to hermeneutics (18-21,88-89,110). In his
own divination of el of Mark, Kermode finds its key
to be an extensi of thematic oppositions (proda-
mationlsilence, ean, election/rejection, confes-
sion/denial, mystery/stupidity) arranged in intercalated se-
quences ( 127-43). Unfortunately, Kermode remains faith-
ful to his vow to presentjust hints for interpreters, not a full
interpretation, and so leaves his comments only partially
elaborated. Yet, there is a superb footnote on genre (162)
that in itself makes the book valuable reading for biblical
scholars.
D
As literary theory The Genesis of Secrecy is frustrating and
disappointing, but as practical criticism it is intriguing and
delightful. Kermode asserts, and I think he is correct, that
divination is an art; method enters in when one must explain
what one has divined (137). Kermode is a remarkable artist,
but he is less satisfactory as an “explainer,” for he is more
evocative than precise. Most of his theoretical assertions
come from others in an eclectic mixture. But what he says,
he says very well indeed, and the book is immensely quot-
able. Truly, this secular literary critic, who takes the biblical
text seriously, has enriched both his discipline and ours. To
see the Bible as literature is to recover a mutuality often
ignored by both groups.
Finally, the random pattern of the last four chapters
spurs my divinatory powers, for “interpretation abhors the
random” (9). I perceive a latent sense in the book, an occult
connection whose radiance is directed specifically at biblical
scholars. Hence, I suggest the following spiritual reading:
institutional constraints force the New Testament scholar to
see the text as transparent on historical reality; so,the “in-
sider” sees history in reading the Gospel of Mark. But the
“outsider” sees fiction, a parable, a story. Now, the “insider”
is just as blind as the “outsider,” for, after all, history is
fiction, and both are a secret.
. NOTES
He reviewed Raymond Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah,
Reynolds Price’s A Palpable God, and Bruce Meager’s The Early
Versions of the N c v TFrtcrnrcnt in volume 25 (June29,1978). Later
numbers of volume 25 contained other reviews: Morton Smith‘s
Jesus the Magician (October 26, 1978) and Alec McCowen’s per-
.._
dway (November 9, 1978). More
d Lattimore’s The Four Gospels
roughout the book is
rsch in his essentially
mxJA T,
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negative review (New Yod Review of Books 26 uune 14, 19791, Mark Pattison, wh% missed
18-20). It should be added, however, that selecting avviewer as time of the TractaSan secessio
ideologically opposed to Kermode’s general,criticalposition as is that had Newman known German
Hirsch seems unfair if not perverse. I I “, church would have been differen
~ ~ ~
that had Newman with his con
REFERENCES ous mind been able to read the
Criticism, he would have move
ABRAMS, M. H. fore him studying the German hi
1953 The Miwor and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical
Traditwn. Oxford University Press. to liberalism, but to a liberalis
BULTMANN, RUDOLF and sophisticated than the
1961 Glauben und V e r s t z h . Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul sayings to traditional religion of a Carlyle (die ezuige Nein) or
Siebeck). a George Eliot.
1963 ET The History ofthe Synoptic Tradition. Harper 8c Row. As it happened, Oxford, where school divinity was
CROSSAN, JOHN D. much honored, was left religiously ted in the after-
1973 Zn Parables: The Challenge of the HistoricalJesus. Harper 8c math of Newman’s defection, and rst concentrated,
Row. extended, and reflective response new German criti-
JEREMIAS, JOACHIM
a1972 E T The Parables ofJesus. Scribner’s.
cism came from such Cambridge sdholars as Lightfoot,
KEE, HOWARD C. Westcott, and Hort. Thus, it is esthetiqally fitting and there-
1977 Community of the New Age: Studks in Mark‘s Gospel. West- fore ethically apposite that-in a ere, certain her-
minster Press. meneuts assert, historical n Tweedledee to
KERMODE,FRANK. fictional narrative’s Tweedledurn book, one of the
1967 The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fictwn. first thoroughgoing critiques of the insolvency underlying
Oxford University Press. our current germanic vouchers, \should have been written
PETERSEN, NORMAN by none other than a Cambridge professor. There may be
1978 Literay Criticismfor New Testament Critics. Fortress Press. some “narrative” irony, however, in the fact that its author
SCHWEITZER, ALBERT wants to deflate the value of those particular linguistic
1968 E T The Quest of the H i s f m i dJesus. Maanillan. First pub-
lished in 1910; translated from the first German edition (1906). marks while inflating that of the historical Mark. (Gresham’s
VIA, DAN0. Law B la Kermode.)
1967 The Parables: Their Liceray and Existential Dimension. For- But as with another norm of fiction to which human
tress Press. development is submissive-or at least so says another
WEEDEN,THEODORE J. hermeneut-just as there were those who saw tragedy in the
197 1 Mark-Traditions in ConJict. Fortress Press. seduction of Lightfoot, et al., by the Higher Criticism, there
may be those who will see farce in the present undertaking
to bury much recent New Testament interpretation and
2 interpretation-theory. I t h i i k they willbe dead wrong. But it
will be instructive to see whether the peerage of the Society
Reviewer: Justus George Lawler of Biblical Literature responds as negativelyor indifferently
Xavier College to this book as did the peerage of the Modern Language
Chicago, IL 60655 Association to Ray Hart’s Unjnished Man and the Imagination,
which Kermode apparently does not know as he does know
Fonngeschichte,Redaktionrgeschichte,Traditwmgeschichte: once its dialogical partner, Robert Funk’s Lunguuge, Hermeneutic,
formidable Teutonic terms, but now standardized argot in and the Word of God. This will be instructive because ulti-
the lexicon of our biblical clerisy and, by that entropic pro- mately what brings success to a new theory or critical approach
cess known as base vdguri.sution, probably already incorpo- is, in modish language, the shifting of paradigms it engend-
rated as argumentative clinchers into the ordinary speech of ers (Brother, can you paradigm?), or, in more traditional
every freshperson seminarian and divinity student exercis- terms, the comemusecclesiae it confirms. And that is a matter
ing what Cardinal Manning-criticizing a Teutonizing lib- as much of politique as of mystique. The facts are dismal: a
eral, Lord Acton-once called “the ruthless talk of under- Latrocinium begets a Christology; the Elector of Saxony
graduates.” But still, however common now, an argot whose begets a Reformation; Garibaldi begets a dogma of Papal
ancestral coinage only a hundred or so years ago sent repro- Infallibility. Herein may be the Catch-22 of this and of other
bative shudders through the spinal circuitry of the pious, for efforts by every modernist hermeneut: that very politics,
whom all such language represented a return to the primal which a lot of good people identify with history, is burdened
obscene. In Eden Garden, the old latinate ethnocentrists by contingency, passion, irrationality, etc., that is, is bur-
had it, the devil spoke only German. So the Venerable dened by submission to adventitious elements that seem
Trollope: clearly beyond-what an odious neologism would call-“the
laws of ‘narratology.’”
“TheGerman professorsare men of learning,”said Mr. Hard-
ing, “but-” Now, precisely on this point of acceptance by the guild,
“German professors!” groaned out the chancellor, as though it is possible that Kermode’s frequent asides on the limita-
his nervous system had received a shock which nothing but a week tions of conventional biblical critics-“the professionals,”
of Oxford air could cure. “the exegetes de w’tier” (15), “the insiders” (3), “remarkable
(Barchester Towers) naivetd of professional exegesis” (130), “not . . .impressive”
 u a y 1982
itself be a strong factor in the rejection of many
ngenious and most engaging readings, and this
s obvious that these asides represent on his part,
tally adventitious obtrusion stemming from his own
personal idiosyncrasies, i.e., his own personal contingent,
passionate, etc., drives which are seemingly not controlled
by some sort of ideal psychological norm (read: “law of
‘narratology’”) to which any record of his own lifelfiction
theoretically should submit. (This may well stand in contrast
to the easy acceptance by the guild of Robert Polzin’s Moses
and the Deuteronomist, a work as table-turning, or tablet-
breaking, as Kermode’s, but executed with even-handed
deference to more traditional approaches.) Is not that old
mole Jung hovering in the background here, or rather in
that underground commonly called the subconscious?And
may not the laws of narratology be as much invented arche-
types as the laws of psychological normality, and perhaps as
irrelevant to historical chronicling as Jungian theory is to
lived living? Again, I think not.
But the question opens up the entire hermeneutical
debate, the past and present of which this is not the place to
re-hash or re-Hirsch. The debate is endemic to the dualism
of an entire civilization, comes to point in the conflict of
harmony and invention in the Renaissance, and is defined
by our own poets as the issue of whether we “half perceive
and half create.” Crudely, it is the conflict of subject and
object which, since the age of High Romanticism, seems to
have been resolved on the subject side, as represented by
some more of those grand Teutons looming on our twofold
horizon: Mommsen’s Voraussetzung, Heidegger’s Vorsicht,
V o r p i , and, closer to home, Bultmann’s Vomerstiindnis-all
coinages which will raise as many a hackle within the
positivist menagerie at the University of Virginia as did their
nineteenth-century counterparts within the closes of Ox-
ford. It was indeed one of those I have elsewhere called
“Virginia Hams” who undertook the most putativzly evis-
cerative assault on Kermode’s book, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., previ-
ously known far more for his weasel strategy (stoat fellow,
he), “meaning / significance,” intended to unplug the re-
spirator of interpretive invalids, than for his forays into
biblical studies-though perhaps here merely responding to
certain affinities with that Matthean Wundergeschichte about
the Gadarene herd. In any case, I do not want to take these
little epigones to market now (that wouldn’t be quite
kosher); but this modest survey should make clear to which
side of that particular hermeneutical Mason-Dixon line I
incline.
And Kermode obviously inclines there too; and this
may explain why his book is somewhat more satisfying than
another recent brilliant study on many of these same
themes, John C. Meagher’s Clumsy Construction in Mark’s
Gospel. Though more elegantly written and more closely
argued than Kermode’s book, and sharing some of the same
presuppositions, if I dare use the expression-the subtitle of
Meagher’s book is A Critique of Form- and Redaktionsge-
schichte-the final contribution it seems to me is largely nega-
tive, aclearing of the ground for a subsequent development.
This, one suspects, is primarily due to the author’s self-
imposed limits, to a more restrictive, I would say more
constrictive, theory of interpretation than that which
undergirds Kermode’s book. Those who do not share that
constrictive theory would say that the critic should be as
Religious Studies4Revie
daring, as bold, even as brash as his own intellectual
science playing over the text will allow. Abstracting
religious considerations, and notwithstanding a re
range of scholarship or his relations with the collegium,
interpretation remains an individual act, the reader and the
text. In Newman’s words, alone with the alone. What
emerges from this encounter, however startling or shock-
ing, if conscientious,is an intellectuallyresponsible heuristic
judgment. This conscientious brashness is the unavoidable
burden and mystery of modern criticism. Kermode himself
observes that some will think his suggestions “on the wild
side” (135); Geoffrey Hartman touches this modernist bur-
den in Criticism in the Wh!mness, and I have elsewhere ad-
vanced, as prefatory note to some other unconventional
readings, the term “wild criticism,” more or less after John
ONeill’s “wild sociology”-both usages owing something to
Freud’s essay on “wild psychoanalysis.”
Freud, of course, used the phrase pejoratively. So far as
his own work and its interpretation were concerned, Freud
in his later years was obsessed with orthopraxis, with in the
present context “closing the canon.” As orthodoxy once
taught there could be no further revelation after the death
of the last Apostle, so too Freud. He, like the Fathers of the
church, being the only duly consecrated and sanctioned
adjudicator. In the light of the institutionally grounded
hermeneutic of such ecclesiastical guardians of the text the
modern notion of a “continuing revelation” would appear as
heresy. Now, for Blake it was churchman preeminently who
rode the horses of instruction-though I have lately dreamt
of a pig on a horse, a real nightmare-but most modern
critics, ecclesiastical or not, SBL or MLA,would embrace
this “heresy” in one form or another, even though a genu-
inely wild criticism, advocating not merely an organic
“development of doctrine,” but also a radical reversal of the
received teaching or reading: such an advocacy would ter-
rify them. For this Safari-Land school of hermeneutics only
the most domesticated and tranquilized tigers of wrath can
be tolerated. Yet even merely to catch a tiger by the tale is a
step towards appreciating those insights of narratology
Kermode proffers. (Though the violation of mew auctoris in
the correction of that old racist tag would seem to reaction-
ary hermeneuts nothing less than the original Sinn.)
Again, the issue can only be briefly sketched. There
may be seven types of ambiguity in a text, or seventy-seven
types, or seventy-seven to the seventy-seventh power, but
the number will be finite, and the text will be exhausted of
new meaning; it may take five hundred years or five
thousand, but it will be in some finite period of time when
this exhaustibility is realized. After that terminal point,
people may still recite the poems of Keats or they may pray
the words of Jesus, but they will learn no more about
them-unless, of course, some new factual datum is un-
earthed, which turns everything over to the archeologists,
and also doesn’t help much, since the number of such data is
 y we say “the matter is closed,” since st a tour de fo
ble word, the definable text-is ex dcfini-
ciple of limitation. Only the human intelligence
admits no closure. The old axiom is correct: intellectus
intelligendo in infiniturn procedit. It is the human spirit, My accountof Green’s novel, however defective,may at least serve
quoddamnrodo omnia, playing over the text that mandates the to suggest that it belongs to a class of narratives which have to mean
interminibility of the interpretive act and the infinitude of more, or other, than they manifestly say. How do we know this?
textual meaning. The ratification of some of those meanings First because we know that many insiders think well of Henry
is an entirely different and tertiary issue: it brings us back to Green,so we assume that the book is not trivial and vacuous,even if
the comensus ecclesiae or to what Stanley Fish calls “the au- it seems so at first. This prejudice is supported by many signs that
thority of interpretive communities.”Wild criticism, then, is the writing, however odd, is not incompetent (7).
merely that criticism which allows a truly disinterested play This seems to me at best a kind of genre criticism, to which
of mind over the text. Kermode is oddly very sympathetic, or at worst a kind of
Now, all of this is what conservative (Safari-Land) and “worldly” critical-pietism-what Coleridge called our
reactionary (Virginia-Hamhanded) critics cannot or will not “hobby-horsical”devotion to old authors. I have never been
recognize (an element of politique again?).It looks like chaos, persuaded by Northrop Frye’s mot that “the Bible would be
what the French Revolution looked like to Burke or the a popular book if it were not a sacred one.” Rather, it is
whole life of the mind looks like to Gerald Graff in Literature popular largely because it is sacred, and some of the efforts
against Itself (cf. Wordsworth, The Prelude, VII, 708). HOW- to prove otherwise (truckling to the cultured despisers) re-
ever, chaos is the presupposition of order, just as matter is sult in the kinds of interpretive howlers Meagher has so
the presup osition of form. neatly exposed. There is much in the bible which is mani-
Since gere will be a companion review to this one, festly muddled, sloppy, or self-contradictory-the pagan
written presumably by a “professional” exegete, I will not Augustine was right-and which we would all do well with-
attempt a detailed summary of Kermode’s book. As noted, it out, but cannot because the canon was fwed not by such
seeks to look at the gospels free of the conventionalmethods semper, ubique, omnibus criteria as have been applicable to
and biases of the biblical guild and in the light of contempo- secular literature (paradoxically for Vincent of Lerins) but
rary literary-criticaltheory. This is rather vague, and in fact by the requisites of institutional hierarchs-not, however,
Kermode’s “look” sometimes seems to focus down simply to necessarily hungry for hegemony, as Pagels for apparently
acceptance of the principles of anyone who examines the ressentimental reasons asserts. Of Mark, Kermode observes:
bible without believing in it. Thus Jean Starobinski is lauded “My present point is simple enough: Mark is a strong witness
as employing a kind of literary-critical approach, though to the enigmatic and exclusive character of narrative, to its
what he has achieved parallels closely and is often eclipsed property of banishing interpreters from its secret places”
by several biblists doing semiotic analyses in Uon-Dufour’s (33-34). I do not see the force of this, since we could say the
collection Les Miracles & J i w - e v e n as Kermode’s fiction same thing of Mickey Spillane, and if some day, as the
model has been already used by Dominic Crossan. There is cultivation of bad taste further accelerates and is sanctioned
in fact a whole history of this kind of approach by “profes- by that oxymoronic discipline known as “popular culture,”
sional” scholars: Cadbury’s The Making of Luke-Acts, Lauren- there is a canonicking of the Spillane corpus (at the First
tin‘s Structure et thdologie & Luc 1-2, Morgenthaler’s Die Council of Bowling Green?) it too will be subjected to la-
lukanische Geschichtesschreibung als Zeugnis, Boulder’s Type bored, learned, and lauding exegesis. This particular issue
and History in Acts, Vanhoye’s La Structure littiraire & Z’Epitre opens up too many.questions of canon formation to go into
aux Hebrew, Malatesta’s The Eputles of John, etc. I am not SO here, but it is an issue that Kermode wrestles with-I would
learned as I appear. This history is taken from Charles say, to a draw.
Talbert’s Literary P a m , Theological Themes and th Genre of But apart from all that, what he does with Mark and the
Luke-Acts, a book which I, in turn, have found remarkably other evangelists is often little short of stunning, a word to
helpful from the viewpoint of what Kermode, whimsically I be used sparingly outside of that genre known as “blurb-
think, calls “worldly” literary criticism. However, “literary writing.” Thus my judgments above may sound more cen-
criticism” as Kermode uses it is not a hedging phrase, it is sorious than I intend. But there is so much in this book that
only somewhat imprecise-“hardly hedge-rows, little lines is so perceptive (though somewhat casually developed and
of sportive wood run wild,” to cite again the Venerable also anticipated, at least seminally,by conventionalcriticism)
Wordsworth. that I seem to have been impelled to engage in dialogue with
Basically, Kermode takes the form and structure, the it rather than grace it by encomia which, coming from an
character development, and the plotting of fiction as models entirely nonguildy party, might prove more damaging than
for potentially isomorphic formats in the New Testament. any conceivable criticism. For, indeed, Kermode
Thus he begins with a detailed analysisof elements in Henry has very arresting views about narrative “secrecy” as such,
Green’s Patty Going to point up the kinds of clues he is going about that unknown element, “X,”which characterizes
to pursue in the four gospels-curiously confined mainly to every strong work of art, and which opens it to further and
Mark: as curious as beginning with Henry Green, since further interpretation. He is also very good on that particu-
Henry Green is to Mark asJames Joyce is to Luke who might lar unknown element in the teaching of Jesus which Mark
therefore have been a more exemplary choice, though discerned and obfurcatGd (Mark spots the X), commonly
perhaps an easier one. For there are obvious “artistic” forces with that enduringly
at play in Luke, whereas Mark, as Meagher is not the first to unding the death of the
have shown-though he may be the first to have illuminated ,it’s still Salome); so too
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 10 1 Religious Studies Review
with the woman hemorrhaging and the Garasene demoniac,
with the recognition of Jesus’ office by Peter, and with much
of the Passion narrative-at the center of which is the Crux,
aWrd at the center of the discussion of which is a hermeneutic
crux.
That crux has to do with the historicity of these various
sayings and deeds, and of these various sayers and doers.
Kermode devotes his most subtle chapter, “What Precisely
Are the Facts?,” to precisely this matter which might be
briefly instanced-out of many possible alternatives-by his
treatment of Judas who is viewed much as a Shakespearean
scholar might view an Iago: as merely “an abstraction given
body” (Stevens), as merely a medieval morality-play’s
elaborated personification of evil. It is widely acknowl-
edged, except among fundamentalists and some Scandina-
vian traditionalists, that much of theJudas story is midrashic
and entails a very considerable type and anti-type casting
between Hebrew bible and New Testament. But to see the
“‘germ’ of the scene” (85), not only of Judas at the Last
Supper but of his very existence in the Psalmist’s “Even my
bosom friend, whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, betrays
me”-to so see is to raise an interpretive hurdle that even the
wildest horses of instruction, much less tigers of wrath,
might balk at. (Porcine gravity, of course, requires a lower
stile.)
There is narrative precedent for Kermode’sreading, as
every cheerless soap-opera on adultery brings out (tl-iangule’
simiotiquement, as Starobinski might say), or as the thews anZr
genre elaborates where, e.g., in the medieval Roman &Alex-
wire, the hero is betrayed by his close friend-a story as
‘ctional probably as the story of the boy Alexander dumb-
founding the Persian ambassadors or the story of the boy
Jesus dumbfounding the Temple scholars. (Has this
aretalogical parallel been drawn elsewhere?) Oddly Ker-
mode is arguing from very conventional norms to a very
unconventional conclusion. Why should not the psalm ver-
sicle be a simple application to Judas rather than the germ
of his “invention by Matthew” (1 11; my italics)-much as
Shakespeare, entering into his fabrication, could affirm by
mere auctorial fiat: cogito, Iago sum. On the other hand, the
norms of narratology certainly do seem to be ignored by the
evangelists’ supplying a papier-mkhk stock figure with a
surname which conveys nothing of his character. When
Trollope introduces Mr. Slope, and labors the point that
Slope has added an “erron his name to make for a more
euphonious appellation-as the Venerable Fields would
have it-we know the bad guy is on the scene. (The marvel-
ous touch by Trollope is in the self-ironizing fact that the
supplemental “e”in his own name served a similar purpose.)
One may think of Peacock‘s Mr. Toobad, Dickens’ rascally
Mr. Jingle, Goldsmith’s Mr. Snake (who should have
dropped the “e”). But Judas Iscariot? Kermode, who relies
heavily on Vincent Taylor’s Mark, fpys with the notion that
Iscariot means “betrayer,” a notion which, Taylor curtly
notes, “has commended itself to few.” (Taylor uses the
anachronism “assassin,” and Kermode derives “betrayer”
from Paul Winter.) On conventional grounds, again, the
“. fact that Judas is the only Judean disciple among all those
Galileans might have suggested support for Kermode’s view
that he is a literary fabrication; but on narratological (sic?)
grounds one would have expected much more than the
scanty detail about Judas the evangelists supply. The villain
Vol. 8, No. 1 /January 1982
of the piece is usually drawn as fully as the hero-again Iago
might come to ‘mind.
All of which is by way of suggesting that truth may
indeed be stranger than fiction, and that it may be exces-
sively pessimistic to conclude “that interpretation, which
corrupts as it transforms, begins so early in the development
of narrative texts that the recovery of the real right original
thing is an illusory quest’’ (125). “Illusory” is hyperbolic and
“thing” is ambiguous. For, we do have guideposts and mar-
kers for the quest, which at this stage is not for the real right
original “thing,” but for the real right original text. Such
guideposts are those various principles of interpretation to
which Kermode himself in this book and in others has made
a notable contribution. Wellhausen on the Pentateuch may
have been wrong in equating brevity and simplicity with
antiquity, and therefore closer to the “real right original”;
Scartazzini on Dante may have been wrong in suggesting
that of several variants the most complex should be adopted
because scribes and redactors are simpla$iicateurs, and there-
fore farther from the real right original. But ultimately
testing these and scores of other congruent and contradic-
tory interpretive principles may lead to a real right original
text which is in no way illusory.
At this point the interpreter, like everyone else, lives by
Bishop Butler’s law of converging probabilities; and statisti-
cally alone, there is no doubt that in some instances that
convergence must indicate, at the very least with moral
certitude, the real right original thing. This is the end of one
quest and the beginning of another, since that thing as the
product of intellectus intelligendo is open to deeper under-
standing, even as that text, equally such a product, is open to
deeper understanding on the part of the questing intelli-
gence.
But we not only have guideposts, we have guides, and I
am not sure that Hermes is our best patron, though Ker-
mode has some interesting reflections on his multiple roles.
But they are all rather archaizing, like those old tracts peri
hermeneias. A contemporary hermeneutic needs a different
model. In both Aeschylus and Shelley, Prometheus mocks
Hermes as a mere messenger boy of the gods, as a mere
transmitter or harbinger. Prometheus, whose name may be
translated by the last of our germanicisms, “Vorverstand-
nis,” taught men all the arts including the art of reading. But
even more significantly, he fought with Necessity, the one
definitive closed meaning, and gave humanity the gift of
Hope, the spes hermeneutica founded on the limitlessnessand
inexhaustibility of the interpretive act.
MAN IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY
B Arnold Gehlen
d a n s l a t e d by Patricia Lipscomb
With a Foreword by Peter L. Ber er
New York: Columbia University ress, 1980
Pp. xvi + 185. $17.00
P
Reviewer: E . Doyle McCarthy
Fordham University
Bronx, NY 10458
This is the first English translation of a work by the promi-
nent German social theorist Arnold Gehlen (1904-76). A
 8;rNo. 1 / Januiry 1982
German edition of his works, which span the
m the mid-1920s to the mid-l970s, is currently
ished in Frankfurt by Vittorio Klostermann. The
work was first published in 1949 under the title
chologische P r o b k in der industriellen Cesellschaft.
mis translation is of the 1957 revised edition which ap-
peared under the new title Die Seek im technkchen Zeitalter. It
has been consideredone of Gehlen’smost influential works.
Gehlen’swritings on the subject of modernizationwere
introduced to many by the sociologists Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann in their works on religion and modern
consciousness. There, in particular, Gehlen’s theory of in-
stitutionsand his concept “subjectivization”played a promi-
nent role in the developmentof the now classic formulations
of secularization theory in The Sacred Canopy (1967), The
Invisible Religion (1967), and The Hornless Mind (co-authored
by Berger, Berger, and Kellner in 1973). While these au-
thors were, by their own acknowledgment, indebted to
Gehlen for his delineation of the social psychological conse-
quences of modernization, from a reading of the present
volume it is also true that they, in turn (perhaps, in return),
have served Gehlen well. They clarified and systematized
several of Gehlen’s concepts for sociological use and, in
particular, for the study of the effects of modernization on
consciousness.
There is still much to be gained by reading Gehlen’s
own portrayal of the culture of modernity-an age of un-
precedented stress for man’s psychic and moral constitution
and one characterized by a mutation in the very structures
of human consciousness. The crisis in cultural development
which Gehlen describes stems from the conflict of the
human being’s unchanging need-structure and the chang-
ing nature of modern institutions.
Gehlen’s theory of institutions rests on the writings of
biologists and ethologistswho emphasize man’s unique posi-
tion in the animal world. At birth the human animal lacks
innate mechanismswhich provide him with a mode of action
that permits him to respond automatically to his environ-
ment and to act upon it. The human being’s unique biologi-
cal character or its instinctualimpoverishment disposes him
to depend upon the extra-organicor social environment to
acquire the stability he needs to function. Social institutions
“relieve” (enthten) the human being of the burden of pro-
viding for its own survival. It is the task of institutions to
facilitateor relieve man of “the taxing search for an appro-
priate line of conduct” (99).
Further, the human animal is a being constituted for
action-for the modification of the external world-whose
being requires that he objectify himself through labor.
There is, for Gehlen, a twofold tendency built into man: a
dependency on the social environment for stability and a
need to actively construct and control the structures which
come to constitute his life-world. Human action requires a
stable background (Hinterpndse$Uung), an “invariant
reservoir of usages, habits, institutions, symbols, ideals”
against which individuals may confidently measure their
conduct (67-68).
Man’s place in industrial culture is the theme of this
book. It is an account of the fragmentationof the ego and of
“the lost absolute which alone could hold those fragments
together” (115). Industrial culture means the weakening of
the great stabilizing and integrating forces of human exis-
Religious Stu
tence-religion, language; and labor. The
and artificial structures of technical civiliiati
ferent world, one which takes on the appearance of
“opaqueness”and “unreality” and lacks the stabilizing fea-
tures of pre-industrial culture. Gehlen offers several #ex-
planations for this. Modern industrial culture appears to
lack intrinsicjustification. Its institutions come to be seen as
human creations which can be made and unmade at will.
Further, these institutions exclude large numbers of people
from direct production while imposing on others functions
so indirect, complicated, and specialized, that mental and
moral integration is increasingly unfeasible. Due to the
complex and specialized activities of technical culture and
accelerated rates of technical change, there is the growing
sense that it is a domain at once inescapable, impenetrable,
and overpowering. And, because of this, there is no close
correspondence between what an individual does within
that culture and his view of what controls his world and the
circumstances of his life within it. Given this situation,
human behavior increasingly takes on the appearance of
“adaptation” where individuals can only reconcile them-
selves and their actions to conditions which appear unalter-
able: an adaptation “to spiritually meaningless, morally vac-
uous, and yet overpowering situations” (51).
Gehlen emphasizes a twofold character of the
technical-industrialethos. It is both “abstract”and “unreal.”
That is because it is a domain which is perceived to be
accessible through abstraction-mathematics and technical
symbols-and, therefore, a domain inaccessiblethrough di-
rect experience. This, Gehlen argues, fosters the loss or
attenuation of the sense of its “reality.” Simultaneously, a
“new subjectivism” (the title of chapter four) takes place
within the realm of private existence.
In the domain of the interpersonal, Gehlen argues, the
loss of traditional structures creates a situation where rela-
tions become “simplified”and “detached”from the rational
controls of public institutional life. The private domain be-
comes a place given over to immediacy and the expression of
emotion. This situation accounts,says Gehlen, for the pecu-
liarly modern tendency to psychological awareness and
self-absorption-the unprecedented explicitness and
directness of individual psychological states. Concern with
the private and the intimate can express itself symptomati-
cally through anxiety-anxiety about individual feeling,
identity, and the authenticity of one’slife and relationships.
Further, the new subjectivism-the emphasis on “inner
elaboration” and “psycho1ogization”-represents an at-
tempt to control a flood of stimuli that overtaxes our ability
to respond. It is as if confrontation with an unreal world, a
world devoid of meaning, turns the subject inward where
experiences are monitored in states of heightened aware-
ness and reflection. Subjectivism refers, then, to the re-
sponse of the subject to the growing sense of the “unreality”
of the public domain. It represents a fundamental trans-
formation of the human condition-namely, the develop-
ment of the psyche itself and the bifurcation of inner and
outer experience, of “self’ and “outside world.” As he ex-
plains in a later chapter, in such a situation a complex
psychological theory-psychoanalysis-acquires the stand-
ing of a world view. Philip Rieff described the appeal of
psychoanalysis in similar terms: Freud’s psychoanalysis de-
fended the private man against the demands of culture and

m the world (1979,
uwsm 1s also fos e “indeterminacy” of
the p&nt. One senses that current states and events are
not only. difficult to comprehend but are, in actuality,
beyond the reach of our presently constituted intelligences.
They result from “wholly heterogeneous components”;
there is something “objectivelyblurred about them. Events
share the property of allowing for conflicting judgments:
Is it war we are having, or is it peace?Do we have a fatherland or do
we not?Do we live in the era of socialism, or capitalism? . . .How do
you characterize a time when the socializationof feelings has pro-
gressed to an unprecedented extent, so that everybody agrees that
all sufferings, real or imagined, should be succored,and when, on
the other hand, the distances between classes grow objectively
greater? (Gehlen, 120).
The answers to these questions, Gehlen suggests, are arbi-
trary. Not because of the proliferation of ideologies and
viewpoints, but because many answers are equally correct.
..
T h e social psychological responses to this indetermi-
nacy are many. Individuals, lacking a sense of stability and
continuity, are more readily disposed to surrender passively
to their circumstances or to take from the constant stream of
ideologies-ideologies “hastily constructed and hastily
taken apart” (67). Related to this is the compulsion to form
opinions about events which resist our comprehension and,
in doing so, to rely on a type of thinking based on senti-
ments, associations, and magical formulas-each of which
favors simplification and overstates the orderliness of real-
ity. In forming ready-made opinions one is setting the world
in order and rendering it coherent. As Gehlen indicates, the
mass media aid in this for there is a technical necessity for
brevity in the presentation of “news.” In this case, brevity is
no longer the soul of wit but the vehicle of oversimplifica-
tion. In connection with these developments, Gehlen recalls
Ortega y Gasset who, in describing this characteristicof our
times, observes: “There is no reason now for listening, but
rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no
question concerning public life, in which [today’s average
man] does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing
his ‘opinions”’ (1932, 78).
“Primitivism” Gehlen describes as a counter-tendency
in modem culture, a response to abstraction. Primitivism is
represented in the return to concrete, stark, and strident
imagery. It appeals to an idea of humanity as something
formless and undifferentiated. Its imagery predates
civilized man and culture and rejects elaboration. Evidence
for primitivism can be found in art, architecture, and what
Gehlen refers to as “the cultural impoverishment of the
verbal expression of thought.” It can be found in the inabil-
ity to comprehend subtletiesof meaning and expressionand
to convey subtle conceptual distinctions. It is accompanied
by the urge to express oneself starkly, to simplify and vis-
1:&.No. 1J 982
hat is know m finds expressionh the
cultural preference for “sheer, irresistible effects,” fol
spare, minimal expression, and in the drive for practical
application. The dualism of abstract conceptualization on
the one hand and primitivism on the other is described b)
Gehlen as a factor influencing contemporary man’s innei
life, shaping his values, his interests, and his reason.
Gehlen’s treatment of the modem human condition
masterfully combines sociological and psychological ap-
proaches. As such, it provides an original social psychology.
At some points his themes parallel those of others engaged
in contemporary cultural criticism. Apart from the sociolog-
ical works already mentioned, those of Richard Sennett
(1974) and Christopher Lasch (1978)are especially relevant
to Gehlen’s. Like Gehlen, both of these authors examine the
impact of modern society upon consciousness and upon the
course of individual life.
Both Sennett and Lasch treat the phenomenon de-
scribed here as “subjectivism,” that turning inward away
from the world in order to concentrate on the cultivation of
the self and its inner life. This self-absorption, Lasch argues,
defines the moral climate of contemporary society (1978,
25). T h e popularization of psychiatric modes of thought
and instant therapies, the spread of the “new consciousness”
movement, the proliferation of techniques for self-help and
self-enhancement, all share “a quality of intense preoccupa-
tion with self’ (25).
It is here that Lasch‘s argument, despite its grounding
in Freudian categories, is most similar to Gehlen’s: narcissis-
tic self-absorption originates not in the assertion of person-
ality but in its collapse-in its inability to cope satisfactorily
with outside pressure. The new narcissism is the symptom
rather than the cause of the contemporary malaise. Our
self-absorption is rooted in the objectiveconditions of social
life and in our experience of alienation which these condi-
tions foster.
Narcissistic traits express ”a loss of ego, an invasion of
the ego by social forces that have made it more and more
difficult for people to grow up or even to contemplate the
prospect of growing up without misgivings bordering on
panic” (1979, 195). Both Lasch and Sennett revise the ar-
guments made by David Riesman in The tonely Crowd
(1950). Riesman argued that the transition from
nineteenth- to twentieth-century capitalism marked a fun-
damental change in the organization of the personality:
from the inner-directed type to the other-directed conform-
ing type of the post-World War I1 years. This personality
type was also described by others as the “organization man”
(William H . Wh yte), the “market-oriented personality”
(Erich Fromm), and the “neurotic personality of our time”
(Karen Homey).
Lasch and Sennett argue that narcissism characterizes
the dominant personality type of our time. Narcissism is
expressed in the urge to reveal and confide one’s most
private feelings. Evidence for it is drawn from the growing
body of clinical writing on the subject. Narcissistic traits
include “dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by
others combined with a fear of dependence, a sense of inner
emptiness, boundless repressed rage, and unsatisfied oral
cravings.” Its secondary characteristics include “pseudo-
self-insight, calculating seductiveness, nervous self-
 For Eric Voegelin
The philosopher Voegelin is among the
On His Eightieth Birthday
greatest and most controversial figures in
contemporary thought. Having left Germany
January3,1981
as an opponent of the National Socialist
regime, he laid the foundations for his own Edited by
international reputation in the USA.
As a philosopher he is nowadays placed in
Peter J. Opitz
the same class with such learned men as and Gregor Sebba
Toynbee, Jaspers and Collinggwood. As an 14 contributions in English,
opponent of National Socialism he soon 6 in German and 1 in French.
developed into a keen diagnostician of the 480 pp, DM 148,-
ideologies and mass movements of modem ISBN 3-12-9 15190-7
times. This led him to sketch out a compre- Available from
hensive philosophy which penetrates right Mary S. Rosenberg Inc.,
down to the deepest problems of the history 17 West 60th Street
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These are the problems dealt with in this
or your library supplier
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clough and R J. Lifion have contributed. D-6200 Wiesbaden
The essays presented here offer a systematic Fed.Republic of Germany
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schutz. 3
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 W
deprecating hurnor.’$The Darcissist has no strong sense of
self
_ _ and so anxiouslv relies on the esteem of others (Lasch,
1978, 33).
Lasch’s evidence includesboth the increasing rate of its
clinical occurrence and its -presence in less severe form
throughout society’= a whole. He finds it there in our loss of
belief in the reality a d meaningfulness of the social world,
in the prevailing passion to live for the self in the present, in
the loss of the sense of historical continuity expressed in a
waning sense of the importance of the traditions of our
predecessors and of posterity.
Despite the similarity of subject and certain points of
agreement, Gehlen provides a critique of any approach,
such as Lasch’s, which employs Freudian modes of analysis
for culturalcriticism: “Psychoanalysisworks well at the level
of the individual, badly at the level of the society.. . cate-
gories derived from the psychic existence of individuals
become oddly deformed and ultimately fall apart when one
tries to load them with contents referring to the collective
level” (Gehlen, 136).
From another standpoint, Gehlen would disagree with
the identification Lasch and Sennett make between the cul-
tural conditions they describe and the capitalist economy.
For Gehlen, the critical feature of our culture is its level of
industry and technique and not its economic base. His objec-
tion to psychoanalytic explanation would also stem from his
opposition to its portrayal of responsible individuals as
“mere objects”caught in a game of self-deception-“a game
where what ‘really’ goes on is very different from what
appears” (140). Furthermore, Gehlen argues that while
psychoanalytictheory mirrors the general conditions of the
culture within which Freud lived and worked, it is unable to
decipher its origins in the culture of technique. Finally, the
“triumph of the therapeutic” represents the view-one
which is morally and intellectually unacceptable to
Gehlen-that the ultimate meaning of human action is to be
found in egoistic intent.
Through Gehlen’s complex route it is possible now to
return to where this survey started and ask: What implica-
tions does Gehlen’s account of subjectivism have for religion
and personal identity in contemporary society? Berger and
Luckmann (among others) have already pointed out that a
serious threat to contemporary religion is to be found in the
separation between private and public domains of social life.
Religion itself, along with art and law, has become subjec-
tivized and, because of this subjectivizing process, its force
and scope have diminished. Religious contents are main-
tained in consciousness as “opinions” or “feelings.” Reli-
gious conceptions become the “private” affair of individ-
uals. Religion no longer refers to the cosmos or history, but
to individual Existenz or psychology (Berger, 1967,150-51).
The tendency of religious beliefs to be translated into con-
temporary ideologies of personalism, self-fulfillment, and
self-expression is another indication that religious beliefs
have been grounded in the private world of the individual
and have become associated with secular ideologies of “au-
tonomous” man. Privatization is expressed in the with-
drawal of individuals from the institutional moorings and
authority of religion. The significance of traditional doc-
trine and practice recedes as the importance of purely per-
sonal faith and religious commitment are inflated into a new
sensibility, a religious homo chusus. Traditional religious
each individual‘
sense, and harmful to personal health and well-being or, at
the very least, old-fashioned. It is as if traditional religious
faith is competing with the language and sensibility of a
post-traditional age and its psychological idiom.
Contemporary religion is also csaracterized by tradi-
tional religious movements: charis&iatic renewal, Pente-
costal revival, the rise of cults. Theit4 expressions have been
seen as reactionary responses to a secularistic situation in
which religious values have lost preeminence. These have
been regarded by some as an indication that religion has not
lost its significancein human society. Others have suggested
that these are superficial popular amusements or a new
means of escaping the crises of modernity. A final perspec-
tive holds that the contemporary fragmentation of life-
space into diverse functionally specific social roles has
created a diffusion of personal identity and has enhanced
the appeal of small groups which provide the only basis for a
holistic conception of self.
From the standpoint of Gehlen’s social psychology
these various forms of religious expression can be seen as
counter-tendencies-reactions to the increasingabstraction
and intellectualization of contemporary life. These
counter-tendenciesare represented in forms of primitivism
with their propensity for direct, simple, and emotional
forms of expression. A common feature of these forms of
religious expression can be said to be their personal and
emotional thrust whether found in personalistic versions of
traditional faith or in the return to intense religiosity. At
their center one finds the self, the locus of “reality” for
contemporary man. An important question, it seems, is
whether or not religious institutions will, despite them-
selves, encourage the tendency of individuals to retreat from
the public sector into an apolitical privatism, a conserva-
tive or emotional moralism, or what has been called a “cultof
man.” In this connection the issues of “subjectivism” and
“privatism” return as useful vehicles for contemporary
analysis, both in the sector of the profane and the sacred.
REFERENCES
BERGER, PETERL.
1967 The Sacred Campy. Doubleday.
BERGER, PETERL., BRIGITTE BERGER, and HANSFRIEDKEUNER
1973 The Homeless Mind. Random House.
LASCH, CHRISTOPHER
1978 The Culture of Narcisism. Norton.
1979 “Politics and Social Theory: A Reply to the Critics.”
Sdmugundi 46 (Fall), 194-202.
LUCKMANN, THOMAS
1967 The Invisible Religion. Macmillan.
ORTEGA Y GASSET, Josi
1932 The Revolt of the Masses. Norton.
RIEW, PHILIP
a1979 (1959) Freud: The Mind of a Moralist. University of
Chicago Press.
 u a y 1984
Public Man. Vintage.
*-
VSION OF THE DISINHERITED THE MAKING
OF AMERICAN PENTECOSTALISM
B Robert Mapes Anderson
dw York: Oxford University Press, 1979
Pp. 334; tables, bibliography, index. Cloth, $15.95
- Armed then with a set of historical tools that has, to say the
Reviewers: Grant Wacker and Timothj L. Smith
1 Pentecostalism.”
TAKING ANOTHER LOOK AT THE VISION OF THE
DISINHERITED‘
Grant Wmker
Universiey of North Carolina
Chapel Hill,NC 27514
A force,” the ‘“honest poor,”’ or, “as one Pentecostal put it,
Although social historians of the “sink and bathtub” variety
(as Perry Miller once put it) are not likely to disappear
overnight, there is little doubt that for the past twenty years
or so the new social history has been the cutting edge of
American historical scholarship. There is no hard-and-fast
definition of what constitutes the new social history, but by
and large it seems to entail at least three elements: quanti-
tative techniques, serious engagement with the behavioral
sciences, and a determination to illumine the underside
rather than the elites of society. Through the rigorous ap-
plication of statistical analyses and behavioral models, these
historians have done a great deal to rescue the ordinary men
and women of the past-as E.P. Thompson has phrased
it-from the “enormous condescension of posterity”
(Thompson, 1966, 12; for a fine description of the new
social history see James A. Henretta, 1979).
Robert Mapes Anderson’s Vzjion of the Disinherited does
not fit this mold exactly, but in general it is an attempt to
apply the methods, models, and aims of the new social
history to a relatively obscure corner of American religion.
Whatever else one may say about the book, it is, at the very
least, a sophisticated and awesomely erudite effort to trace
the roots of Pentecostalism* outward, into the social and
cultural setting of the early twentieth century, and back-
ward, into the long and tangled history of ecstatic, millenar-
ian, radically perfectionist religious movements.
Perhaps the clearest way to assess Anderson’s work is to
begin by isolating the interpretive principles he consistently
uses. Taken together, these principles add up to a tough,
bareknuckled argument that extreme social strain was the
mainspring of the Pentecostal movement that erupted in the
Southern Highlands, the lower Midwest, and in the Los
Angeles Basin between 1900 and 1906.
Starting at the most general level, Anderson simply
presumes a conflict model of social process. The struggle for
power and position dominates the story from beginning to
end. Second, he appears to follow contemporary Marxist
historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson in
the judgment that the industrial basis of modern Western
Religious Studies Review I 15
society is the main source of class stratification and class
conflict. Third, Anderson adopts a variatibn ofathe well-
worn theory of status anxiety ’ to account for persistently
symbolic and economically nonproductive religious be-
havior within the lowest stratum of the working class. On the
other hand-and this is the fourth interpretive principl-
he also assumes that whatever else religion may be, it is at
least this: a functional mechanism people use to adjust to,
and in turn reflect, their social and cultural environment.
least, seen heavy action on other fronts, Anderson under-
takes a radical reconstruction of the “making of American
“Pentecostalism,” he flatly asserts, “may be viewed as
one small part of a widespread, long-term protest against
the whole thrust of modern urban-industrial capitalist soci-
ety.” In the United States in particular it was “primarily a
response to the massive social dislocations of the late 19th
century.” By and large the people who turned to Pente-
costalism were three-time losers. In the first instance they
were economicallydisinherited, the “lowestbase of the work
‘the “scum” of society.’” In the second instance they were
victims of status disinheritance, drawn from the “very lowest
social levels,” their economic plight “exacerbated by their
generally low social status.” And in the third instance they
were culturally disinherited, exhibiting a “deeply-rooted,
underlying mood of profound cultural despair.” The typi-
cal leader was slightly better off (1 13), but overall, the ear-
liest Pentecostals were “economically, socially, culturally,
and even physically displaced and deprived” (223,153,225,
114, 151, 226, 224, 136).
Not surprisingly, these disinherited souls were filled
with “hatred for the existing social system,” but this hatred
was not aimed at its rightful target, the “capitalist class and
its surrogate, the state.” Rather, the “rebellious-submissive
character structure typical of their class found its ultimate
expression in submissiveness toward political and economic
authority.” Thus a “potential challenge to the social system
was transformed into a bulwark of it” (209, 221, 222).
The result was twofold. The first was a flight from social
reality to the comforts of ecstatic religion. Although some
Pentecostals continued to nurse aspirations for middle-class
status, “ecstatic religious experience became in large part a
surrogate for success in the social struggle.” The second
result was smoldering frustration, which often flared into
“extraordinary aggressiveness.” But this aggressivenesswas
directed inward, in “fratricidal warfare” with each other and
with other religious groups. In the end, “rejecting all secular
solutions to their problems,” Pentecostals settled for a “reli-
gious resolution that was almost wholly other-worldly, sym-
bolic, and psychotherapeutic” (152, 153, 154, 229).
This, then, is Anderson’s basic argument. The book has
many virtues, but it should be evident that subtlety is not one

thesis with a swashbuckling
of serious scholarship..We
***‘ ”
rn to this point, but first it is necessary to under-
s a d why the bookdearly is-and for a long time probably
will remain-the central landmark in the historiography of
American Pentecostalism.
At least three reasons come to mind. The first is that this
is the only treatment of the subject that deals with the full
spectrum of historical and behavioral questions in a manner
consistent with the highest standards of critical scholarship.
This is not to say that Anderson is the only player on the
field. Since the late 1950s third-generation Pentecostals
have been writing respectable-and in some instances
highly respectable-Ph.D. dissertations on various aspects
of the history of their own tradition^.^ Moreover in the
1950s and 1960s behavioral scientists who dealt with Pente-
costalism finally began to move beyond the tour-through-
the-zoo approach. Linguists launched a spirited argument
about the nature of tongues, while sociologists, an-
thropologists, and psychologists carefully analyzed the so-
cial, cultural, and cognitive scaffoldingof Pentecostal expe-
rience.* Anderson’s achievement is, in short, inconceivable
without the historical and behavioral research of the past
two decades. Nonetheless, he is the first to weave the strands
together in a single, sweeping interpretation of the origins
of the movement. It is not too much to say that he has done
for Pentecostalism what Ernest R. Sandeen has done for
fundamentalism or what William R. Hutchison has done for
Protestant modernism: established the standard that subse-
quent interpreters simply shall have to come to terms with,
one way or another.
A second reason why the book merits attention is the
range and depth of evidence Anderson puts on display for
the first time. As an ethnography of American Pentecostal-
ism the work is, quite simply, incomparable. Preeminent,
perhaps, is Anderson’s meticulous reconstruction of the
multi-ethnic composition of the movement in its earliest
years. H is findings undermine the recent tendency among
less careful historians to trace Pentecostal roots to an exclu-
sively Black subculture, but at the same time they also dis-
credit the contemporary PTL Club/700 Club image of the
movement as the exclusive preserve of well-coiffed, up-
wardly mobile WASPS. Another contribution of enduring
significance is Anderson’s dogged pursuit of the lives of
long-forgotten early leaders. Although much remains to be
done, his composite biographical portrait of the founding
generation is the first systematic attempt to pin down their
personality characteristics, cultural attitudes, and social
composition.
Finally, there can be little doubt that Anderson’s ideas
will force much of the conventional wisdom about Pente-
costal history back into the garage for retooling. Several
points here are especially worth noting. One is his revision
of the prevailing view that Pentecostalism was largely an
outgrowth of the Wesleyan holiness tradition. Anderson
argues instead that the Reformed version of holiness, with
its peculiar combination of emphases upon faith healing,
dispensational premillennialiim, and expectation of an
imminent worldwide holiness revival, was the principal
source of the eruption. Also coming under scrutiny is the
widespread but uncritical assumption that speaking in
tongues not only is, but always has been, the cornerstone of
Vol. 8, NO;EL/
Pentecostalism. impulsein the firstd
t tongues, nor even f a
but throbbing millenarianexpectation. It was only when the
Second Coming failed to materializethat tongues, perceived
as a more palpable token of the divine, became preeminent.
(It is worth noting, however, that this thesis is difficult to
square with Anderson’s parallel contention that as the
movement matured doctrine increasingly displaced ec-
stasy.) Anderson persuasively demonstrates, in any case,
that the Pentecostal understanding of tongues drastically
changed over the years. In time, but only in time, Pente-
costals wove an elaborate casuistry around the practice,
eventually making it the sine qua non of the “overcoming
life.” Finally, Anderson securely ties Pentecostalism to fun-
damentalism. In the light of his work there is little room for
the currently fashionable idea that early Pentecostals were
gentle children of the spirit, somehow lacking the conten-
tiousness and angular convictions of their fundamentalist
cousins.
All things considered, contemporary Pentecostals can
hardly find the book pleasant reading. This is partly because
the portrait is unflattering, but primarily because Anderson
demonstrates what every good historian instinctivelyknows,
and what every true believer instinctively denies: that the
doctrines and practices of Pentecostalism, like everything
else, are part of an evolvingsocial process. Anderson has not
spoken the final word, but even the most committed parti-
san will have to admit that he has marshaled the evidence
like a Philadelphia lawyer. For the honest Pentecostal, there
is no credible alternative except to meet him at the bar.
B
Earlier I intimated that Anderson’s work is marred by the
heavy-handed way that he hammers out (and hammers
home) his central argument. I am not suggesting that he
should be criticized for explicitly imposing an interpretive
structure upon a chaotic story, for until now the bane of
Pentecostal historiography has been what might be called
the Jack Webb conception of history: “Just the facts.’’ Nor
should he be criticized for the particular interpretation he
has selected. Indeed, the conviction that Pentecostalism is
best accounted for as a functional adaptation to social disor-
ganization or real or perceived cultural deprivationis nearly
universal in scholarly studies of the m o ~ e m e n tAnderson’s
.~
vulnerability lies rather in his persistent tendency to let the
argument get the upper hand. Ultimately the argument
becomes not so much a controllingmetaphor that organizes
the material as a steamroller that smashes through compli-
cations and crushes other plausible explanations.
One way to test the validity of what I shallloosely call the
strain thesis is to break it into its logical components: (1)
position, (2) anxiety, (3) change, (4) behavior. More fully
stated, it goes something like this. The lower class, with little
power or status, experienced anxiety because this class was
the victim of massive social change. For some, this anxiety
resulted in frustration and aggression until it was subli-
mated in purely symbolic and economically nonproductive
behavior such as Pentecostal religion (see Doherty, 1967).
The thesis has a credible ring, but does it hold up?
The initial component-disadvantageous position-is
the most defensible. Anderson and others have stacked up
considerable evidence that rank-and-file Pentecostals were
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“
drawn from the WO exactly where i
working class is no Anderson supposes. A
number of studie us from 1900 to 1970,
indicate that over stals consistently have
been found at the up f the working class, among
artisans and steady wage eafners, and occasionallyscattered
even into the lower middle dq,y (Nine, 1974,657; Martin,
1975, 191; Schwartz, 1970,44;’ 165, 179-80; Wilson, 1961,
99). Moreover, Anderson’s literary evidence strongly indi-
cates that the attitude of (white) Pentecostals toward
Anglo-Saxon superiority, trade unions, Bolshevism, and so
forth, was highly characteristic not of the lower working
class but of lower-middle-classWASPS. It is not evident to
me (nor, apparently, to Anderson) how this fits with the
multi-ethnic and heavily immigrant composition of the
movement. Nonetheless, it is not surprising. Enthusiastic
religious movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies in England and in the United States ordinarily flour-
ished among artisans and steady wage earners rather than,
as Anderson puts it, among the “depressed agrarian. . .
[and] struggling industrial proletariat” (136; see, e.g.,
Johnson, 1978, and Harrison, 1979,29,221). The issue here
is not trivial. Presumably we need to know exactly whom we
are talking about in order to know what functions a religious
movement like Pentecostalism performed.
The absolute position of Pentecostals on the social scale
was, in any case, less significant than their relative position.
In 1900 the scale still flared most broadly at or near the
bottom. Therefore, the pertinent question is, Were Pente-
costals discernibly poorer than the mass of working people?
Neither Anderson nor anyone else (as far as I know) has yet
offered hard data to prove that they were. But until it is
shown that the social position of early Pentecostalswas pecu-
liarly degraded, it is difficult to see what explanatory value
the notion of social position might have.
In addition to absolute position and relative position,
longitudinal mobility--changes before and after conversion
to the movement-must be considered. Pentecostal history
bulges with instances of persons of relatively humble origins
who became worldly-wiseand exceedinglyambitiousfollow-
ing conversion and affiliation with the movement. Sister
Aimee McPherson and Oral Roberts are highly visible ex-
amples of a relatively common Pentecostal personality type:
the self-aggrandizing world-saver. David Harrell’s recent
study of the big-time faith healers of the 1950s, for example,
lends considerable support to the hypothesis that over the
years Pentecostals have been spectacularlyadept at manipu-
lating disadvantageous social circumstances to their own
interests (Harrell, 1975).
Of course, continued research may prove beyond ques-
tion that early Pentecostals were distinctivelyand hopelessly
impoverished. If this turns out to be the case, then this is
i
r 7.t I
VoL 8, No. 1/January 1984
e.maze of radical reli-
English society in the
seventeenth and ei s was commonly atuib
uted to the “English Malady”-a widespread belief that
rainy climate and urban tension made Englishmen espe-
cially susceptible to depression, delirium, and finally, reli-
gious madness. This rather extreme example illumines the
underlying problem with most psychological explanations
for the eruption of religious enthusiasm: it is difficult to find
an age that was not filed with conditions that produced
what we now call anxiety. “Every age,” asJohn Harrison has
noted, “indulgesin theconceit that nervous disorders are on
the increase because of the complexity of its civilization.”6
Of course, the early years of the twentieth century
really might have been a time of unique stress. We shall
return to this issue shortly. Here the critical question is
whether the individuals who became Pentecostal were
prone to respond with exceptionalanxiety. There is no easy
way to answer this question for no one has studied the initial
cohort of convertsin aclinicallyrigorous fashion.’ It must be
acknowledged that Anderson’s extensive biographical por-
traits of the founding leaders yields a grim profile of harsh
upbringing, disease, and personal misfortune. But among
working people was this exceptional? Anderson obliquely
admits that it was not (265), and Robert Martin’s quantita-
tive analysis of the social composition of Southern Pente-
costalism between 1900 and 1940 also indicates that it was
not. Martin found that on a county-by-county basis there
was no si ificant correlation between the incidence of
Pentecosshurches and indications of anxiety such as di-
vorce or illiteracy.* Attempts to establish a psychological
profile of more recent converts are not particularly helpful,
for they have come to wildly differing conclusions.s All in all,
then, the most sensible thing to say at thisjuncture is that the
question is moot.
Much more nettlesome, in any case, is Anderson’s pre-
supposition that religious rewards were intrinsically less
satisfyingthan rewards of a more worldly nature. As critics
of Richard Hofstadter often pointed out, in order to make
the strain-anxiety-sublimation causal sequence stick, one
first has to show that Pentecostalsdefined themselveschiefly
in terms of their role in the social system. Being blocked at
the bottom of the class-status ladder, in other words, would
have generated anxiety only if a person really wanted to
climb the ladder in the first place (Lane and Ellis, 1969). But
for early Pentecostals this is extraordinarily difficult to
demonstrate. Indeed, Anderson effectively proves the op-
posite, for he shows that the typical convert evinced a life-
long trajectory of increasingly intense preoccupation, not
with social status, but with ecstaticreligious experience(1 10,
228).
It is true that early Pentecostals bristled with hostility
toward “D. D.’s” (dumb dogs) in the pulpits of the main-
stream churches, and they habitually called mainstream
seminaries “cemeteries,” and so forth, but it is hardly self-
evident that behavior of this sort was a sign of status anxiety.
If, in their heart of hearts, what Pentecostals really wanted
was power and esteem in secular society, one has to wonder
 that sponse to strain,
em-ange per- bolic dimate o f t
uedwhatthey called it the “p
ity”-a chill that left the system of
enemy of the histo- ideology, too brittle to absorb the s
atina of the obvious.” system.”
1s-ofhuman motiva-
tion that elude or even contradict the “actor’s”point of view anxi
often deepen our understandingof collectivebehavior. Still, in purely symbolic and economically.nonpwductive be-
the question persists. Peter Brown also admonishes us to havior. Here it should be noted that Alidersan moves the
remember that the historian is committed to explore the discussion into a different key. While functioxkd adaptation
dead “with sympathy, with trained insight, and with a large to strain was, as he interprets it, the movement’s immediate
measure of common cunning” (Brown, 1972, 19, 21). We cause, dysfunctional or maladapti
have to wonder, at what point is the historian obliged to take range effect. There is little reason to
his subjects’intentionalityas seriously as his own? Interpre- correct in claiming that the Social
tations that attribute religious enthusiasm to acute anxiety, Pentecostals were fiercely reactionary and ultimately had a
or to a more serious malady of the mind, almost always negative impact upon the larger Society, F5ut.i
reduce the enthusiast in some way. Accounts of this sort were confined to the working class, and e s P z a s l yif it was
effectively suggest that enthusiastsare not fully responsible the case that they were wedged at the bottom oftheworking
agents, that they do what they do not because they rationally dass, was the choice of “ex~emelyother-worldly refigion”
choose it, but because they are in some sense victims. This economicallY nonproduc~vefor Did it really fail to
diminishes the dignity of the choice and, more important, serve what he Calls their “real life intereStS’’ (227, 240)?
strips away accountability for the choice (Harrison, 1979, It is-or should be-needless to say that these are quite
217). different questions. For many people productivenessin the
The third component, massive social change, is open to social system and real life interests hardly mean the same
similar reassessment. When lookingat the United States as a thing. But even if we accept the question as it stands, does
whole, it is not obvious that the transformations in the first the evidence show that Pentecostalism deflected and dissi-
decade of the twentieth century were severe enough to pated the m ~ n d a n energies e ofthe Poor? Most attempts to
account for the timing of the conflagration. The period test the issue in a rigorous way unfortunately have been
from the first Bryan-McKinley election to World War I was limited to Post-WOrld war 11data. S d ~ a r t (1970,170-75)
z
relatively tranquil when compared to the immediately pre- concludes that contemporary Pentecostals do tend to get SO
ceding and immediately succeeding decades (Gutman, wound into the otherworldly world of ecstatic religion that
1976, 40-41; Nugent, 1977, 145-46; Thelen, 1969, 335). they lose a competitive interest- in workaday affairs.
Even so, let US grant the assumption. In many cases there Schwartz’s opinion is, however, exceptional. Much more
were, or seem to have been, unusual pressures in the par- common is the judgment that Pentecostalism, like most
titular regions where Pentecostalism got its initial toe- Protestant sects, socializesin middle-class values, facilitating
hold.’O rather than retarding upward mobility. Beyond this, as
The real problem here is that Pentecostalism im- countless studies have shown, the closely-knit nature of
mediately flourished in counties and regions that exhibited Pentecostal communities seems to have brought a large
few or fewer of the customary signs of social strain. The measure of stability to the lives of its members, including,
same is true of Pentecostalism’srecent rapid growth in the especially, those that are drawn from the ranks of the very
Third World, where it prospers in stable and traditional as poor.12
well as in rapidly modernizing areas (Martin, 1975, 130, C
133; Turner, 1970, 223, 226; Wilson, 1978, 100). An- It is worth repeating that Anderson’s general argument is
thropologists Gerlach and Hine go so far as to suggest (after not (except for the fourth component) unusual. The pre-
a bit of wavering) that movements like Pentecostalism grow sumption that Pentecostalism arose as a more or less func-
best when social bonds such as kinship networks are most tional adaptation to social or cultural disequilibrium has
secure (Gerlach and Hine, 1970, xxi-xxiii, 82-87, 194-95). acquired the status of an orthodoxy in the historiography of
All of this suggests that a more fruitful approach to the the revival-and I readily acknowledge that this interpreta-
problem is to ask not how much social strain was present, but tion of the data is not without merit. Nonetheless, if there
how it was controlled and rationalized. are nagging problems with each of the components in the
In searching for the origins of religious movements like argument, should we assume that they cumulatively
Pentecostalism, it does not help much to talk about “disaster strengthen one another? Or is it more plausible to suspect
and the millennium” unless we impose a middle term: the that the whole scheme is less than rigorously historical?
system of meaning-r what Gary Schwartz calls the “reli- There is another question, less subject to empirical con-
gious ideology”-that leads the true believer to construe firmation or disconfirmation, but ultimately more worri-
Socialsituationsin one way and not another (Schwartz, 1970, some. Succinctly stated, Anderson’s Pentecostals were dis-
1, 164, 224, 229). Differently put, social strain is likely to tressingly predictable. They were, from first to last, the
trigger a movement like Pentecostalism if the system of archetypical proletariat. Like a terra cotta army, they
meaning by which social strain normally is controlled and marched in lifeless stillness, precisely according to plan.
m h a l i z e d has in some way broken down. We are closer to This brings us to the heart of the matter. Nothing is
&themark if we think of Pentecostalism, not as a direct re- gained by trying to deny that Pentecostalism’kitrvivedbe-
t
 ncttonal. Obviouslv the movement would not
urished if it had not off&ed)as john >Harrisonhas’
1 such movements, a “fabric which held together
folk memories, the meaning of dailyjoys and suffering, the
hopesand expectations for the future” (Harrison, 1979,41).
A glance at the parking lot of a typical Assemblies of God
church suggests that Pentecostalism has afforded some of
the more tangible benefits of the Protestant ethic as well.
The point, rather, is that for the true believer Pente-
costalism shattered the smoothly beveled rationality of the
modem world. Functional adaptation to strain was only part
of the story-and the most obvious part at that. The propul-
sive force was deeper and murkier. Stunning healings, re-
peated claims of persons raised from the dead, glossolalic
ecstasy, and eschatological visions of every sort were the
stuff of daily life, the palpable elements of the really real.
This leads us to wonder, with Kenelm Burridge, if “those
supposedly hapless creatures of circumstances, people, re-
ally [are] 50 helpless?”The chaos and imaginative disorder
that stands outside the constraints and principles of the
social system is, in Bumdge’s words, undeniably the source
of the “noxiousand [the] destructive,”but surely it also is the
“fount of most of our becomings” (1979, ix-x).
Long after the computers have shut down and the
behavioral scientists have gone home, the real work of the
“new” social historian remains to be done: somehow to un-
derstand the dialectic between social forms and the private
lives inside. This means, among other things, that the histo-
rian who seeks to untangle the origins of a religious move-
ment like Pentecostalismis charged with the taskof showing
how plain men and women, locked into a particular position
in the social system, paradoxically invested their lives with
significance by discerning chaos in order as well as the
reverse. It may well turn out that the enduring significance
of the vision of the disinherited is that it flourished precisely
because it was so desperately out of step with the times.
NOTES
I a m indebted to Donald G. Mathews and Everett Wilson for
discussions that have helped me think about Anderson’s work in
the context of the general social origins of religious movements.
I shall use “Pentecostal” to refer to members of traditional
Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God and
countless, independent store-frontchurches. I am not referring to
the recent neo-Pentecostals of charismatic revival in the Roman
Catholic Church and in some mainstream Protestant denomina-
tions. The term “tongues,”which Pentecostals prefer, will be used
instead of the more technical word glossolalia.
Dissertations that have become books include Hollenweger,
1977; Kendrick, 1961; Menzies, 1971; Nichol, 1966; Synan, 1971,
1973. A sizeable number of dissertationshas now been written on
American Pentecostal history. Many are listed in Anderson’s bib-
liography. Four he does not cite which are especially useful are
Clow, 1976; Reed, 1978; Shropshire, 1976; Waldvogel, 1977. Two
important historical treatments that did not originate as disserta-
tions by Pentecostals should be mentioned. Bloch-Hoell, 1964, is
the outgrowth of a dissertation by a very scholarly but decidedly
unsympatheticNorwegian historian. Conversely, Conn, 1977, is an
able work by an amateur historian, a Church of God official.
’The behavioral literature on Pentecostalism may not be vast
but it is extensive. For a brief summary of the older literature see
Hine, 1969; for a much more extensiveand more recent summary
see McDonnell, 1976. Virtually every issue of the Journalfor thc
Scimtiii study of Religion
references relevant to-the
See,e.g., the critical s
1974, and, more generally, L a Barre, 1971.
6Harrison, 1979, 209, quoting Ida Macalpbe and Richard
Hunter, “The Pathography of the Past,” The TimesLitcrCrty SUM-
mmt,March 15, 1974.
’ The earliest clinical studies I know of (and even these are
largely impressionistic)are two articles by Boisen, 1939a, 1939b.
Martin, 1975,140. Martin’s general conclusions are, however,
somewhat different than mine.
* Some of this literature is summarized in Richardson, 1973,
and McDonnell, 1976,79-109; see also Hutch, 1980.
lo The most powerfully buttressed and eloquently argued state-
ment of this thesis I have seen is Barton, 1980, a paper given at the
annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 1980, and
forthcoming as part of a book-length study of religion and
working-class culture in America.
Davies, 1965,27; Anderson mentions (83-84, 214-15) but in
general severely minimizes the role of strain in the religious mean-
ing system.
lL Some of this literature is summarized in Dearman, 1974,438;
see also Bourguignon, 1965, 57. Anderson acknowledges that
Pentecostalism engendered the values of “passivity, obedience,
honesty, hard work, thrift, self-denial, and sobriety” (239). How-
ever, he characterizesthese as proletarian traits, which (except for
the first) I find simply inexplicable.
REFERENCES
BARTON, JOSEF
1980 “Pentecostalismand Rural Society in the Southern High-
lands, 1890-1950.” Paper given at the annual meeting of the
American Academy of Religion, Dallas, 1980.
BLOCH-HOELL, NILS
1964 ET The Pmtccostal Movement: Its Ongin, Developmm, and
fitinctive Character. London: Allen & Unwin (Norwegian origi-
nal, 1956).
BOISEN, ANTON T.
1939a “Religion and Hard Times: A Study of the Holy Roll-
ers.” S o d Action 5, 8-35.
1939b “Economic Distress and Religious Experience: A Study
of the Holy Rollers.” Psychiahy 2, 185-94.
BROWN,PETER
1972 Religion and Society in the Age ofsaint August&. Harper &
Row.
BOURGIGNON, ERIKA
1965 “The Self, the Behavioral Environment,and the Theory
of Spirit Possession.” In Melford E. Spiro (ed.), Context and
Meaning in Cultural Anthropology. Free Press.
BURRIDGE, KENELM
1979 Someone, No One:An Essay onlfidividualily. Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
CLOW,HARVEY KENNEDY
1976 “Ritual, Belief, and the Social Context: An Analysis of a
Southern Pentecostal Sect.” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University.
CONN, CHARLES W.
1977 Likc a Mighty Army: A History ofthe Church of God, 1886-
1976. Rev. ed. Pathway Press (Cleveland, TN).
DAVIES,HORTON
1965 ChristianDcoiations. Westminster Press.
DEARMAN, MARION
1974 “Christand Conformity: A Study of Pentecostal Values.”
Journal for the Scientijiu Study of Religion 13, 437-53.
DOHERTY, ROBERT W.
1967 “Status Anxiety and American Reform: Some AIterna-
tives.” American Quarterly 19,32937.
 Wadsworth and religious studies .
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22 / Religious stli Vol. &No., 1/January 1984

GERUCH, LUTHER
1970 Pe&C. Pow of Social Transfonnutwn. 1971 The Holiness P
Bobbs-Me;riil. Eerdmans.
GUTMAN, HERBERT G. 1973 The Old-Tim Reli&i: A History of the Pentecostal Holiness
1976 Work, Culture, and Society b Zndust?dizing America. Ran- Church. Advocate Press (Franklin Springs, GA).
dom House. THELEN, DAVIDP.
HARRELL, DAVIDEDWIN 1969 “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism.”
1975 All Things A k: The Healing and Charismutic Re- Journul of American History 56,323-41.
vivals in Modan A iana University Press. THOMPSON, E. P.
HARRISON, JOHN F. C. 1966 Making of the English Working C h s . Random House.
1979 The Second Coming: Popular Millcnarianism, 1780-1850. TURNER, FREDERICK C.
Rutgers University Press. 1970 “Protestantismand Pohics in Chile and Brazil.” Compara-
HENREITA, JAMES A. tive Studies in So&p and History 12, 213-29.
1979 “Social History as Lived and Written.” A d a n HistOkd WALDVOGEL, EDITHL.
R& 84, 1293-1322. ’ 1977 “The ‘OvercomingLife’: A Study in the Reformed Evan-
HINE,VIRGINIAH. gelical Origins of Pentecostalism.” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard
1969 “PentecostalGlossolal~:Toward a Functional Interpre- University.
tation.” J o u d for the S&nt#U Study of Religion 8, 2 11-26. WILSON, JOHN F.
1974 “The Deprivation and DisorganizationTheoriesof Social 1978 Religion in American Society: The Eflective Presence.
Movements.” In Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (eds.), Prentice-Hall.
Religious Movements in Contenrporary America, 646-61. Princeton WILSON, BRYAN
University Press. 1961 Sects and So&ty. London: Heinemann.
HOLLENWEGER, WALTERJ.
1977 ET The P&cost&. Augsburg Publishing House.
HUTCH,RICHARDA.
1980 “The Personal Ritual of Glossolalia.”Journalforthe Scien-
hyu Study 4 Religion 19, 255-66.
JOHNSON, PAUL E.
1978 A Shopkcepcr‘s Millennium: Society and Revivalr in Rochesh,
NEU YO&, 18151837. Hill & Wag.
KENDRICK, KLAUDE
1961 The PronicC Fdf&d: A Histoty of the Modern Pentecostal
Mouement. Gospel Publishing House (Springfield, MO). 2
LABARRE, WESTON
1971 “Materials for a History of Studies of Crisis Cults: A THE DISINHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS
Bibliographic Essay.” Cuwent Anthropology 12, 3-44.
LANE, W. CLAYTON, and ROBERT A. ELLIS
1969 “Social Mobility and Anticipatory Socialization.” P m f u Timothy L. Smith
SotMb@al RGUiRU 12, 5-14. Johns Hopkins Universig
MARTIN,ROBERTF. Baltimore, M D 21218
1975 “The Early Years of American Pentecostalism, 1900-
1940: Survey of a Social Movement.”Ph.D. dissertation,Univer- The broad favorable reaction to Robert M. Anderson’s Vi-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. sion of the Disinherited is readily understandable. Although
MCDONNELL, KILIAN judicious in tone, the narrative is frankly sympathetic. It
1976 Chu- Renewal and the Churches. Paulist Press. displays the results of wide reading in the sources of every
MENZIES,WILLIAMW. one of the many Pentecostal sects, as well as solid acquain-
1971 Anointed to S m e : The Stmy o f h e Assemblies of God. Gospel
Publishing House (Springfield, MO). tance with the extensive scholarly literature pertinent to the
NICHOL, JOHN THOMAS
subject. Moreover, Anderson carefully avoids affirming
1966 Pentecostdk. Harper & Row. either the general evangelical or the specifically Pentecostal
NUGENT,WALTERT. K. ideas and commitments the movement embraced. His inten-
1977 From C e n t e n d to World War: American Society, 1876- tion, he tells us, was to analyze “the making of American
1917. Bobbs-Merrill. Pentecostalism” from the point of view of both insiders and
REED,DAVID outsiders. T h e widespread approval of the volume seems to
1978 “Origins and Development of the Theology of Oneness me directly related to his fulfilling of this aim in a particular
Pentecostalism in the United States.” Ph.D. dissertation,Boston way: the evidence is drawn from insiders, and the interpre-
University. tations from outsiders.
RICHARDSON, JAMES T.
T h e facts of the narrative are in virtually every detail
1973 “Psychological Interpretations of Glossolalia: A Re- drawn from the contemporary writings and later reminis-
examination of Research.”J o u d for the Sci..tt#iu Study of Reli-
gion 12, 199-207. cences of American Pentecostals. It is a comprehensive ac-
SCHWARTZ, GARY count that deals evenhandedly with every major group,
1970 Sect Ideologies and Social Stutus. University of Chicago whereas previous writers have given preponderant atten-
press. tion to only one wing of the movement. Anderson includes
----- ,
psycho-historical or sociological explanations of religious
movements did not. All this constitutes a great advance over
previous studies.
Nevertheless, Anderson almost never tests the accuracy
ofthe accounts of insiders against the records left by outside
observers who, he argues, were closely associated with the
origins of Pentecostalism, namely, the radical Wesleyans in
the holiness movement, the spokesmen for the English and
American wings of the Keswick movement, and those evan-
gelicals (he does not identify them as Baptists, Congrega-
tionalists, and Presbyterians moving toward Fundamen-
talism) who had embraced Plymouth Brethren views of dis-
pensational premillennialism. He does not even consider
the possibility that the founders may also have drawn their
ideas about restoring the New Testament church order
from the Disciples or Churches of Christ, or their conviction
that charismatic gifts are always linked with the baptism of
the Holy Spirit, from Mormons. Charles parham’s millenar-
ian beliefs-notably that of the annihilation of the wicked
at death-seem obviously Adventist. A doctrine of the “fin-
ished work“ of Christ in the experience of the new birth had
long been used by Southern Baptists and Presbyterians to
oppose the Methodist emphasis on sanctifying grace. The
records of both a nearer and a largely unidentified wider
circle of non-Pentecostal evangelicals thus play no part in
shaping or validating Anderson’s narrative of events.
The outsiders whose interpretations and evaluations he
adopts are twentiethcentury scholars in biblical, sociologi-
cal, psychological, and historical studies. Most of these
leaned somewhat upon early anthropological studies of sur-
viving remnants of “primitive”religions. Their conclusions
were limited, of course, as are Anderson’s, to those they
believed scientifically valid. But the Pentecostals built what
was new in their understanding of Christian faith around
belief in a continuing miracle of ecstatic speech, whether in
earthly or heavenly languages, and around the expectation
of frequent miracles of divine healing, spiritual discern-
ment, and exorcism. Anderson’s massive use of twentieth-
century scholarship, therefore, sustains his flat rejection of
the authenticity of Pentecostal experiences of both ecstasy
and miracle. In the narrative, however, the authenticity of
the insiders’ reports of such seeming miracles is not an issue.
All that matters is the evidence of the character and extent
of their belief in them, and of the presumed source of that
belief: the psychic consequences of cultural or economic
deprivation.
The net result is a book which will on first reading seem
entirely satisfying to scholars in many fields. Its detailed and
respectful summaries of the testimony of early Pentecostals
will also make it attractive to the best-educated of their
modern successors. The latter will be especially pleased that
Anderson relies upon insiders’ evidence to resolve persua-
sively the major contradiction in previous Pentecostal his-
toriography, namely, the argument over whether its origins
lie chiefly in the Holiness or the proto-Fundamentalist
movements.
dorse. All this wou
fact to obscure major aspects
illumination of some minor ones.
Anderson’s opening chapter, entitled “The Charis-
matic Tradition,” raises this historiographic question sharp-
ly. He argues, first, that tongues-speaking, which most
would agree is the distinctive mark of -Pentecostal faith,
takes place in a trance-like experience of -ecstasy, or “an
altered state of consciousness.” Althou ’ h this denies what
B
modern Pentecostals themselves testi y a b u t the expe-
rience, it affirms what Anderson d a b ‘We consensus of
those historians, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians,
psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurophysiologists who
have studied the phenomenon.’’ T h e battery of big intellec-
tual guns he cites in the footnote to that statement is formi-
dable. But by appealing to such authorities he is able to avoid
the question whether many scholars who have studied the
phenomenon, including the ones he cites, were for reasons
of their own fascinated by trancelike states, and a bit eager to
place “spiritual” phenomena in categories which diminish
their religious significance. He also is able to ignore, as his
authorities did, the fact that in both the Hebrew and Chris-
tian scriptures, as well as in the long history of the use of
those scriptures by Christian and Jewish teachers, the pres-
ence and power of the Spirit of God-both in the commu-
nity of the faithful and in the consciousness of the
individual-was understood to brixig illumination to the
intellect and moral empowerment to the will, rather than an
altered state of consciousness.
One aspect of Anderson’s definition of tongues-
speaking seems certain to please Pentecostals. He rejects, for
the purposes of historical analysis, the distinction between
xmglossy (that is, a language unknown to the speaker and
some or all of his or her audience but known to some nation
or culture and intended for their conversion) and gbssorcllia
(that is, “tongues” which are no human language at all but
one or more heavenly ones, thought to contain a message to
earthlings whenever one of the believing hearers is granted
the gift of interpretation). “Speaking in tongues,” he writes,
‘‘isany vocalization uttered in an actual or imputed state of
altered consciousness that is attributed by some group to a
spirit or power other than the speaker.” Such an inclusive
definition protects Pentecostal belief from attacks by other
Evangelicals; for it ignores the apparent distinction between
the gift of instantly understood human languages recorded
in Acts 2 and the language of heaven that many Pentecostals
believe is the subject of the other New Testament passages
on tongues-speaking, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14.
Only a tiny minority of Pentecostals, however, will be
happy to find their conflation of these two events sustained
by a radically critical exegesis of the story of Pentecost pre-
sented in Acts. Anderson argues that all the fleeting refer-
ences to speaking in tongues in the New Testament refer to
glossolalia, that is, utterance while in asstateof altered con-
sciousness of a language unknown on earth. That phenom-
enon, he says, demonstrates the ecstatic character of the
 ’ tian community. He appeals at length, then, to rience of such faith stirred profound emotio
w Testament scholars who have suggested that .St. both the Old and the
story of Pentecost so as to depict a gift oE emotionswere expresse
guages in order to sustain St. Paul’s effort beauty and intellectual power.
to impose rational order and ethical discipline upon a wildly In Hebrew and Christian religion ecstasy, or
charismatic church. Such reasoning is hardly an option for rience of the Spirit, consists in an intelligible gras
modern Pentecostals, for it challenges their loyalty to the the will and the love of God, and a hunger to share them.
widespread Evangelicalbelief in the divine inspiration of all Although dreams, visions, and trance-induced physical be-
scripture. havior, such as King Saul’s lying naked all day long among a
Biblical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic do not group of unidentified Hebrew “prophets,”do appear in the
seem to have displayed significant interest in ecstatic utter- Old Testament, ecstatic utterance as an expression.of reli-
ance as a sign of possession by the Spirit until the news of the giousecstasy does not appear there at all; nor does it occur in
Pentecostal awakening broke upon America and Europe in the nonbiblical literature of the ancient Near East (Isbell,
1907. The movement arrived in Germany in 1908, during 1976). Moreover, the phenomenon of glossolalia appears
the same period when the study of comparative religions only rarely in Greek and Hellenistic texts describing-the
was provoking inquiry into primitive elements in early mystery cults. Only in the case of the crazed gibberish of the
Christianityand the Hellenistic mystery religions. Then, for Delphic priestess is the record unambiguously precise. What
the first time, biblical scholars began to consider the prob- was in the air in the centuries preceding the Apostolic age
lem St. Paul addressed in Corinth to be the disorderly use of was the notion that sexual ecstasy, practiced often amidst
the “language of angels” by persons in trance-like states, temple prostitution, and secret or mysterious knowledge,
rather than, as all had earlier assumed, the use in public used pragmatically for personal advantage, were signs of
worship of one’s mother tongue when most of the hearers the supernatural. This notion both the Old Testament
could not understand it. Those whose conclusions Ander- prophets and the New Testament writers opposed. The use
son quotes, such as Ernst Kasemann and Hans Conzelmann, by modern biblical historians of shreds of evidence to argue
have adopted this new interpretation, even at the cost of the pervasiveness of glossolalia in the Apostolic age repre-
altering the meaning of the word in 1 Corinthians 14:14, sents in fact, as Anderson’s book does, a pejorative evalua-
translated in the best modern versions as “unfruitful,” to tion of both primitive Christianityand of the modern Pente-
mean “empty” or “swallowed up.” Following them, Ernst costals who believe they have revived it.
Haenchen, as Anderson points out, argues powerfully that Similarly, the central thesis of Anderson’s book, dis-
the story of the miraculous gift of well-known languages at played in the title, is drawn from a modern sociological
Pentecost was “a later interpretation imposed on the event theory he apparently believes is so widely accepted as to
by the author of Acts” (23,n. 52). The ground of such make the demonstration of it, from evidence, unnecessary.
reasoning, of course, as of Anderson’sacceptanceof it, is, in The notion that ecstatic religion reflects the need for dislo-
his own words, the scientific belief that “the ability to speak a cated and disinherited persons to find a compensatory sense
language with which one has had absolutely no prior of identification with the divinewould not stand up very well
acquaintance” is “utterly incredible.” if tested by comparativestudy of the immense growth in this
century of conservative churches with little or no history of
ecstatic religion, such as the Churches of Christ, the South-
e m Baptists, the urban Fundamentalists, the Black Baptists,
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the Church of
Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Mormon expansion
has taken place without any revival at all of their early
interest in the gifts of the Spirit, including, though rarely,
that of unknown tongues. What Mormon missionaries of-
fered instead was a community of the saints that promised,
as did Pentecostal regeneration, both spiritual meaning and
temporal security, and citizenship in a kingdom that was to
come down from God and bring peace to every valley on
But the kind of “scientific” reasoning historians es- earth.
pouse does not sustain the use of these tiny pieces of ambiva- The Churches of Christ grew rapidly in many of the
lent evidence to make the New Testament testify that the same places where Pentecostals flourished: Roanoke, Nash-
experience of glossolalia, as practiced today, was wide- ville, Memphis, Little Rock, Houston, Los Angeles, and all
spread in early Christianityand the source of the confusion the Ozark towns. And they attracted the same social groups.
Paul was trying to restrain among the Christians at Corinth. Their preqccupation with the restoration of primitive Chris-
To do so is to ignore the centuries-longeffort of the Hebrew tianity, and hence with the New Testament, equaled that of
prophets-the most “charismatic”figuresof Old Testament any Pentecostal. But their beliefs and practices were the
faith-as well as of Jesus and his apostles,including St. Paul, antithesis of Pentecostalism. They thought premillennial-
to make understanding the faithfulness of God the intelli- ism a twentieth-century heresy. They stressed free will and
gible ground of the experienceof trust which opens a repen- free grace as intensely as any Wesleyan, and made obedi-
tant heart to the Spirit of God. In both the old and new ence to Christ’s commands the only sure sign of salvation.
covenants, the Holy Spirit is the bringer of Shalom-of wis- Yet the experienceof conversion among them was an affair
dom, holiness, and healthy relationships. That an expe- of the mind, which occurred when sinners were convinced
 Religious

'nd, on rational have been obsessed with thennotion.

has set forth;
ve also that a study of the ide
Black Baptists, white Naz
ntists during the same periodiof time would
likewise rein in the easy equation of marginality and ecstatic
Celigion. The faith of Adventists in both scripture and the
visions and prophecies of Ellen G. White never impelled
them, or her, to seek the gift of tongues. Their concern for
ical healing, comparable in intensity' to Mary Baker
pressed itself in vegetari foods, and
ssing spiritual ecstasy to e and intelli-
gible devotion is, after all, a widespread reJigious concern,
especially evident in the nineteenth centyry among Wes-
leyans, Quakers, New England Transcendendists and New
School Presbyterians. It was also pervasive in the Jewish
mysticism Gershom Scholem has taught us to understand.
Indeed, the second of the two New Testament passages
which are the bedrock of Pentecostal teaching concerning
unknown tongues, 1 Corinthians 12-14, spells out the p i -
macy of ethical love in the religion of Jesus and St. Paul.
Anderson's neglect of the testimony of other con-
temporary Evangelical movements stems partly, I think,
from his audience. American historians and sociologists
Christianitywas divided between plu
monolithic Fundamentalism. In :fat
rejected modernist theologies form
gelical movements much broader and more varied than the
three which this book pays attention ro,:namely,
mentalists, Radical Wesleyans, and Pentecostals.~,
For example, conservative P
sects-Scandinavian Lutheran And
Calvinists, and German Lutherans,
souri Synod-grew by leaps and bounds in the Uppe~. Mid-
west. Professor Anderson pays considerable attention to the
conversion to Pentecostalism of immigrants and @eir chil-
dren, noting, I think very usefully,>that&nguisticdisabilities
helped to prepare them psych
guage of unknown tongues. But he
of Protestant immigrants. Equally alienated from%he older
American population, and divided by their faith frorqltheir
countrymen who were Catholic, Orthqdox, or Jewish,!they
found peace and belonging in congregations that kept alive
their memories of homelands far away. These also nuptured
spirituality while providing friendship, order, and aids to
advancement in America. But their members preserved a
rich heritage of liturgy and dogma, while coping with
economic disinheritance by skillful farming or hard work in
mines and factories.
Students of immigrant religion have also been im-
pressed by the theories of deprivation and disinheritance
which Richard Niebuhr summarized in the mid-1920s. To
their great surprise, however, computations of employment

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At your h k s e U e r or fiom

dincame, educational “achievement, and home
:‘and thelevidence of lay leadership of ethnic
ons revealed remakkable degrees of middle-class
aspifition a n d achievement among immigrant groups
whose &cent arrival and perceived status seemed to place
them among the disinherited. Such studies have raised deep
questions whether an analysis of “class,” particularly when
based upon traditional models, sheds much light on the
cultural or religious behavior of new immigrants. This
should prompt readers of Anderson’s book to consider his
failure to make or report close analysesof the social status of
persons who joined early Pentecostal congregations. Only
by such studies could he have established the validity of the
widely-held view that they were disinherited saints.
I What all such analyses require, moreover, but often do
dot provide, is a comparative study of the apparent social
status of the members of neighboring congregationsof con-
W t i n g belief and practice, such as Kenneth W. Under-
wodd provided long ago in his illuminating account of
Holyoke, Massachusetts. Would the use of city directories to
trace down the occupation of members or leaders of the
pioneer Pentecostal Holiness Church in Nashville show a
different configuration than that of the community who
belonged to one of the newly-founded Churches of Christ in
that city? Were Black Baptists in Memphis demonstrably less
“disinherited” than those who joined Elder C. H. Mason’s
Church of God in Christ? Only when we know the answers
to such questions can we really judge the matter fairly. But
Anderson has been able to present his generalizations con-
fidently because they fit so closely the preconceptions of the
scholarly community.
The adequacy of deprivation theory would also be
more readily questioned, I think, in a volume which came
forward in time so as to include the charismatic movement
that has grown so extensively since 1957 among Roman
Catholic, Protestant Episcopal, Lutheran, and other “old
line” Protestant communions. The experience of speaking
in tonguekamong them may not be “ecstatic” at all, in
Anderson’s sense of that word, as it generally is not among
second- and third-generation Pentecostals. Nevertheless,
glossolalia, healing, spiritual discernment, and other kinds
of what they call the “gifts of the Spirit” are clearly signifi-
cant elements in the fellowships that unite charismatic be-
lievers in home Bible studies, prayer conferences, and reli-
gious rallies. Clearly, the leadership of the Catholic phase of
the movement is firmly in the hands of priests and bishops
and members of the Benedictine, Holy Cross, and Jesuit
orders.
A decisive difference, of course, is the fact that persons
in the charismatic movement remained members of their
original congregations. They have participated more heart-
ily than ever in sacramental rituals, declaring that their
rediscovery of the spiritual realities that lie beneath the
rituals have made the Christian religion more deeply sig-
nificant than before. The older Pentecostals, by contrast,
appear to have sprung up among the most radical of reli-
gious firebrands, in communities where the historic con-
straints of order and ritual had almost disappeared.
Nevertheless, the intensity of feeling with which Cardinal
Archbishop Suenens of Belgium and thousands of Roman
Catholics stood alongside Black and white American Pente-
costals and charismatics in the Kansas City stadium two
Vol. 8, No;r l ./Januaiy1982
summers.ago to pray, sing, and speak.
unknown tongues is uncontestable evide
ecstasyof glossolalic praise has a powerful appeal to h-.
dividuals of all social and economic backgrounds.
Turning to a different theme, Anderson seems to
minimize and certainly does deprecate the Pentecostal em-
phasis upon faith healing. He acknowledges that it was an
important part of their belief system, standing alongside
unknown tongues in the earlier period as a sign that the Last
Days were drawing near. His evaluation and interpretation,
however, is drawn quickly but decisively from scholarly
“outside” studies carried on by persons who scarcely needed
proof to convince themselves or their readers that real mira-
cles do not take place in the actual world.
Anderson’s discussion makes no significant reference
to the earlier growth of popular Protestant interest in divine
healing, as exhibited in Christian Science,in the teachings of
some of the missionary and evangelistic “faith” movements,
and, more recently, in staid Lutheran and Episcopal par-
ishes. He seems not to realize that the leaders of both the
Wesleyan and the Keswick holiness movements in America
and England resisted for a long time the idea of making
faith healing a central part of their teaching, although many
on the fringes of both movements had wished to give it a
larger place. In view of the groundswell of public interest it
seems likely that the Pentecostal declaration of the universal
availabilityof healing through faith was an important draw-
ing card. It certainly helped confirm their vindication of the
biblical idea of the miraculous. The similar preoccupation of
the early Mormons and of their contemporaries, the Lon-
don Irvingites, is worth recalling at this point.
Would not reference to the centuries-longattraction of
faith healing to Roman Catholics also enrich our under-
standing of the Pentecostal appeal? Here, certainly, stu-
dents of Pentecostalism need to ponder the rapidly expand-
ing scholarly literature concerning popular religion in
Europe, England, and America in the past four centuries.
The social historians of France have added much to our
knowledge of these matters, notably Natalie Z. Davis and
A. N. Galbern. Keith Thomas’ Religion and the Decline of
Magic is significant both for what it says and does not say
about the relationship between the two. But certainly one
could explain the attractiveness of a healing-oriented
Protestantism to Roman Catholic immigrants from Central
Europe as much by reference to their traditions as to their
social dislocation. Moreover, the immense preoccupation of
middle-class Protestants with healing ministries in recent
years would suggest that even in the absence of such a
tradition the promise of a great tide of physical healing in
the Last Days is compelling to any who can be persuaded to
believe that the Bible sustains it. Ironically, such a belief
seems also to flourish amidst the declining certainty of
heavenly hopes. The escalating fear of death that RobertJay
Lifton has posited in our times may have contributed more
than we have recognized to a desperately“religious”quest to
prolong life on earth.
Finally, I question whether the narrow interpretative
frame upon which Anderson wove this book would have
been possible if a broad interest in comparative develop-
ments in England and on the continent of Europe were
, regarded as prerequisite to sound scholarship about Ameri-
can religious history. For example, a misinterpretation of

ovement,” borrowed from Ernest
study. Sandeen concluded, incor-
ment empha‘sized premillen-
W i n e healing, and the notion that the
ch for holiness, as Wesley
rk and witness. In fact, how-
r 1900, the managers of the
liate conferencesand pub-
lications refused to allow millenarianism, divine healing, or
g,emphasis upon spiritual gifts to be presented under their
auspices. The reason 4 clearly spelled out in their publica-
dons: they wished a b p e all to declare the promise that the
fullness of the Spirit would bring about personal holiness.
Some American evangelists who were greatly influ-
enced by the Keswick movement but who had no standing in
the English network, such as Dwight Moody, ArthurT.
Pierson, and R. A. Torrey, did trace out in what is now
‘thought of as “Calvinistic” fashion the notion that Pente-
costal grace brings charismatic “power.” Confused by this
fact, Anderson uses the word “Keswick” ambiguously,
sometimes referring to the “Keswick-holiness”movement
and at others to “Keswick-fundamentalist” ideas. Keswick
was in fact the English version of the American holiness
movement, though most of its leaders observed the hairline
distinction that separated them from Wesleyans. Proto-
Fundamentalistsin America borrowed their emphasis upon
being filled with the Holy Spirit but not their commitment to
holiness. When, a bit later, Pentecostals began to vindicate
unknown tongues by similar stress upon God’s communica-
tion of divine power to believers, the American Keswickians
saw the connection being made with their teachings and
renounced Pentecostalism.
Anderson’s neglect of the Pentecostal awakening in
Europe, however, is \his own responsibility. Several impor-
tant studies have analyzed the several English Pentecostal
sects whose history precisely parallels that of the American
ones. And Nils Bliich-Howell chronicled the Scandinavian
and German movements in copious detail in 1964. Depriva-
tion theory has been applied to their origins and growth as
well, and their debts to the holiness movement on one hand
and the Plymouth Brethren on the other explained. No one
has had the temerity to link the English movement to the
decaying strength of Mormonism in the Midlands, and
perhaps there was no such link. But the study of Irish
Catholic piety in that region’s industrial towns certainly
offersparallel examplesof the relationshipof the process of
modernization to the revitalizing of old traditions.
Exceedingly useful background to the study of such
questions appears in John F. C. Harrison’s recent volume,
The Second Coming. Ranging over English millenarianism in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he shows that the
ideas, piety, life-style, and ethic of persons preoccupied with
Judgment Day reflected widespread popular beliefs, nearly
&of them drawn fromone or another long-heldinterpreta-
tion of scripture. Rather than describing millenarians in
terms of either class or deprivation theory, Harrison de-
dares that their beliefs reflected pervasive human concerns:
with guilt and its resolution in repentance and forgiveness;
with death and the hope of eternal life; and with the desire
,for godliness. -
i4
i*
Harrison’s study, like many in recent years, draws upon
growing body .of historical and anthropological scholar-
Re!li&d&iilie~ Review / 27
y Wallace made Chief Hand-
some Lake a symbol of the capacity for renewal in primor-
dial faith. Such a revitalition brings people anchored to
traditional patterns of thought into the modem world, se-
cure in the belief that the essentials of their “old-time reli-
gion” are alive and well. This is precisely what Max Weber
perceived to be the function of the Hebrew prophets and
what Robert: Frykenberg has concluded was the impact of
Christian mis’sions upon Hinduism in South India.
Pentecostal denominations in America ministered to a
rural population which, whether trying to hang on in the
countryside or-accepting a new life in the city, was under
immense pressure to accept great changes in belief and
behavior. Their leaders did not content themselves with
holding their converts within the old patterns. With the
Fundamentalists, they popularized a new scenario of the
future of the world and of Christians. They declared that
the Last Days had begun in the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon a tiny gospel mission in Los Angeles. This con-
viction legitimized many new departures in theology, reli-
gious experience, and church order. It drew together com-
munities of persons who, as happened later in Brazil, Chile,
and Columbia, found their conversion and fellowship to be
a means of social and economic advancement-if nothing
more because the moral disorder that once afflicted them
had been healed by disciplineand divinelove. Their sense of
the “fulness of the Spirit” was not simply a compensatory
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2 4

Fosdickand Mathews ha

was soon to come.

But that was also the way ich conversion was
perceived among new recrvi hes of Christ, the
Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, the
Seventh-Day Adventists, the Southern Baptists, and the
Nazarenes. Indeed, the exhortation of St. Paul that Chris- come to terms with
tians must cultivate m y-or as we today would
one another, and endure p as to insure the death
would heap upon them,
If Christianity, “while the I millions are desperately
ity,” answers with “a sys-
patterns of other times”
1 be abandoned. To the
n, one was bound to
uman society and to
, .

tive a successful revitalization of religious ideas that have How little change it would require to make these statements
permeated Hebrew culture ever since Moses led the fully contemporary!
Exodus, and have inspired Western Christendom ever since The situation in which we would reappraise liberalism
St. Paul wrote letters from a Roman prison. is, of course, very different from‘theone that originally gave
rise to the classical liberal themes: Certain battles seem to
REFERENCES
have been won decisively: the theological legitimacy of bibli-
I cal criticism and the historical-critical method generally; the
ISBELL,CHARLES D. recognition that the formation of both biblical ideas and the
1976 “Originsof hophetic Frenzy and .&static Utterance in history of doctrine are-relativeto historical and social con-
the Old Testament World.” Wesleyun Theological Journal 11 text; the acceptance of a much more complex relationship
(Spring),62-80. . I . . L a
:I.%.*<..

than was once common between -original creedal or doc-

trinal formulation and contemporary theological statement
THE MODERNIST IMPULS AMERICAN and the willingness, therefore, to entertain a much more
PROTESTANTISM flexible attitude taward doctrinal restatement today; l the
By William R. Hutchi sodial relevance of the gospel, indeed, its necessarily social
Cambridge, MA,and h n d form. Gone for good also, we can.hope, are some of the
University Press, 1976 attitudes and formulations which informed constructive lib-
Pp. xvi + 547. $15.00 eral efforts: the doctrine of progress, an overly optimistic
conception of human nature and a generally Pelagian locat-
ing of the human problem either in ignorance and error or
Reviewer: Charley D. Hardwick in man’s “lower” or “animal” nature; a simplistic and naive
The A k a n Univerdy notion of God’s cultural immanence; and the confident
Washington, DC 20016 expectationof the realization of an earthly Kingdom of God
as a human achievement. Merely to mention these elements
In the present disarray of theology, we need-and can is to realize how commonplace criticism of them has become.
surely expect-a serious reappraisal of liberal theology,not Hutchison’s book has the value, however, of making us
merely as an historical artifact but as a movement with realize how serious and lasting were the concerns that the
something to teach us theologically. At one point near the liberals, however defectively, voiced in these ways. Indeed,
end of The Modernist Impulse in Anmican Protestantism, Wil- the real long-term effect of the neo-orthodox criticism of
liam Hutchion provides as good.a reason as any for this these elements in liberalism may turn out to be less an
expectation. Discussing the strange alliance which emerged overturning of liberalism itself than a recognition of the
in the 1920sbetween fundamentdist and humanist critics of dilemmas any truly modern theology must share with it.
liberalism on the question whether [iberalism could really Preeminent among these dilemmas is the problem of
claim to be Christian, Hutchison g&s on to present the religious language, not merely the problem of myth as iden-
liberal response. He shows how among other things such tified by Strauss and Bultmann but a broader, more nu-
liberals as Shailer Mathews anced problem which is ultimately nothing less than the
could not legitimately be ch question of theological foundations itself. The liberals
about human nature and recognized very clearly that .the problem of religious lan-
How then [i:e., without a human o guage is the problem of theological foundations (the mean-
offer liberal solutioris?To a ing and status of “revelation,” for instance, could no longer
tempt tcreqnter the‘world o be taken for granted). Their solution was to see theological
 here is the issue which gave rise to
r. deepest scorn: What
n” to play once we have
need to reconstruct theological foundations?
e cannot have the easy liberal confidence in
4jadaptlonism (rooted, of course, in the doctrine of pro-
gress), this lack of confidence does not make the problem
simpler for us but far more difficult. The same situation
exists with such other liberal preoccupations as the unique-
ness and finality of Christianity or the problem of finding a
proper mode for conceptualizing God’s immanence once
the rise of the natural sciences has pretty much undone the
traditional distinction between God’s primary and second-
ary causality. Finally and in certain ways a summary of all
these is one stressed by Hutchison: the need the liberals felt
to overcome a pervasive Christian “otherworldliness” and
hence their various attempts ‘‘to renounce long-standing
categories of ‘religious’and ‘secular’*’ (1 1) and to find ways
of thinking that would not force them into such
dichotomies. Once we have seen how commonplace the
standhrd criticisms of liberalism have become, we are in a
position to recognize how the need for a reappraisal is
grounded in such systematic questions as these which still
bedevil us. The nature and value of its contribution to this
task is, in any case, the framework within which The Modern-
ist Impulse in American Protestantism needs to be evaluated.
In this light, Hutchison’s book will doubtless be com-
pared with Kenneth Cauthen’s The Impact of American Reli-
gious Liberalid which has established itself as the standard
work in the field. Cauthen’swork deservesits reputation not
merely because of the general excellence of its expositions
but especially because of its theological self-consciousness. by Jerry H.Gill
Writing within the shadows of a still vital neosrthodox
theology, Cauthen succeeded in focusing a fundamentally This fresh perspective on post-critical philosophy
sympathetic analysis by a well defined set of theological and its implications concentrates on a new
issues which was just different enough from the liberals’ understanding of our knowledge of God. Gill
own theological concerns to illuminate them in interesting identifies and analyzes the chief characteristics of
ways. He also developed in rich detail a typology of perva-
sive liberal preoccupations (continuity, autonomy, and critical philosophy, consolidating the new
dynamism) which he then related to each thinker. To be directions of such widely diverse post-critical
sure, Cauthen’s book suffers from several shortcomings. Its thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, the later Wittgenstein,
person-by-person exposition-one of its strengths-means and Polanyi. This is a serious challenge to critical
that there is little sense of historical development or general rationalism that falls into neither a romantic, pre-
social and intellectual context. There are also too many critical position nor a nonrational existentialism.
places where Cauthen’s typology of liberal preoccupations Paper $9.95
and his own theological framework lead him simply to sup-
ply descriptionsof achieved positions instead of providing a Order from your local bookstore.
detailed analysis and evaluation of the philosophical and
theological arguments which the liberals found convincing.
There is, finally, another problem which Hutchison himself
uses to highlight the distinctiveness of his own effort.
THE
I have already indicated how valuable Cauthen’s
theological point of view was, especially when>employedas
WESTMINSTER
sympathetically as he used it. At the same time, as indeed
Cauthen’s title belies, this procedure will bias an historical
PRESS
925 Chestnut Philadelphia,PA 191.07.
Street, ::.* .‘ ‘ i
discussion in the direction of an evaluation of theological j I.

Consequences. According to Hutchison, this is in fact the

effect of Cauthen’s seemingly innocent yet now fairly stan-
 the
n in
some Torm as normative and sought to adapt it to modern
culture, and the more radical “modehistic liberals,” who
made modern science or aspects of modern”culture norma-
tive and then redeemed what would be saved of the Chris-
tian tradition. For Hutchison, this disti
struing modernism too narrowly and serves less the value of
historical recovery than of theological evaluation. On the
one hand, “few, if any, Protestant liberals-modernistic or
o t h e r w i s 4 e n i e d normative status to Christ and to the
Christian tradition” (8). On the other hand, most of the
liberals, including Cauthen’s evangelicals, were concerned
to adapt Christianity to modernity and, even more impor-
tant, self-consciously sought to undercut the antinomies
implicit in distinctions between revelation and science or
culture. Thus, Cauthen’s distinction (and his discussion in
general) begs the historical question of what the liberals
themselves thought they were doing (cf. 7-9).
Hutchinson sets out not to beg this question. Good
historian that he is, he wants to tell the historical story
without prejudice to what the actors involved thought they
were doing. To bring the story into focus, he distinguishes
“modernism” within liberalism as a whole because he be-
lieves this version of liberalism was, in its explicitness, dis-
tinctively American and the most important impulse within
American liberalism (vii, 6). Hutchison defines modernism
as a cluster of three closely related ideas: adaptation (“the
conscious, intended adaptation of religious ideas to modern
culture”), cultural immanentism (“the idea that God is im-
manent in human cultural development and revealed
through it”), and a religiously based progressivism (“a belief
that human society is moving toward realization [even
though it may never attain the reality] of the Kingdom of
God”)(2). His point is that many versions of liberal theology
made no reference at all to modernity, and some (e.g., most
transcendentalism) were explicitly hostile toward it.
He begins with the early and ambivalent stirrings of
modernist liberalism in the mid-nineteenth-century Unitar-
ian movement, shows its early versions in mainline evangeli-
cal Protestantism in the 1870s through the gentle influence
of Horace Bushnell and F. D. Maurice, and then its flower-
ing into a mature and deeply pervasive movement (called
“The New Theology”) in the 1890s (chs. 3 and 4, pp. 76-
144). In the rest of the book, Hutchison traces the ebb and
flow of the modernist cluster of ideas in a series of chapters
dealing with such themes as the emergence of self-criticism
from within a now confident liberalism, the surprising note
of social crisis in liberal thinking quite prior to the First
World War, the impact of the war itself, the alliance between
fundamentalism and humanism in their criticism of
liberalism in the 1920s and the demise of the modernist
temper under the impact of events and the criticism of an
emerging American neo-orthodox theology.
What particularly marks Hutchison’s book is his com-
mitment to a certain kind of intellectual history. He seri-
ously attempts, that is, to tell the story of a cluster of &a.
The real actor in his narrative is neither persons nor even
really a movement or a social formation. It is this cluster of
ideas. Hutchinson makes his commitment to this method
explicit e co otslighting the
social d f.). mention that it
also results in a dearth of de
analysis. This followsfrom hi
and their; theological work
some detail, and there is some theologi~alanalysi
excellent discussion of Lotze and Ritschl, 122-32). but these
are always narrowly focused on one or another aspect 6f the
modernist impulse. What Hutchison tries to do instead is to
take soundings within the thought ofsparticularindividuals
in the interest of capturing a set of problems, issues, trends,
and clusters of ideas characterizing the general modernist
impulse at a particular time. The result is thus something
like a “character-sketch”or a Gestalt of a set of ideas within a
specific time-frame (say, the decade of the nineties) or prob-
lem situation (say, the impact of the First World War).
Hutchison is very skillful with this technique, and ceF;
tainly it has its advantages. There is, for instance, a much
stronger sense of historical development than in Cauthen.
The procedure is especiallyeffective in conveying the diver-
sity and richness of liberal thought. This is, indeed, the
primary achievement of the book. Despite the generally
“optative mood” which did characterize liberal thought
(186-93), for example, it is difficult to maintain the stereo-
type, after reading Hutchison, that liberal thinkers univer-
sally maintained an unambiguously optimistic account of
human nature. There was simply too much diversity, too
many reservations, too much realism, and too great a sub-
tlety for such stereotypes to hold up any longer.
At the same time, Hutchison’s method occasions very
severe problems which ultimately make his book disappoint-
ing. Because he abstracts from both the social dimension
and sustained theological analysis and because the focus on
modernism prevents him from providing more than snip-
pets of exposition of particular thinkers, his discussions of
periods in the development of modernism too often lack
context in the broadest sense and read simply like catalogues
of opinions. For much the same reasons, Hutchison cannot
avoid conveying a sense of arbitrariness concerning the
specific persons or themes he chooses to discuss. Because he
does succeed in providing a certain loose Gestalt of the
modernist impulse within given decades, there is, to be sure,
a kind of internal, retrospective justification given by the
success of his sketches. But time and again the reader wants
to know whyjust this thinker, or controversy,or problem, or
essay is the crucial or representative one. What were the
options? What was the larger theological context that jus-
tifies Hutchison’s choices? Hutchison’s method results, in
other words, in a curiously static kind of intellectual history,
for while there is cumulatively a sense of historical develop-
ment, there is little sense of historical causality (assuming the
rich meaning this can have in the best intellectual history).
The same commitment to telling the story of a cluster of
ideas also inevitably occasions problems with Hutchison’s
thematic concepts. As I have indicated, he is at pains to
distinguish a modernist cluster of ideas within a broader
liberalism. It is certainly true that certain historical examples
of theology that made no special appeal to modernity can be
called liberal (e.g., various Enlightenment attempts to
ground religion in reason); it is also true that a great deal can
be said about liberalism, including its modernistic versions,
that requires no mention of the modernizing interest (e.g.,
the christological emphasis of most liberal theology). But
liberalism as a theological movement has come to be iden-
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n Religious L k d h

THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY IN ENGLISH

that theology must always take care to adapt its message to Members Of thecoptic Gnostic
changing time and place 9rsomethhgas radical as the claim Project of the Institute for Antiquit and Christianity
that modernity itself carried religious meaning or was the James M - and i eneral Editor
form of religious revelation. A whole spectrum existed be- Sari Francisco: 8c lg7’
tween these extremes. There were, for example, several ‘P. xvi 4- 493* $*Osg5; paper (1981)*$9.95
varieties of the less innocent but still quite different position
that modern culture requires serious revision of traditional Reviewers: Robert A. Kraft
religious concepts. In themxial gospel movement, on the Univers$ of Penmylvania
other hand, it was comyon to appeal for adaptation to the Philadelphia, PA 19104
very best in modernity and then from this platform to call
for the most serious opposition to elements in modern cul- Janet A. Ti&
ture (i.e., for non-adaptation). At those points where Hutch- A k a n Univers$
ison is most self-conscious, he seems to indicate that mod- Washingtab, DC 2001 6
ernism ought to convey the ,mostradical meaning of cultural
immanentism, but he ‘fails to alert to and carry his reader For three decades, tantalizing bits and pieces, rumors and
through the full theolo@~~significance of the much wider reports, snippets and;etlitions relating to various portions of
diversity that telling the story uncovers, and one suspects the “new Gnostic d s“ at Nag Hammadi (or Cheno-
that his commitment to the story rather than to sustained boskion) in Egypt d the appetites of students of
theologal analysis is what accounts for this fadure. In any early Christianity and late antiquity. Relevant publications
case, the result is a confusion of varied opinions which are competently and conveniently chronicled in D. Scholer’s
makes the overall discussion of modernism less valuable bibliographies. Now, for the first time in any language, a
than it otherwise might have been. complete corpus of provisional translations is available
Hutchison’s book is, nevertheless, helpful for the story thanks to the considerable efforts of James M. Robinson
it tells. As I have indicated, he is very skillful with his chosen and the Coptic GnosticLibrary Project team of more than 30
method. He effectivelyalerts us to the diversity and richness scholars working through the Claremont (California) Insti-
of liberal thought, and the book provides a readable, easily tute for Antiquity and Christianity in cooperation with UN-
accessible orientation to .+e general flow of liberalism in ESCO and the Arab Republic of Egypt. This volume (NHL)
America over a one-hunared-year period. One may also dramatically marks the presence OE a new era of research
hope that it will help sti te that historically and theologi- into early Christianity and its world(@,providing as it does
cally self-consciousrea al ofliberalism that it portends. access through translation to a Wealth of new materials
At the very end of his book, Hutchison provides an exceed- hitherto not even fully available to specialistsin Coptic. This
ingly nice statement of why we ought to expect it: volume also celebrates completion of publication of the Fac-
simile Edition of the codices (NHC 1972-79) and will be
Liberalism at its best had asked the church and its people to say followed by major editions (with appropriately full intro-
what they really believed, and then to make moral action consonant ductions, translations, notes, indexes, etc.) of the various
With belief. It had asked Christian theology to accept realistically tractates, to published in the series s s Hammadi
~ ~ ~
the entanglement of religion in culture, and to make the best of Studies” (NHS) under the &*The Coptic Gnostic Li-
that circumstance. “Proclamation”was not to be a substitute for
ethicalperformance; nor was the church to assume too eas’llythat it brary” (CGL; six volumes were in print by the end of 1980;
had actually achieved a critical or prophetic detachment from the See Pearson’s review of NHS 11). Whatever criticisms are
larger society. Candor on such a point had been greatly encour- leveled against the volume under review-and it is ex-
aged and facilitatedby progrehive faith, and more easily achieved tremely vulnerable by its very design a~ the “provisional”
in that ambience. But whatekG’ih; initial incentives, liberalism results-ofthe loosely coordinated efforts of a large number
 _-
ts it pr6viaes to its surprisingly
The task of mediating this sc
arious ramifications to the various
formidable. It is difficult simply to s
manner the c m of this ancient
verse and ’often frustratingly obscu
readers who are moderatel
Christian literature and its
the relatively uninitiatedf). To
attempt to place it all in the
came for persons interested i
ancient philosophies and religions
religion, psychology of religion, an
gigantic and frustrating task, but a
We will make no attempt to do it all, bufW1tend to focus on
the things with which we feel relativdf’
namely, early Christian literature and history (treated here
especially by Kraft) and, in particular, early Coptic Chris-
tianity (especially by Timbie). Observations about the
broader context of discussion will be incluaed when they
seem appropriate. Fortunately, the interesg! ‘beginner can
now obtain a great deal of reliable and attractivelypresented
additional information (verbal and visual) by consulting or
obtaining Robinson’s 1977 general introduction and the
1979BiblicalArchaeologist fascicle devoted to Nag Hammadi.
THE MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY INFOVATION
EXPLOSION IN THE STUDY OF EARL‘Y JUDAISM AND
CHRISTIANITY: NAG HAMMADI AND QUMRAN
At approximately the same time (1945-46) as a youthful
Bedouin in then Jordanian Palestine was throwing the peb-
bles that shattered a concealedjar and launched the discov-
ery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) near the site of Khirbet
Qumran, Egyptian fellahin searching for fertilizer at the
base of a rocky cliff near Nag Hammadi on the river Nile
north of ancient Thebes uncovered the jar containing the
thirteen papyrus books now known as the Nag Hammadi
Codices (NHC). Together, the DSS and NHC already have
directly or indirectly revolutionized knowledge of and at-
titudes toward Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-
Roman world-and will continue to do so as they continue to
be studied. In each instance the new discoveries provided
actual writings produced by long extinct groups about
which historians had only secondhand knowledge through
reports by outsiders-and, especially in the case of (at least
part of) the NHC, by vociferous opponents. Whether with
reference to Judaism at the time of Jesus and Paul (prior to
the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the rising ascendancy of
“RabbinicJudaism”) or Christianityat the time of Aqiba and
Jehuda ha-Nasi (the especially formative second century),
we have learned to take quite seriously the increasingly
evident fact that no satisfactory understanding of the de-
velopment of these respective religious traditions is possible
without careful attention to inner diversisy of thought and
practice. In this context, a resurgence of historical analysis
on the study of the polemical expressions of persons
a n d communities in conflict has flou
%Ggnergeschich#e;or perhaps A
.‘J ‘
continue to undergo s
not look exactly as it once
better focus, others have
scale today.
Despite the (mostly obvious) similarities between the
DSS and NHC discoveries, there are important differences
as well (see also Robinson, 1977b, ii-iii, for a somewhat
overly dramatic comparison). The DSS were not all found
together in one place, at the same time, are not all written in
the same language (Hebrew predominates, but Aramaic
and even Greek occur), and include a much larger range of
materials (biblical and “pseudepigiaphic” alike, as well as
some “new” texts) in much larger quantities-and often
much more fragmentary condition-than the NHC. In
terms of physical format, the DSS are written mostly on
leather rolls or individual sheets-they predate the period
in which the modern book format (“codex”) was developed
on a wide scale-while the NHC are early examples of
papyri codices all written at approximately the same time
(350-400CE) in the Coptic (mostly Sahidic) form of the
Egyptian language. Probably all of the 40 or so writings
collected in the NHC were translated from Greek, while
most of the works in the DSS originated in the same lan-
guage in which they have been preserved (primarily He-
brew). In the nearly 35 years since the respectivediscoveries,
a flood of publications has appeared, including transaip-
tions and facsimiles of many of the extensively preserved
texts (for DSS bibliography, see Burchard, LaSor, and Fitz-
myer). Various English translations of the best preserved
texts from the DSS are available (Burrows, Gaster, Vermes,
Dupont-Sommer),although it will still take years for all of
the DSS materials to reach English readers. Despite a “later
start” in terms of public accessibility, the relatively more
restricted,physically more integrated collection of NHC has
now outstripped the DSS in this connection.
The story of the Nag Hammadi discovery has been told
many times, with whatever fragments of information and
conjecture happened to be available. But it is best heard, in
terms of accuracy and completeness, from James Robinson
who, through tenacious detective work during the past de-
cade, has uncovered and pieced together most of the relevant
 6dktudies Review
reader. His more under discussion a
detailed-narrativesin the issue of BibZiCat
oted to the Nag Hammadi discoveries
(1939):are preferable.
vin W.Meyer, Managing Editor of the project, in his excel-
lent preface to the volume, “The NHL in English seeks to
provide within the scope of a single volume, English transla-
tions of the Nag Hammadi tractates. To these English trac-
tates have been added very brief introductions, so that the
readers may become aware of the main features and issues
to be noted within each tractate” (x). Technical sigla for
indicating damaged portions of text, etc. have been simpli-
fied and kept to a minimum. Only one index is provided,
listing proper names. Identification of biblical allusions and
parallels within the respective translations is sporadic and
infrequent. Where more than one copy of a particular writ-
ing has been preserved in the NHC, only the “best” copy is
translated. On the other hand, careful attention is given to
providing a precise means of identifying individual writings
and passages which does not depend on the page numbers
of this particular edition. Thus NHL can be used as a schol-
arly tool in conjunction with the NHC Facirnile Edition, the
NHS/CGL editions, and other relevant publications since it
clearly designates the Coptic page and line for any given
passage as well as the location within the NHC for any given
writing;.e.g., a quotation from Homer occurs near the end
of The Exegesis on the Soul (codex 11, item 6, p. 136 of the
codex, lines 27ff. of the page in the codex); scholars, one
hopes, will resist noting that this appears on p. 186 of the
NHL\, but instead will follow the lead of the NHL index and
list “IU6.1S6.27ff.” or something similar (Robinson prefers
11, 6:136, 27ff.). Standard abbreviations for the names of
the various writings are provided by MacRaein his excellent
IDB Su@!enunt article on “Nag Hammadi” (1976); it would
have been helpful had these abbreviationsbeen reproduced
also in the Table of Tractates in the NHL, xiii-xv.
In his twenty-five-pageintroduction to NHL, Robinson
deals briefly with three general topics: (1) “The Stance of
the Texts,” (2) the actual manuscripts, from their contents
to their copyists, and (3) the history of the discovery (see
above). The report on the munuscri~&is extremely well
presented (10-21). Robinson argues convincingly that the
jar’s “library” is probably not a library at all, at least in the
sense that all the NHC was commissioned and copied as a
unified effort. The twelve codices (plus 8 leaves, but no
covers, from a thirteenth), containing a total of 52 writings
(46 different writings, since 4 are duplicates and one is in
triplicate; see below and the general list above), are not
uniform in externals (e.g., covers) nor were they copied by
the same scribes, as Robinson notes on p. 15. The leather
cover of codex VII was stiffened with discarded materials
(letters, etc.) dating from the mid-fourth century, and other
such material from the covers seems to associate the manu-
facture of the codices with the Pachomian monastery that
existed h .the fourth century not far from the site of the
ficance of this fact for reconstructing the
Egyptian (Pachomian) monasticism is still
whom they were written. Even the points of view diverge tQ
such an extent that the texts are not to be thought ofas
coming from one group or movement.” The point at w&&
the word “library” seems to have relevance for describing
the materials is neither in terms of origins of particular
writings nor in terms of the scribalactivity that produced the
preserved manuscripts, but only with reference to whatever
was responsible for depositing and burying this collectionof
texts in thejar in which it was found. Unfortunately,it iseasy
to lose sight of this fact and to impose a false homogeneity
upon the NHC which not only may distort the attempt to
understand the original meaning of particular passages and
writings preserved therein, but may also produce a highly
misleading reconstruction of fourth- and fifth-century
Egyptian Christian history in particular and of the tensions
between Christian “orthodoxy” and “heresy” in general.
One of the major temptations-and major potential
pitfalls-in working with these new materials is to accept as
one of the relatively fxed points of research a picture of
orthodox/heretical theological developments drawn from
the major Greek and Latin authors who were involved in
such discussions and whose pertinent writings have been
preserved in the “orthodox” trajectory that ultimately pro-
duced Western medieval Christianityand its Eastern Byzan-
tine counterpart. This view presupposes that the
heresiologists such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus,
Epiphanius, and Jerome are sufficiently representative of
Christian opinion throughout the areas into which Chris-
tianity had reached by the late fourth century to be useful as
approximate guides and that the same sorts of issues that
concerned them were also of concern to their Christian
contemporaries. With such assumptions, one considers it
enigmatic to find apparently overtly “gnostic” materials re-
ceiving sympathetic use by anyone other than “gnostics”or
related “heretical/heterodox” groups or individuals, In
many instances this sort of assumption may indeed prove
correct. But it deserves to be tested in each instance with as
much care as possible if we hope to derive maximum benefit
from the new discoveries.
Fortunately, Robinson’s careful work with the NHC
helps present this problem in bold relief-the covers of at
least some of the codices are associated with monks, and it is
dear that Pachomian monastic communities, which tradi-
tionally have been considered “orthodox,” existed in the
Nag Hammadi area in the mid-fourth century.’ But the
contents of many of the treatises in the NHC are far from
“orthodox” by traditional standards. What is the explana-
tion? After discussing as unpersuasive other possible solu-
tions’(the NHC were-written to record and thus combat
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the later monastic&m that recorded the legends about the
earlier period” (18). Robinson goes on to argue that there
may have been a certain looseness of (theological)control in
the Pachomian monastic situation which permitted a great
deal of diversity of outlook among the monk-hermits.
Athanasius’ Easter letter of 367, which was issued in slightly
different forms in Coptic as well as in Greek (whether
Athanasius himself was bilingual and was himself responsi-
ble for both forms is worth further consideration; or were
the Coptic users responsible for the translation, and for its
variations from the Greek?), and the violent opposition of
Shenoute to his “pagan” opponents several decades later,
may be understood as attempts to bring the situation under
more firm control. Thus the NHC may have been “buried in
the jar for safekeeping, perhaps for posterity” (20) by a
hermit (or group) who cherished these writings and feared
their confiscation and ultimate destruction.
..
Robinson’s presentation makes considerable progress
in the direction of a satisfactory understanding of the Chris-
tian world from which the NHC derive but is still not suffi-
ciently critical of the assumptions we inherit or sufficiently
inductive and circumspect about what the availableevidence
from Coptic (monastic) Egypt seems to suggest. On the one
hand, there is little in the preserved traditions about the
origins and early development of Coptic Egyptian monasti-
cism (Antony, Pachomius, even Shenoute) to suggest that
philosophical-theological concerns were the touchstone of
community acceptance. “Orthodoxy” in that sense seems
not to be a major issue in and of itself, although it may
become an aspect of a more widely based conflict situation
(especially with Shenoute). Much more in focus as water-
sheds of “orthodoxy” (or is it “orthopraxy”?)for the emerg-
ing monastic communities were matters of loyalty to God’s
human authorities-the archbishop, the local leadership
(“holy man”)-and perseverance in wrestling with the an-
tagonistic demonic world. By the beginning of the fifth
century, a militant monasticism had developed under
Shenoute in the Nag Hammadi area which attempted to
take social control of the area as well by suppressing or
eliminating serious rivals (“pagans”). There is little evidence
of theological self-consciousness even here, except as part of
the larger context concerning authority and conflict. When
literature is mentioned in relevant late fourth- and early
fifthcentury stories, letters, and so forth, it tends to be
biblical/canonical. But our sources of information are rela-
tively few and limited in representation. All of this would
tend to confirm the possibility that a “Pachomian” monastic
s) could have“owned the NHC, but it
burial“ of the NHC need be used as
In and of itself the ques how the NHC came
to be buried is a relative1 r hardly worth the
space we have devoted considerably in
importance when one e the extent to
which the presumed “gnostic” connection insinuates itself
into and tends to dominate discussions of the NHC. This is,
unfortunately, even true at the level of the choice of a series
title for scholarly publication of the material: “The Coptic
Gnostic Library.” Why use “gnostic” here? As Pearson
points out in his review of the most recent volume in the
series:
The tractates included in this volume represent a great variety of
religious milieux. Some of them are clearly Christian-Gnostic
works.. . . Some of them are certainly Christian not necessarily
Gnostic.. .. Some of them are Gnostic and probably not Chris-
tian. .. .Three of them are of Hermetic origin.. .. I have already
referred to the text from Plato’s Republic. Thus we have in this fine
volume a significant amount of primary source material for the
study of Christianity, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Greek phi-
losophy in late antiquity, and particularly the phenomenon of
late-ancient syncretism (1979, 252).
Why call the NHC ‘ ‘ g n ~ ~ t i ~Presumably
’’? because at one
period in the history of scholarly discussion about the NHC
the word “library” suggested enough homogeneity that ev-
erything in the NHC, plus some related materials, could be
painted with the same “gnostic” brush. But now that “li-
brary” is seen to be a very w e d designation, if not entirely
inappropriate, and to refer only to the monk-hermit (pre-
sumably)who for some reason collected the diverse codices,
how is it “gnostic”?Although Robinson and his collaborators
seem to know better, users of the NHS/CGLmaterials will be
forced to fight this “gnostic” ghost (not to mention the
“library”ghost) in this overt form as a series title as well as in
innumerable more subtle ways.
Indeed, Robinson himself has scarcely been successful
on this front, despite his careful attention to the diversity of
materials (content) and of format in the NHC. While he
acknowledgesthat the texts do not come “from one group or
movement” (1; see above), he postulates that “these diver-
sified materials must have had something in common which
caused them to be chosen by those who collected them” (1;
italics added). He then explains, quite arbitrarily:
The focus that brought the collection together is an estrangement
from the mass of humanity, an affinity to an ideal order that
completely transcends life as we know it, and a life-style radically
other than common practice. This life-style involved giving up all
the goods that people usually desire and longing for an ultimate
liberation. It is not an aggressive revolution that is intended, but
rather a withdrawal from involvement in the contamination that
destroys clarity of vision (1).
The assumption, from the outset, would seem to be that
there is at least a hermit-monastic ideal behind the materials.
Given the probability, as Robinson argues later (17f.), that at
least some of the codices were produced in close connection
with the Pachomian monastery, presumably by monastics,
we would expect the writings to be in some way useful to the
 into a vague “gnostic” environment:
m e point of the Nag Hammadi library [sic] has been battered and
fragmented by the historical process through which it has finally
‘cometo light.. . .The ancient world’s religious and philosophical
waditions and mythology were all that was available to express
what was in fact a quite untraditional stance. Yet the stance was too
radical to establish itself within the organized religions or
,philosophicalschools of the day, and hence was hardly able to take
,advantage of the culture’s educational institutions to develop and
darify its implications. Gnostic schools[sic]began to emerge within
Christianity and Neoplatonism, until both agreed in excluding
them as the “heresy” of Gnosticism. Thus meaningful and elo-
quent myths and philosophical formulationsof that radical stance
became in their turn garbled traditions, reused by later and lesser
authors whose watered-down, not to say muddied, version may be
most of what has survived.
If we have read these presentations correctly, Robinson
begins by denying any clear sociological homogeneity (in
terms of groups/movements) to the texts in the NHL, argues
that the (presumably fourth-century Pachomian monastic)
collectors found some focus in the texts, then proceeds to
talk as though the NHL actually derived from some original
unity (“stance”) that was somehow associated with “gnostic
schools” and came to be badly garbled and diffused in the
process of transmission. T h e ghost of a “Gnostic Library”
seems to haunt this rhetoric!
East West Enric rnent
.
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paper 314.95
THE UNKNOWN CHRIST
OF HINDUISM
Completely Revised and Enlarged Edition
By Raimundo Panikkar
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themselves with the problem of how to communicate the
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At bookstores, or from
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answer to the human dilemma, an attitude towaFd *iety, h a t is
worthy of being taken quite seriouslyby anyone able and willing to
grapple with such ultimate issues. This%& stance has until now
been known almost exclusively through the myopic view of
heresy-hunters, who often quote only to refute or ridicule. Thus
the coming to light of the Nag Hammadi library gives unexpected
access to the Gnostic stance as Gnostics themselves presented it. It
provides new roots for the uprooted (3; italics added).
This is very confusing. T h e “something in common” attrib-
uted to the NHL on p. 1 as the reason why the codices were
collected by their most recent users in antiquity-a “focus’’
which has “much in common with primitive Christianity,
with eastern religions, and with holy men of all times” (1)-
has now become “the Gnostic stance.” I n the context of the
heterogeneity of the collection and its rather artificial
characterization as a “library,” this discussion can only be
described as premature, arbitrary, and potentially mislead-
ing. We have materials that presumably appealed to an
ascetic Christian “stance” and were copied in that frame-
work. What the original “stance”of each text may have been,
and how each particular text came to be transmitted and
preserved in this specific form, and came into relationship
with the other texts in its codex, requires more careful
detailed analysis and should not be prejudged by means of
the “gnostic library” generalization.
Times (London)
EASTERN PATHS AND
TH E CHRlSTlAN WAY
By Paul Clasper
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most significant issues of our day, ecumenism among
world religions.”-Catholic Library World.
paper 35.95
THIRD-EYE THEOLOGY
Theology in Formation in Asian Settings
By C.S. Song
“An extraordinary treatise on spirituality in Asian cultures,
discussed from the point of view of the Christian Gospels,
in an attempt to help Christians discover ‘fresh insights into
how God i s at work in nations and peoples alien to western
Christian culture.”’-Inner Paths paper $9.95
..
 view
subsequent discussion in Robinson’s
of the texts” has less to do with the
more to do with Robinson’s own
terests, and includes an extremely
provocative thumbnail sketch of Christian history (3-6).
Robinson then briefly states the case for the existence of
“forms of Gnosticism”in late antiquity “outside of Christian-
ity,” including ‘‘Jewish‘‘ and “Samaritan” forms, and even
argues that “it is not inconceivable that such a Christian
Gnostic movement as the Sethiansmay simply be a Christian
outgrowth of a Jewish Gnostic group” (6-7). He does not
seem to notice that if one takes seriously the possibility that
some Christian gnostic groups developed directly from exist-
ing pre-Christian Jewish gnosis, one need not postulate that
early Christianity went the route of nongnostic Jewish
apocalyptic which then was gradually transformed in a
gnostic direction. Indeed, one could even recreate the his-
torical Jesus as a Jewish gnostic (rather than a “synagogue”
apocalyptic)and see nongnostic Christianity as an attempt to
bring Jesus and his movement into a more conventional (as
things worked out) Jewish trajectory.
But to return to our immediate problem-the
homogenization of the tractates preserved in the NHC into
a concrete “library” with a “gnostic stance”-listen again to
the subtle progress in Robinson’s presentation. By p. 9, he
no longer hesitates about questions of unity/diversity or of
relationship to groups/movements, but states rather di-
rectly: “The Nag Hammadi library seems to have been col-
lected in terms of Christian Gnosticism.” It all sounds very
straightforward, very concrete, until the reader finally
learns (9-10) that for Robinson, “Gnosticism” really is not
necessarily to be understood as a group or movement in the
normal sense:
Gnosticism seems not to have been in its essencejust an alternate
form of Christianity. Rather it was a radical trend of release from
the dominion of evil or of inner transcendencethat swept through
late antiquity and emerged within Christianity, Judaism, Neo-
platonism, the mystery religions, and the like. As a new religion it
was syncretistic, drawing upon various religious heritages. But it
was held together by a very decided stance, which is where the unity
amid the wide diversity is to be sought.
It is no doubt thisstunce, rather than the myths and doctrinesof
the texts themselves, that explains the association of the Nag
Hammadi library with Christian monasticism, where the with-
drawal from the world into a commune [sic] in which utopia could
be anticipated was strikingly similar to the Gnostic way of life. . . .
Interesting-and confusing. The presentation has come full
cycle from the “focus” of “estrangement” in a hetero-
geneous collection of texts through a discussion of the
“gnostic stance” in all its variety as an authentic variation on
the “original stance” of Jesus and his earliest followers to a
firm connection between the “gnosticstance” and Christian
monastic perspectives. Only then does Robinson reveal that
the “library”is not really a library in any demonstrable sense
(see above), but preserves “at least three smaller collections”
(15). Would it not have been more helpful to begin with the
ascetic-monastic connection and work backward through
such stages as the grouping of the codices, contents of each
codex,$transmission and translation of each text in Coptic,
pre-Coptic form@)of each text, and finally the derivation
and composition of the originals?Then the entire endeavor
‘would ”not be-forced to find ways in which its presumed
:Val.
“gnostic” pedigree could be ex
might not even need to have a
general. And we could get on
open to what the new materia
various aspects of the develo
various environments.
From this perspective the designati
usefulness-the hint of homogeneity it suggests needs to be
laid aside in favor of close attention to the v
spective, tradition, and approach that clearly existed even
within overtly “gnostic” circles, not to mention less clearly
defined “dualistic” and/or “ascetic” groups. For discussions
about the origin of the individual writings, nothing should
be presupposed about unity or homogeneity among these
works. Indeed, there is probably less homogeneity in NHL
than in other similarly artificial collections of writings from
early Christianity such as “The New Testament’’ (grouped
by the ancients)or “The Apostolic Fathers” (a more modern
grouping) or “The Apocryphal New Testament” (also mod-
ern).
THE COPTIC CONNECTION
The most immediately and directly relevant context in
which the texts of the NHC deserve discussion is early Cop-
tic literature. Very little is known with any confidence about
the conditions under which Coptic-speaking Christianity
developed and the directions it took in its early develop-
ment. Because of its commitment to the “gnostic” connec-
tion, NHL actually takes an extra step toward providing a
wider basis for discussing early Coptic Christianity by in-
cluding two Coptic treatises not attested in NHG-a Go5peZ
of Mary and an Act of Peter (NHL, 471-77). The justification
for this is that these additional texts are preserved in Berlin
“Gnostic” papyrus codex 8502 (from the fifth century)
along with copies of two other treatises found also in the
NHC-Apocryphon of John and Sophia of Jaw Christ. The
partial duplication of NHL texts in BG 8502 thus provides a
somewhat arbitrary and “formal” catalyst for expanding the
coverage in NHL in the direction of a fuller collection of
noncanonical (by traditional standards), nonpatristic early
Christian Coptic literature (fifth century and earlier). (For
detailed bibliographical information about texts and manu-
scripts mentioned below, see especially Kammerer.)
Followingalong these lines, a fitting companion volume
to NHL might include translations at least of a number of
other treatises preserved in Coptic*or that circulated at one
time or another in cop ti^.^ It is within the wider context of
writings that presumably were used among Coptic-
speakingheading Christians prior to the fifth century that
the NHL deserves to be analyzed to determinejust what sort
of information its texts can provide regarding (1) its most
recent ancient owners/users; (2) the history of transmission
of its materials and the history of their transmitters, in
Coptic; (3) the circumstances of its translation into Coptic;
and (4) the ultimate origin and pre-Coptic histories of the
texts.
It could not be expected that Robinson and his team
would address this task in detail in NHL.But until such an
approach is attempted with rigor-i.e., a history of early
Coptic literature-it will be difficult to obltain,the perspec-
tives nkessary for a careful; controlled assessment of the
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the sooner the
to use this valuable set of keys to help unlock various mys-
teries of early (Egyptian) religious history and literature. At
present, we simply do not know what criteria will be most
useful in attempting to identify the motivations of fourth-
century Coptic Christians, or their predecessors, in copying
and collecting the texts in their possession. Until we are
more aware of such matters, general discussions of the
“stance” of the “library” will be premature.
The emergence within fourthcentury Coptic Chris-
tianity of skillfully produced codices each of which contains
a variety of writings is itself noteworthy. When the codex
(modern booklike) format became increasingly popular as
an alternative to the well-established roll/scroll in the second
and third centuries, codices tended to be relatively limited in
content, containing the work of a single author much as had
been true of the roll. But it was found that the codex format
could hold much more material than the typical roll, espe-
cially if several minicodices (quires or “gatherings”) were
bound together. This technological advance magnified the
possibility of the development of codices in which a number
of different works, whether by the same author or by vari-
ous authors, could be included, although even with “single-
quire” codices, a mixture of heterogeneous materials could
also be produced (see Turner, 55-71, on these matters).
Because of the fragmen nature of many of the
oldest writings (especially papyri) preserved from antiquity
it is not always possible to know whether the extant rem-
nants of a particular text were once part of a larger codex in
which other writings also were~included.But in those in-
stances in which the evidence is clear, Christian-and espe-
cially Coptic Christian-codices seem to provide most of the
examples of heterogeneous collections. With the develop-
ment of the concept of the unity of canonical biblical writ-
ings in Judaism and Christianity, a model emerged in which
matters of heterogeneity/homogeneity became blurred.
“Biblical” writings were perhaps viewed, consciously or un-
consciously, as from the same source. Thus it is perhaps not
very surprising to find early Greek papyrus codices contain-
ing more than one “biblical” writing.‘ From the fourth cen-
tury onward, more luxurious parchment or vellum (leather)
codices were produced in which a full corpus of Jewish and
Christian scriptures were collected--e.g., Sinaiticus (S or
Aleph), Vaticanus (B), Alexandrinus (A), Beza (D), to men-
tion only the earliest and most .famous.
Mixture of what came to be f=ed in Christian tradition
as “biblical“ with nonbiblical writings in early Greek manu-
scripts is relatively infrequent-the presence of Bumdas in
Sinaiticus and of 1-2 CZement in Alexandrinus may reflect
ambiguities in the extent of the contents of “canon.” The
juxtaposition of Z Enoch and Melito O n Passover in Chester
Beatty papyrus codex XII, from the fourth century, is more
problematic. An even “stranger” mixture takes place in the
Bodmer papyri originally designated V-X-XI-VII-XIII-XII-
xx-IX-VIII (in six different handwritings), which seem to
come from one or two cod ice^.^ A new element is introduced
in another Greek Bodmer papyivs from the fourth cen-
tury where we find Susanna; an tinidentified aporryphon,
1.8,No. 1/January 1984
An-unusualjuxta-
n a Hamburg codex
third- and fourth-
tic manuscripts seem
to be even more tantalizing in this respect, at least at this
relatively early stage of detailed modern study of early co-
dices.’ The NHC seem to fit very well into the spirit of
Coptic bookmaking techniques as they were developing in
the fourth century. That is another reason for taking great
care in defining the se in which the designation “library”
may appropriately be lied to the NHC, or to subgroups
within the “NHL.” T h e question of why various writings
have been gathered together in a single codex requires
closer attention.
CATEGORIES AND CONTENTS OF THE NAG HAMMADI
TREATISES
The sequence in which the translated materials are pre-
sented in NHL follows the flow of the various tractates
within the thirteen NHC, in the order in which the tractates
are now officially numbered (e.g., the “Jung Codex” =
NHC 1). NHL provides a summary of this sequence on pp.
xiii-xv. What it does not supply is any consistent attempt to
classify the treatises either according to respective forms
(insofar as that can be determined with the fragmentary
works) or their contents and perspectives. This is especially
unfortunate insofar as the only index in NHL contains only
a listing of proper names (there is no subject index).
Granted, a subject index would have added somewhat to the
size and cost of the volume, but it would also have increased
the usefulness of N H L many times.
In the absence of such a ready means of making general
connections betwee_n% the individual writings in the
heterogeneous collecdQn in NHL, we present the following
attempt at classifying the tractates with respect to their for-
mal characteristics. We have used categories ranging from
straightforward narrative (stories of events) on the one side,
through reports of deeds or,more frequently, of words and
conversations, to material in “letter” form (addressed to a
specific person or group), to straightforward monologue or
dialogue presentations. Inevitably, different sorts of material
will be intermixed in a given writing, and various subdivi-
sions based on form, tone, or content suggest themselves. In
one way or another, “monologue” material predominates,
followed by “dialogue.” What this may mean in any given
instance remains to be investigated. (The abbreviated titles
are basically those suggested by MacRae, 1976, compared
also with those of Mtnard in BCNH, 1.)
NARRATIVE OF EVENTS
Except as part of someone’s speech, these are rare in NHL.
The best examples are the following:
812 Letter of Peter to Philip (PetPhil),which begins with a letter,
then continues to the end in third-person narrative, including a
lengthy discourse by the spiritual Jesus on the Mount of Olives in
which he answers questions posed by the assembled apostles. It is
unfortunate, because deceptive, that the opening words of this
short treatise have been used as the title for the entire work.
BG 850214 Act of Peter (AcPet),which briefly narrates a story
of Peter healing the sick and explaining why he allows his own
virgin daughter, whom he heals temwrarilv. to remain naraIv7ed
 ew 1 41-

wrote,” followed by the accou

of the words of James.
515 A&p#yp.WA~? (
.
taught his sdn Seth,. . sayi?
revelations,. ..” etc.
711 Paraphrase of Shem
SDirit”: “What Derdeka revea
oh Shem at the end.
911 (perhaps belongs here; th
chizedeR (Mekh), which tells of “r
ones and ends with the words “
the generations of life had
up. ...”
1011 (perhaps belongs
(Mar),which seems to be a first-
the heavens.
1113 Allogenes (Allog),a re
in the first person, of a seri
person account by JacobIJames of conversations with “the L o r d ceived and now has written
but continues in the third person, includmg a: transition section 1114 HypSphrone (Hyps): “The book {of visions] which were
from the time prior to Jesus’sufferings toatimeafter(30,13-31.5). seen. . . ,” told in a first-person narration. ‘
I n addition, a few writings supply $&-person narra-
DIALOGUES WITHOUT A SPECIFIED CONTEXT’
tive information only in the opening anddor closing lines:
211 ApocryPhon of John (ApocrJn), beginning (“It happened Similar to the two reports of dialogues hfed above (217
when John . ..*’)and end (“and the Savior presented these things to ThCont and 3/5 D d S u v ) are three other works which pre-
him Uohn] . . .”), between which John reports his encounter and sent running dialogues without any introductory frame-
conversationwith (the resurrected) Jesus, who reveals mysteries to work (see especially 3/5 DialSav, above):
John. 615 Plato, Republic 588B-589B (PbReP), which is presented
3/2 GospeloftheEgyptians (or,Holy Bookofthe Great Invisible without any explanation by the excerpter.
Spirit; GEgypt), which ends with a lengthy description of how “the 616 Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (On8th9th; BCNH,
great Seth” wrote this book about the origins o f the world.
314 S o p h of Jew Christ (SJC), beginningcAfter he rose
.
Ogd[oad]Enn[ead]): “0my father,. . 0 my son” types of ex-
change, without any introduction, broken only by the third-person
from the dead his disciples went.. .”) and endt(“These are the transition at 59.23 (“When he had finished praising he shouted”)
things the Savior said.. .”),with Jesus’ conversations with (espe- and allusionswithin the dialogue exchanges to writing this material
cially) Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Mariamme in a book (60.16, 61.19, etc.).
617 Prayer of Thunksgiving (PrTknk), as 618 Asclepius 21-29(Ascl; MacRae has ApocAscl), with running
the prayer that they spoke”) and at the end (“ dialogue between Trismegistus (Hermes) and Asclepius which
these things. ..”), in an otherwise anonymou covers a number of subjects, especially creation iof the gods), an
713 Apocdypse of Peter (ApocPet), final line only (“When he (apocalyptic) oracle about the fate of “Egypt,” and the fate of the
Uesus] had said these things, he [Peter] came to himielf”), after soul.
Peter’s first-person report of an episode with the (already rejected)
Savior in the temple.
LETTERS* AND TREATISES ADDRESSED TO SPECIFIC RECIPIENTS’
715 Three Steles of Seth (3StSeth), with an elongated narrative
title followed by three hymns/prayers and a final exhortation. These are as follows:
1/2 Apooyphon of James (and Peter; ApocrJm): “Jacob/James
REPORTS writes to [. . .]thos, Peace.. . . Since you asked that I send you a
Otherwise, whatever narration occurs in the NHL is found secret book which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord,. ..”
within other types of material such as first-person reports or etc. The “letter” continues with a narration of a dialogue between
the resurrected Jesus and his twelve disciples.
recorded discourses. What we have chosen to classify as 1/4 Treatise on Resurrection (OnRes; BCNH, Rheg[inos]):
“reports” take the following forms (see also above, 211 “Some there are, my son Rheginos, who want to learn much”; and
ApOcJn, 314 SJC, 512 ApocPaul, 513 IApoeJas, 611 AcPetTwAp, at the end, “Many are looking forward to this which I have written
713 AFcPet): you. To these I say, Peace. . . ,” etc.
212 Gospel of Thomas (GTh): “These are the secret sayings 313 Eugnostos theBlessed (Eug) “tothose who are his,” followed
which the living Jesus spoke and DidymosJudas Thomas wrote,” by a treatise with essentially the same content as Sop& ofJesus
followed by 114 often unconnected (by modem Western rational Christ and a closing section addressed to a “you” singular alerting
dteria) sayings attributed to Jesus, occasionally with details of the the recipient to an impending revelation from a special agent,
setting attached, especially questions asked of Iesus.
217 Book of Thomas the ContendGr (ThCont; in BCNH, ThAth- MONOLOGUES WITHOUT CLEAR CONTEXTS
netel): “The secret words that the Savior spoke to Judas Thomas
T h e remaining materials in NHL are various sorts o f
“monologues” which a r e classified below with reference to
the apparent thrust of the material. T o the category o f
prayer-paise-invocation, which we have already encountered
above in 617 (PrThank)and 7
1/1 Prayer.of thc Apostle Paul

Similar materials are sometimesincluded within some of the
other tractates.
We also find s e Z f - q f i d n s in paradoxical poetic form
in 612 Thunder, Perfect Mind (Thund)and in running prose in
1311 Trinwrphic Protennoia (TriProt;in three parts, “a sacred
scripture written by the Father with perfect Knowledge”).
The subcategory of admonition or exhortation of a rela-
tively “traditional” ethical sort is represented by 714 Teach-
ings of Silvanus (Silv), and 1211 Senbnces of Sextw (SSext;
beginning and end mutilated).
Finally, there are a large number of treatises that could
perhaps best be described as meditations or didactic essays of
various sorts. Several of them deal in one way or another
with how the world came into existence and why it requires
redemption (see also above 211 ApocrJn, 312 GEgypt, 315
DialSav, 711 Parashem, 1311 Triprot):
115 Tripartite Tractate (TriTrac).
214 HMstasis ofthe Archons (or, Realiq oftheRulerslAuthorities;
HyPArch: MacRae has Nat[ure of the] Arch), to which is joined a
first-person account of a revelatory encounter with the angel Ele-
leth.
215 (= 1312) On the Origin ofthe World (OrgWld; MaclZae has
OnOrgWZd while BCNH designates it the “Untitled Treatise”).
614 Concept of Our Great Power (CrPow).
1 112 ValentinianExposition (VnlExp),includingappended sec-
tions on baptism (A, B, C) and eucharist (A and B).
Two other treatises focus on the origins, nature, and fate of
the soul (see also 618 Ascl, toward the end)--2/6 Exegesis (or
Expository Treatbe) on the Soul (Exsoul); 613 Authoritative
Teaching (AuthTeach; BCNH, AuthLog[os])-while 1111 In-
tet-jwetuthn of Knowledge (InterpKn; BCNH, InterpGn[osis])is
a homiletic discourse on humility. General exhortation, in-
struction, and meditation are found in
113 Gospel of Truth (CTr);
213 Gos#l of Philip (GPh);
913 Testimony of Truth (TestimTr).
Finally, two treatises which recount revelatory encounters
and a very short, particularly enigmatic piece dealing with
Norea round out the picture:
712 Second Treatise of the Great Seth (CrSeth);
811 zoshwnos (&st);
912 Thought of Norea (Nor).
~~
NHL AND “NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA
COLLECTIONS
This rapid survey of the NHL materials shows that the
explicitly “Christian” ingredient varies considerably among
the various writings. A significant number of tractatesclaim
to speak about Jesus and his immediate companions, al-
though seldom by means of extended narrative reports.
The person familiar with “New Testament Apocrypha”col-
lections (most notably those edited by M.R.James or by
Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson) will recognize that NHL
provides several new candidates for inclusion in such mod-
e m anthologies of ancient Christian literature cast in forms
similar to the canonical gospels, acts, letters/homilies, and
apocalypse. Indeed, the Hennecke-Schneemelcher-Wilson
edition already has begun this task of incorporation.
8, No..l/ J
GOSPELS
The title “gospel” actually occurs i
in NHL: 212 GTh, 213 GPh, 312
GMary. Possibly other NHL
subscriptions have not been
nation. But the four aforementioned “gospels” differ sig-
nificantly from each other as well as from
namesakes, and only GTh and GMary highli
which Jesus has a central role as an active participantYGPh
juxtaposes various anonymously reported teachings;
GEgypt deals mainly with the origins of the heavenly and
earthly worlds). None of the NHL treatises supply explicit
narratives about Jesus’ activities prior to his suffenng-
death-vindication, but several (including GMary and GTh)
present “the living”Jesus as instructing one or more of his
followers, often in the context of his suffering andlor vic-
tory:
513 IApocJas: Jesus’ conversation with his brother
Jacob/James prior to as well as after (3) Jesus’ suffering;
713 ApocPet: Jesus makes revelations to Peter, apparently at
the very time Jesus is being rejected by the Jewish authorities;
217 ThCont: Jesus speaks secret words to his twin, Judas
Thomas, prior to Jesus’ ascension (138.23);
112 ApocrJas: Jesus discourses with the disciples (especially
James and Peter) 550 days after his resurrection and prior to his
ascension (2.20-24);
BG 850211 GMary:Jesus, presumably after the resurrection,
instructs the disciples and departs from them (Mary, Peter, and
Andrew continue to discuss matters);
212 CTh: a series of sayings by “the living Jesus” to his dis-
ciples (especially Judas Thomas, Peter, Matthew, Mary, Salome;
James the Just also is mentioned);
314 SJC: Jesus appears on the mountain in Galilee to his
twelve disciples (especially Philip, Matthew, Thomas) and seven
women (especially Mariamme) as “invisiblespirit” after the resur-
rection and reveals many things;
812 PetPhil: Jesus appears on the Mount of Olives to the
apostles as a great light after he was no longer present “in the
body,” and later (in Jerusalem?) he sends them out in peace;
2/1 ApocrJn: Jesus discourses to John in a revelation appear-
ance sometime after Jesus had “gone to the place from which he
came” ( 1.13);
315 D d S a v :Jesus discourses and converseswith the disciples
(especially Matthew, Judas/Thomas, Mariam) under designated
conditions.
These ten writings seem to qualify for inclusion as a s u b
category of “apocryphal gospel” materials, and are very
similar in some ways to the so-called Epistle of theApostles that
has been preserved especially in Ethiopic translation and
also depicts the resurrected Jesus teaching his associates.
ACTS
The canonical gospels (especially the synoptics) are, basi-
cally, acts of Jesus-a sort of acts not represented in the
NHL. But the NHL does include a few writings in which one
of the revered early Christians receives central emphasis
either in terms of deeds (“acts” proper) or discourse (likethe
“gospel” subcategory discussed above). Actually, the line is
difficult to draw between “discourse-gospel” material and
acts or “discourse-acts”materials in some instances,since the
former are often presented as reports by specific followers
of Jesus who also play active roles in the report-e.g., GMary
deals both with Jesus’ discourse and with the discussion that.
 GION AND ETHICS INSTITUTE, INC.

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OT3, SACRED PLACES, by Lloyd R. Bailey
OT4, SACRED KINGSHIP, by Wolfgang Roth
OT5, SACRED ACTS AND SEASONS, by Walter Harrelson
OT6, SACRED LITERATURE, by Rebecca J. Schiffman
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 on Peter as variant
ly, ZAp0cJa.s deals to “Eve th
fate and finds its sequel in
seems to. be the primary
sisgiven by-theresurrected
mainly a narrative about I am the portio
. and the last.
es an appearance and the scorned one.
and exhortations:by.the risen Jesus. T h e only unambiguous
“acts” document in NHL,from this viewpoint, is BG 8502/4 and the holy one.
AcPet, which is unique in not reporting a revelation- I a m thewoman, . I am the wife
discourse of Jesus. and I am the virgin. and the virgin. ’
I am the pregnant one. I am <the mother>
LE~RSIEPI- m ~ ,
srnfrrw APOSTOLIC^ COMPOSITIONS and the daughter.
the otherwise already I am the members
of my mother.
of epistles and related I am the I am the barren one.. . .
New Testament” an- I am hemidwife. - I am the midwife
has a few treatises in the and she who does not bear.
form of lettem-the ApocrJas (1/2) begins as a letter but I am the solace
records a “gospel;discourse,’’ OaRes (1/4) and Eug (3/3) of my labor pains.
both have letter form-but only the opening sections of I am the bride
PetPhil (8/2), and perhaps of ApocrJus, seem to qualify as and the bridegroom,
allegedly apostolicletters (in each instance, letters attached to MY husband is the one and it is my husband
other materials). There are, of course, numerous writings who begot me, who begot me.
and I am his mother, I am the mother of my father
identified in one way or another with “apostolic”names, but and he is my and the sister
most of them fit better into other categories. An exception, of my husband.
perhaps, is PrPuul (l/l), which by default (it is not gospel, or and my lord. and he is my offspring.
acts, or an apocalypse) might be included here. He is my potency. I am the slave
, . of him who prepared me.
APOCALYPSES I am the ruler
In one sense, the revelatory gospel-discourses listed above of my offspring.. ..
often also qualify as “apocalypses,” e.g., ApocPet (7/3). But That which he desires He is my offspring. . .
Jesus is not the only revealer of clearly Christian association I am (still) and my power is from him.
in the NHL collection. In 2ApocJa.s (5/4), Jacob/James plays a
... Whatever he wills
happens to me.. ..
central role as agent of revelation. More classic in form is but I have
ApocPauL (5/2), Paul recounts his journey through dly man. I am the utterance
the heavens. A int, again, “New Testament Apoc- of my name.
rypha” collections will be expanded by the material in NHL.
THE “NONGNOSTIC”CONNECTION
THE “NON-CHRISTIAN CONNECTION
To suggest that SSext or T h u d may be “nongnostic” in
It is clear that the NHC preserve numerous documents that origin is, of course, to presume a relatively tight definition of
have explicitly Christian connections in their present form, “gnostic.” Nor does it say anything about how the text came
whatever their origins and transmission history. There is no to be read and used in the course of transmission. For
reason to doubt, and there are good reasons to affirm, that present purposes, those texts which do not seem to require
Christians copied and transmitted the contents, at least in that the material world be considered basically and ulti-
the latest stages. What is not so clear is the extent to which mately inferior to and in important ways opposed to the %n-
originally pre- and/or non-Christian materials have found seen” spiritual/immaterial world would not qualify as main-
their way into the collection (see NHL, 8-9). The sections stream “gnostic.” Thus when the God who is to be wor-
from Plato’s Repubk (6/5) and from the Hermetic Prayer o j shiped is described as creating or maintaining the physical
Thnksgiving (6/7), Asclefitis (6/8), and the Dticourse on the world, or the savior/redeemer is depicted as somehow actu-
Eighth andNinth (6/6)are obvious illustrations of the breadth ally physical or physically raised from the dead, the “gnos-
represented in the direction of non-Jewish and non- tic” label seems to some extent inappropriate. Especially in
Christian materials. Whether and to what extent such texts “ethical” literature, of course, the line between a “gnostic”
as Pardhem, ApocAdam, 3Stscth, Zost, Allog, Mar, and Nor perspective that the world is inherently inferior/evil and a
relate to or derive from Jewish, perhaps even pre-Christian view that the originally good or neutral world hus become
Jewish, circles requires careful attention. The relation of “sinful”/“fallen’T and thus in need of redemption may be
SSext (12/1) to Judaism and Christianity, and also to “gnosti- very thin indeed. Adjustments in interpreting a text/passage
cism,” is equally problematic. Similarly, the tractate T h u d may also be required when the scholarly conceit of thinking
tended to mean is
ough a *shorter,somewhat
 d, howe\ter,.the followingovertly ChriStianJf2xts in NHL
e reason or another seem less likely to be ,of “gnostic”
: Silv, AcPetTwAp, ActPet. A number of other texts in
NHL do not demand an overtly “gnostic” interpretation,
although they are ambiguous enough to allow such, notably
&Paul, GTh, ThCont, AuthTeach, GrPow, IntgbKn, Exsoul,
ApocJas, ApocPaul, and ApocPeter. Of the not overtly Chris-
tian texts, As1 and SSext seem especially problematic from a
FOCUS ON CREATION
Probably the single most pervasive general theme found
among the NHL writings is the derivation of the world
(cosmogony). In one way or another this is a central focus of
more than a dozen tractates. Indeed, several writings show
such close similarities that arrangement of certain passages
in parallel columns would be very helpful for studying this
material. In order to test the value of the index in NHL as a
tool for study, we attempted to trace the story of the four
angeldlights already known from the Bruce Codex “Seth-
ian” tractate’s cosmogony-(H)armozel, Orfo)iel,Daveithai,
Eleleth. By working backwards and forwards from the NHL
Index of Names, whkh provided a cross-reference between
the separate entries for Armozel and Harmozel, we were
able to isolate the following group of cosmogonic texts with
similar traditions: ApocrJn, Zost, GEgypt, TtiProt, Melch,
HyPArch. The composite picture of the four angeldlights
derived therefrom is especially helpful iri.-attempting to
understand each of the separate texts
of contact, and led to other names to
onomastic chain reaction which added the following simi-
larly cosmogonic texts to the growing listf+OrgWld,Tn‘Truc,
GrSeth, ApocAdam, 3StSeth, DialSav, Pard?, ValExp, Mar,
Albg. Various subgroupings within this *larger collection
emerge on closer analysis; for example, aspects’of the bibli-
cal Genesis creation tradition appear in many, but not all
(e.g., TriProt) of the writings.
It is interesting to note that several of the aforemen-
tioned works seem to claim a special scripture-like authority
for themselves (compare also ApocAdam), for example:
ApocrJn (end), the revealer commandsJohn to write what has
been said and guard it to transmit to other disciples of this mystery,
with a curse on anyone who merchandises the revelations;
GEsrpt, “the holy book of the Egyptians,” “God-written, holy,
secret” (end);
Triprot (end), “a sacred scripture written by the Father”;
Allog (end). “write down” these revelations for “those who will
be worthy after you.”
(See also Zost 130.If., “I wrote three tablets and left them . . .
for those who come after me, the living elect.”)
FOCUS ON IESUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS
The Index of Names will not give the reader much assis-
tance in attempting to locate information about the Jesus
5aditions in NHL, beyond undifferentiated lists referring
to Christ, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Mary, etc. This is unfortunate
shce NHL contains numerous references to the two poles of
SUS’ earthly story-birth and infancy’, ,+death
resurrection-plus a few other ma
of much popular co
ing Savior and ’Pagels’
abound in the next few
Jesus as teacherhev
as we have already notic
research concernin
collections (the old
Testament Apocalyps
Christian prophecy a
more far-reaching impact in the study of early (=hristianity.
Of special interest in the NH texts is&
early disciples-Judas Thomas,Jacob/Ja
Jesus), Peter, Paul, Philip, Mathias, Matthew-and not least
on “the seven women” (SJC, beginning; ApoCJas 38.16f.),
with particular attention to one or \more named
Mary/Mariam/Mariamme and occasional references to
Martha, Salome, Arsinoe. The Indexof Names is, of course,
useful here. On the whole, however, the disciples serve
mostly as the foil for the Redeemer’s discoursing, and only
occasionally do we learn anything about their independent
activities.
FOCUS ON CHRISTIAN PRACTICES, USE OF
“SCRIPTURES,” POLEMICS
From the materials in the NHL comes interesting informa-
tion about various aspects of Christian life‘and practice as it
was known to the various authors and groups represented in
this collection of texts. Only occasi&ially’arechurch officials
mentioned, e.g., “the priest” in GPhi177.2; the antagonistic
“bishop and deacons” in ApocPet 79.25. Indeed, “the
church” is itself a term rarely encountered (see NHL Index;
TripTract 57.34-59.10, preexistent church; GPhil 53.32;
ValExp 29.29-3 1.37, pre-existent Sophia). Virtually nothing
is said in the NHL texts about calendric observations (Sun-
day receives passing notice in OrgWld 118.1-2). A number of
prayers, however, are referred to or are actually recorded in
the texts, along with mysterious “nonsense” formulas in-
cluding sequences of vowels resembling passages found
elsewhere in magical literature (see GEgypt 44.2, 66.8,
67.14; On8th9th 56.17ff., 61.10ff.).
Of specific rituals, fasting plays no significant role, but
baptism is mentioned in various connections, includin8 the
reference in OrgWld 122.14f. to “three baptisms:. . .
spiritual, .. .a fire ...,water.” In GPhil 67.28-30 baptism is
the first of five interrelated ritual aspects of “a mystery”
performed by the Lord: “a baptism and achrism” (“superior
to baptism” in 74.12f.; leads to resurrection in 73.18f.) and a
eucharist (see 75.1, bread-cup-oil; also 75.14f., 77.2ff.) and
a redemption and a bridal chamber (see also 64.32 on the
“mystery of marriage,” 69.22ff. on baptism, redemption,
and bridal chamber). Other texts sometimes mention mem-
bers of this series besides baptism, e.g., TriTrac 127.26-
128.34 where baptism is called the “garment” which those
who have received redemption wear; also “confirmation,”
“silence,” “bridal chamber,” “li
totalities”; ValExp 40-44 whic

sed in GPhd59i3-4 (Cf.8
hristianityimnd to other revered writ-
e NHLf texts. On the one-hand,
V&p 28.29ff. tells its readersof the necessity to search the
scriptures, and in certain tractates we find a wide positive
use of fscriptural” quotation and/or allusion; Exsoul is the
most obvious example (including quotations from “the
poet”-Homer at 136.17-137.2), but TatimTr and SiZv also
contain such quotations. On the other hand, the words of
Moses are at best ambivalent for ApOcrJn (see 13.20; 22.22;
23.2; 229.6, “not as Moses said”), while the heroes and the
God ofJewish scriptural tradition are ridiculed in PTrSeth
62-65, and the traditional story of the fall (Gen. 1-3) is
turned on its head in TestimTr 45-48. Elsewhere, various
nonbiblical titles are mentioned as somehow worthy of
attention-book of Zoroaster (ApocrJn 19.lo), ArchungelikZ
of Moses and various other “holy books” (OrgWZd 102, 107,
112, 122), book the great Seth wrote (GE@ 68.1fJ-and
certain of the NHL texts themselves make claims to be
authoritative writings, e.g., GEgypt, ApocAdam, On8th9th,
Zost,.Allog, TrimProt (see above on creation accounts).
A few passages in the NHL materials offer explicit
information about inner Christian conflicts. Most intriguing
is TatimTr, which criticizes “the foolish” who claim to be
“Christians” but are actually ignorant and fit the pattern of
“Pharisees and scribes” by exhibiting the “errant desire of
the +gels and the demons and the stars” (see 29.12ff.,
31.22ff., 41.2ff.). Later, in a very poorly preserved section,
cr,itiqism is voiced against Valentinus and his disciples (56),
and-Tj&iides and his son Isidore (57), among others. The
author also is critical of portions of Jewish scriptures, which
are quoted or alluded to several times (see the preceding
paragraph), of certain attitude8 to Christiari baptism as a
“seal” ofsalvation-indeed, “the baptism of truth” is found
“by renunciation of the world” (67.7-31band of certain
positive attitudes to future resurrection which are corrected
with the words “this is the perfect life, that one knows
himself by means of the All” (34.26-36.28).
QUALITY OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS IN NHL
Evaluating the English translations of the Coptic texts that
comprise this volume is a formidable task. The reviewer is
faced with 48 separate texts edited or translated by 31 dif-
ferent scholars working independently or in collaborative
groups of two or three on one or more texts. The quality of
the translations varies widely-some are very good, others
barely adequate (see below). As the individual tractates are
published in the NHS series (with text, translation, and
com*entary) reviewers will be able to deal with each tractate
in detail. Here, we can only summarize the translation prob-
lems and caution users against uncritical use of this volume.
Obviously, different readers ivilluse these translations
in different ways. Those who read Coptic will not be seri-
ously inconvenienced by errors and incoherencies in the
ce they will be able, at least theoretically, to
c passages in the Coptic original, but may be
other features Those who do not
Vol. 8, No-J J
for this (xi). But i n th
especially of borrowed
reduces the book‘s usefulness. Contrary to comon:praV
tice, the translations do not mark the presence +oE-Greek!
words in the Coptic original, possibly due to considerations
of space and economy. Many of the Greek words are
cal terms which often refer to personified concepts
Logos, etc.). The translators handle these perswifications
in various ways: some transliterate (Nous), others t r q d a t e
and capitalize (Mind). If the translator decides @at no per-
sonification is intended, the Greek word is simply panslated
(mind). This inconsistency between tractates, and occasion-
ally within the same tractate,can create significantproblems
for the reader. If we find “Sophia” in some texts (see Index,
which lists more than 50 occurrences) and “Wisdom” in
others (about 15 listed in the Index), can we infer any
common ground between them? We could at,least cpnsider
possible connections if it were clear that the same Greek
word sophiu appears in all the Coptic passages listed. Espe-
cially confusing is GPhd where we find both Sophia (59.3Of.)
and Wisdom (60.1 1-15) side by side in personified forms.
Elsewhere, Greek and English words are awkwardly mixed
in a series of personifications, perhaps to alert the reader to
the presence of a particular Greek word in the Coptic:
“perfection,peace, and Sophia”(ApOcrJn 9.19f.; why are not
all three “aeons” capitalized in English?), and “NOUSand
Word and Division and Envy and Fire” (GrSeth 68.19).
Similarly, transliterated Greek is introduced into in-
“.
appropriate contexts, such as GrSeth 66.6-8: ..the unde-
fded wedding was consummated through the Mesotes of
Jesus.” Is it likely that a personified abstraction is intended
here, rather than the simple statement,“through the media-
tion of Jesus”? In ApocrJn, the Greek term # m d uis some-
times transliterated (6.5-30, 30.12) and sometimes trans-
lated “foreknowledge”(23.24-29,28.2,29.2),while another
term, prognosis, also is translated “foreknowledge” (5.13-
6.6). The translator may be correct in hisjudgment that one
usage is a personification and another is not, but the basis
for thisjudgment is not immediately apparent and the Eng-
lish reader may not recognize what is happening. Indeed,
the well-intended cross-references in the Index may add to
the confusion since (personified) Foreknowledge is listed
without cross-references while Forethought refers us to
Pronoia, Providence, and Thought. Under “Thought,” we
are then referred to Ennoia and Epinoia as well as Pro-
tennoia (but not to Forethought). There is no Index entry
for Prognosis.
The same problem of variation in treatment of techni-
cal terms within and between the treatises also affects Coptic
(non-Greek) technical terms such as pte$(the All) but not to
the same degree because such Coptic terms are always trans-
lated, never transliterated. But the failure consistently to
*dicate Greek terms forces the scrupulousrea
the Coptic text ve uently, thus to some e
wining the value mpact translation for
user.
 dividual words, misinterpretation
rs in editingoccur in several
u is translated “dissolve” instead
of “set” or “become fured,” which would certainly be better some passages, the grammatical elements are interpreted in
suited to the metaphor of dyes that are permanent (Crum, a way that”ispossible, but highly un1ikely:mo question mark
159a). Similarly, in GrPow 46.2 sti@ is translated “mo- is necessary in On8th9th 58.23; a sentence division inappro-
(perhaps through confusion with stigma), though priately follows the Greek particle gar in CPhil 52.18 (it
” suits’the context and is attested in Greek of the should be divided, “. .. and this one is in danger of dying.
62a). In Ascl75.29 h o h should be translated For he is alive ever since Christ came. The world ...”); not a
“summit” rather than “corner.” The in- nominal sentence, but simple apposition (“I, Jesus
“tended emphasis or contrast is lost in &Seth 59.26f. when Christ. ..”) appears in GrSeth 69.21. In &Seth 66.6 the use
’ermpOrei is tr’anslated “advancing the name of Christ.” The of the passive verb “was consummated” is unjustified and
’point seems to be that they “think that they are rich in the may be the result of the earlier omission of an indirect object
name of Christ, but they are unknowingly empty” (see which provides the antecedent to the subject of the verb,
Crum, 83a). T h e awkwardness of a sentence such as “I thus:
proclaim to you to tell you these (words) that I shall speak” NHL version at 712.66.1ff. Improved version
(ZApOcJm 52.13-15) is the result of mistranslation of the
Coptic shmmufe (= ewlggelwn). With this correction, and a ... ...
when they had taken counsel having taken counsel
slight grammatical adjustment, the sentence would read, “I about a spiritual wedding about a spiritual marriage
give you good news, telling you these (words) that I shall which is in union, which is in union-
speak.” and thus he and thus it [the marriage]
Confusion is sometimes due to misinterpretation of was perfected was completed for them
Coptic tenses. In GrSeth 55.7 the translator reads nef as the in the ineffable places in the ineffable places
prefix of negative third future (“the plan will certainly not by a living word, through a living word-
materialize”), yet this section repeatedly uses the prefixes the undefiled wedding they consummated this
mi,ncu,etc. for the imperfect. The sentence, as an imper- was consummated undefiled marriage
through the Mesotes through the mediation
fect, should‘read, “the plan is coming into being,” which of Jesus.. . . of Jesus.. . .
makes better sense in connection with the following sen-
tence: “For Adonaios knows me because of hope.” Earlier, Over-1iter.d translation, insufficient sentence division,
in 53.5 a second perfect tense is incorrectly translated as a and a choice of words that strike the wrong note also make

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 to:the poi,nt of unintelli-
tempt to translate every
)before our eyes” (AcPet
for quantitative equiva-
lence also produces technically accurate but idiomatically
awkward expressions such as “finding your houses unceiled”
(Ap0CJQ.r9.5-6; Coptic emnmelot).A sentence such as is found
in ApocPet 7 1.22ff.-running for seven printed lines-may
follow the coptic closely yet & confusing in English due to
the accumulation of relative Clauses and the strange use of
the dash. This should be divided into two or three sentences
if a useful English tramlution is desired. We also question the
use of archaic “thee,” “thou,” etc., in prayers contained in
GEgypt 66-67, DialSav 121 (see also ”Ye.. .you” in 133.19,
On8th9th 52-63, PrThank, ParashGm (passim), 3StSeth 118-
27, Silv 112.28ff., and ValExp 40-44. It is especially confus-
ing to come across this style in the middle o f a tractate when
the opening prayer tractate of the collection does not use it;
the reader who is Coptic may think that
there is a basis for’these differentiations in Coptic (a polite
second person), although there is none.
Some of the translations are a Clear improvement over
previously published attempts. The better translations are
characterized by skillful editing and reconstruction of the
text, effective sentence division, and avoidance of over-
literal translation. T h e reconstruction of gaps in the text of
the PrPud (Dieter Mueller, translator) is particularly effec-
tive. In the case of the AutTeach (Douglas Parrott, editor;
George MacRae, translator) the restraint,compared to earlier
editions, shown in restoration of thkope’ning portion of the
text is commendable. Many sentence
division and nonliteral, yet be
selected from the TriTruc (Harold Attridge and D. Mueller,
translators), e.g., 63.15ff., “He, however, is as he is, the
incomparable one. In order that he might receive honor
from each one, the Father reveals himself, and yet in his
ineffability wonders at himself.” The use of punctuation
here is very skillful and makes a difficult passage reasonably
clear.
Because Of the uneven quality Of the
tion’ the reader use them With degrees Of
caution. We cannot, however, rate the relative merits of each
and every in this review and thus cite
those we have found to be PoSitive1Y Or note-
worthy, for one reason or another. Those who read Coptic
can safely use all the translations for quick thematic review,
fobwed by a comparison of some individual passages with
the Coptic original. Other readers must be warv of identifv-
ing all but thevbroadest outlines of thought in GrSeth and be
moderately cautious in their use of the translations of the
ApocrJn, AcPetTwAp, GrPow, Odth9th, and Ascl. These trac-
tates are relatively more marked by inconsistency in transla-
tional technique and/or by mistranslation. Those who do
not read Coptic can place relatively more confidence in the
TriTrac and the GPhil (Wesley Isenberg, translator), which
are idiomatic, yet accurate, translations. The remainder of
the translations seem to be literal (at times overly literal) and
sufficiently accurate for general purposes.
All users of this volume should benefit from the publi-
cation of separate editions of the tractates in the CGL series.
These separate publications will doubtless correct some
problems that have k e n ‘notkd“in eailiiifdrafts and/or in
NHL,a
error, this volume is amazingly free of such blemishes.
Those of US who have watched James Robinson meticu-
lously working his way through,*e proofs even during “free
time” at busy Professional,meetings Can Perhaps be@n to
appreciate the type of effort expended in this regard. A few
problems remain to be noted here:
pp. 51 and 53 (heading), read I,4 not I,3;
p. 79 (at 98.5), “phantasy,” bpt p. 81 (at 103.16), “fantasy”;
PP. 237 (at 143.19). 445. (at 47.261, 462 (at 36.3). close the
brackets;
readpe:;!$; (last line), initial letter has slipped, final letters should
p. 304 (top Gne at end), read
p. 430 (last line), “does work on the Son” seems faulty;
p. 44 1 (last line at 43.18), left bracket is lacking in the final pair.
The Proofreaders and editors failed more frequently in
noting inC0nSiStenCieS in Use Of CapitdhtiOn even Within
the SXIW tractate as Well as b&ween tractates, for example:
“Son of man” (p. 27 last line, p. 145 at 76.1-2), “Son of Man”
(p. 30 at 3.141, “son of man” (p. SDlat9.18, p. 112 at 25.11, “son of
Man’’ (P. 106at 14.15)~eWt h e m of the Index should have
caug;fitthis Problem* I
,” for no obvious reason,
Word” (see Index), but al
e.g., on p. 321 at 29.6 and p. 324 at.Srl.7; unfortunately the com-
piler of the Index failed to include lowercase Occurrences even
where they clearly refer to personified word.
“Hymen” ( P a r u S h , passim), but also “hymen” (p. 328 at
47.25); fortunately the htt indexed.
The Indexofprope requires further attention
and has already received COmmentin the preceding
section. In many ways it epitomizes the weakness of NHL as
well as the tantalizing potential. The index is well inten-
tioned and extremely useful; it is also flawed and sometimes
very frustrating. It is flawed partly because it must try to
present in as consistent and ordered fashion as possible
materials which to extent are inconsistently presented
or are inherently ambiguous in the various translations. As
we have noted above, when does a term qualify as a
in this literature so full of personified LLCOnCePtS and
abstractions.,? As the introduction to the index notes,
it remains for future research to make a definitive distinction
between caseswhere each term is a proper name and cases where it
is a common noun or an adjective. In these cases the selection
provided here is only preliminary, and in some cases the quantity
of Occurrenceshas led to a selection even within those that might be
considered proper names.
The reader is then referred to the indexes to the volumes of
CGL “for complete lists of proper names and personified
concepts” (478).
Nevertheless, one cannot but wonder whether it might
not have been w o e delaying publication for a few extra
weeks in order to use the process of indexing to bring more
homogeneity to the edited translations, or at least to con-
s m t t a more rationalized and com?i-&l&nsiveindex. includ-
 ;No. 1/January 1982

ey concepts and even 8/1.25.11 (plural) and 25.15 (

aptism, law, faith, cruci personifiedalso in 7/1.29.
The index is sometime above under typograph
inclusion or omission of cross-references, as has been noted other users will spot other
above with reference to the related e part the high degree of e
Pronoia, Providence, Thought tained here.
Ennoia, Epinoia. The user w
mention Coptic, may not realize FINAL NOTE
as has been pointed out above, We hope readers of this review will not be impatient with
translated passages may not help since Greek trans- our attempt to cover a wide variety of perspectives in assess-
literations in the Cop ing NHL, or be confused about our overall evaluation. It is a
equivalent appears. volume that any serious student of early Christianity or of
whether “Thought” re Egyptian religion in late antiquity must consult frequently,
non-Greek Coptic wo and it is priced low enough for individuals:to purchase.
sents only p m i a o There are flaws-some more serious than.others, some af-
“First Thought,” for fecting one type of readership (or usership) more than
but only under “Thought”). another. But the final word is one of,deep‘ and lasting
to clarify such matters in the appreciation to James Robinson, his team and his institu-
themselves. Users would ha tion, and to the publishers for making this material accessi-
effort. As things now stand, makes us wonder
ble so quickly, conveniently, and inexpensively. We look
whether “Underworld” represents Hades, Tartaros, forward to continued progress in making these materials
or none of those terms to which dex makes cross-
progressively more available.
references; is there no connec tween Existent One,
Preexistent One, and First-E NOTES
cross-referenced to each other) as here seems to be between
Existent One and He Who Is, One Who Is, and That Whjch Robinson’s NHL presentation (p. 16) reflects the preliminary
Is? Should not Judas refer also to Thomas, and Mary to judgment of the late J. W. B. Barnes (1975) that some of the
Mariam and Mariamme? one is referred to material used to stiffen the leather covers “came from the Pacho-
Ruler, but not vice versa; Me rs to Christ, but not mian monasteries.” Subsequent study of these materials by J. C.
Shelton, however, suggests that more caution is necessary regard-
vice versa. Father has no cross-reference to Mother-Father. inga specificallyPathomian connection; see Barnes, 1981, pp. 5-1 1
Does Eros have any relationship to Love (perhaps not)? Do (especially note 11).
Form, Eidea, and Idea have anything in common? What of * Parchment codex Askew (British Museum Or. Add. 5114, ed.
Life and Living One, or Devil C. Schmidt), from the fourth/fifth century, which preserves the
Pistis Sophia and Books of the Savior materials; papyrus codex Bruce
(Oxford, Bod. Bruce 96, ed. C. Schmidt), with the books of the
(Great) Treatise atcording to a Mystmy (booksof Jeu?) and the muti-
lated “Sethian” (?) treatise in a different hand; the parchment
papyrus fragments of British Museum Or. 4920 (1) (ed. Crum)
which speak of Ialdabaoth, Sophia, and the “seven powers”; the
Deir-Bala’izehparchment fragments (ed. Crum and P. E. Kahle) in
which pre-Abrahamic Israelite traditions are explained to John;
the Paris Bibl. Nat. pap. 135 and Berlin P. 1862, from the
thirdlfourth century, containing Achmimic and Sahidic versions
At other points the Index fails to fulfill its intended of the apocalypses of Elijah and Zephaniah (ed. Steindorff and
function. There are no entries for (the) All, Apostles- Rosenstiehl (the beginning of the Apocdypse of Elijah also appears
although “Apostle (Paul)” appears-or Disciples (even “the on an end page of British Museum Or. 7594 in Sahidic, from the
Twelve”), Archangel& (see Moses), Eighth o r Ogdoad, fourth/fifth century); the Coptic Manichaean Kephalia (P. Berlin,
ed. Polotsky-Bohlig),Homilies (P. Chester Beatty, ed. Polotsky)
Evangelist, First-Thought (see Thought), Harvest (see Place and Psalm Book (P. Chester Beatty, ed. Allberry), all from the
of), Hebdomad, Heli (see Seth), Imperishable Ones, Invisi- fourth or fifth centuries.
ble Spirit (see Spirit), Invisible Child, Joy (mountain of; see
Place of Harvest),Just One (seeJames), Luminaries, Machar
’ Testamentsof Abraham, Isaac,Jacob, and Job (ed. Box-Gaselee,
etal.); Ascension oflsaiah (ed. Lefort); an Apooyphon ofJeremiah (ed.
(see Seth), Mirotheos/Mirothea (see Meiro), Plutonius (see H. Kuhn); Gospels of Bartholomew and Nicodemas (ed. Budge and
Zeus), Rabbi (forJesus), Rest-Repose (as a place), Sambathas Revillout); proto-Gospel of JacoblJames (ed. Leipoldt); History of
(see Pronoia), Self-Father (see Father), Telmael (see Seth), Joseph the Carpenter (ed. Stern and Michel-Peeters); Prayer and
Thrice-Male, Totalities, Triple-Male, Triple-Powerful In- Assumption of Mary (ed. Spiegelberg and Baumstark and Crum);
visible Spirit, Virgin Spirit, Vitality. Many of these appear Epistle of the Apostles (ed. Schmidt); AbgarIJesus correspondence
elsewhere in the Index, it is true, but the user deserves at (ed. Schmidt-Krall);Acts ofAndrew (ed. Lemm); ActslMarCyrdomof
least a cross-referenced entry in alphabetical order. Peter and Paul (ed. Schmidt); Apocalypse of Andrew and P a d (ed.
Steindorff); Didache (ed. Horner, Schmidt); I Ckment (ed.
For what it does include, the Index gets high grades for Schmidt); Shepherd of Hennar (ed. Lefort); treatist on the mysteries
accuracy. Misprints and oversights seem minimal: “Church” of the Greek letters (Oxford/Bodleian Hunt. 393, ed. Hkbbelyn-
does not appear in 2/3.55.19 as reported; “Eve” is in 9/3.46 ick); various “magical” texts and ma e also
(the 3 is omitted); “Self-begotten One” occurs also in Charlesworth, Hennecke-Schneemelc
a“ 1 .
,50J Religious Studies Review Vol. 8, No. l,/Januarji 1989

&?;937 = Chester Beatty ~ x - x(etc.),. third-century single quire BAYNES,CHARLOTTE A.

,containingEzekiel-Daniel-Susanna-Esther; P75 = Bodmer XIV-XV, 1933 A Coptic Grwstic Treatise Contained in the Codex Brucianus.
thirdcentury single quire containingJohn-Luke; P45 = Chester Cambridge: University Press.
Beatty I, 3rd century (?), Gospels-Acts; W = Freer Codex, 5th BIANCHI, UGO(ED.)
century, Gospels; H = Freer Codex, 6th century, Joshua- 1967 Le originidello Gnosticism: ColtoguiodiMessim 13-1 8 A*
Deuteronomy. 1966; Testiediscushni. Supplementsto Numen, 12. Leiden: E. J.
They contain the following sequence of texts, from around the Brill.
third to fourth century (Turner,79-80)and probably discovered in BURCHARD, CHRISTOPH
the area near Nag Hammadi (so Robinson, 1980): Nativitp $Ma?, 1957, 1965 Biblwgraphie zu I n Handschn&n vom Toten Meer.
Paul’s “3 Corinthians” (independent of the Acts of Paul), Odes of Zeitschn3 f u r die alttestamentliche Wissenschu.., Beihefte 76, 89.
Solomon 11,Jude, Melito’s On Passover, fragment of a Hymn, A@- Berlin: Topelmann. Updated regularly in Revue de Qumran.
ogy of Phileas, Psalms 33-34, and 1 Peter. BURROWS, MILLAR
It contains Acts of P a d (Greek), Canticles (Fahumic Cop&), 1955 The Dead Sea Scrok. Viking.
Lamentations (Fayumic Coptic), . . . Qohelet (Greek), Qohelet 1957 More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Viking.
(Coptic). CHARLESWORTH, JAMES H.
In addition to the Coptic materials already listed in preceding 1976 The Pseudepigrapha and Mo&m Research. Society of Bibli-
notes (e.g., Berlin 8502, Paris 135), we find: British Museum Or. cal Literature Septuagintand Cognate Studies, 7. Scholars Press.
7594, from around 300-350 CE, which contains Deuteronomy- (New edition forthcoming.)
Jonah-Acts; Mississippi Crosby Codex 1, from the 3rd or 4th cen- CRUM,WALTER E.
turies (single quire), which includes an unidentified text, then 1939 A Coptic Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon.
Melito’s On Passover, the Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 5.27-7.50, DART,JOHN
1 Peter, Jonah, and another unidentified text. 1976 The Laughing Savior: The Di.scovery and Signfzance of the
* See also 812 PetPhil, above. Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library. Harper 8c Row.
* See also above, 515 Adam to Seth and 1113 Allogms to Messos. DORESSE,JEAN
1960 The Secret Books ofthe Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to
the Gnostic Coptic Manuscrips Discovered at Chemboskion. Trans. by
P. Mairet from the 1958-59 French original. Viking.
DUPONT-SOMMER, ANDRE
BA - Biblical Archaeologist 4214 (Fall 1979). 1961 The E s s m Writingsfrom Qumran. Trans. by G . Vermes.
BCNH - Bibliothtaue CoDte de Nag Hammadi. Laboratoire Oxford: Blackwell.
d’Histoir<ReIigi/use Unive& Laval. Edited (1977-80) FITZMYER, JOSEPH A.
by Jacques E. Menard. Quebec: Les Presses de PUniver- 1975 The Dead Sea Scrok: Major Publications and Toolsfor Study.
site Laval. Sources for Biblical Study, 8. Scholars Press.
FULLER, REGINALD H.
CGL - The Coptic Gnostic Library. Edited with English Trans- 1978 Review Notice of NHL. In Interpretation 32,432,434.
lation, Introduction, and Notes. Published under the GASTER,THEODORE
Auspices of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. 31977 The Dead Sea Scriptures. Doubleday.
Leiden: E. J. Brill. (A sub-series within NHS.) GRANT, ROBERT M.
IDBS - Interpreter’s Dictiormty ofthc Bible. Supplement Volume. 1977 Review of Pagels, 1973 and 1975. In RSR 311. 30-35.
Abingdon, 1976. HENNECKE-SCHNEEMELCHER
NHC - Nag Hammadi Codices. The Facsimile EditMn of the Nag 1963,1965 New TestamentApoMYpha. Translated and edited by
Hammadi Codices. Published under the auspices of the R. McL. Wilson. 2 vols. Westminster Press.
Department of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of JAMES,MONTAGUERHODES
Egypt in conjunction with the United Nations Educa- 1953 The ApOMYphal New Testament. Supplemented and cor-
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Edited by rected ed. Oxford: Clarendon.
J. M. Robinsonetal. lovols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972- . JONAS,HANS
N H L - The Nag Hammadi Library: In English. Translated by 1962 Review of Doresse, 1960. In Journal ofReligion 42, 262-
Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the 73.
Institute for Antiquity and Christianity.J. M. Robinson, KAMMERER, WINIFRED
Director and General Editor. San Francisco: Harper 8c 1950 A Coptic Bibliography. University of Michigan General
Row, 1977. Library Publications. University of Michigan Press.
KRAUSE,MARTIN(ED.)
NHS - Nag Hammadi Studies. Edited by M. Krause, J. M. 1975 Essays on‘ the*NagHammadi Texts in Honor of Pahor Labib.
Robinson, F. Wisse et al. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975- . NHS. 6.
KRIM, KEITHR.
1978 Review Notice of NHL. In Religion in Lge 47, 389-90.
REFERENCES h SOR,WILLIAM
1958 Biblwgraphy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948-1957. Fuller
ALAND, BARBARA (ED.) Theological Seminary.
1978 Gnosis: Fesfschnxt fur Hans Jonas. Gottingen: Vanden- LAYTON, BENTLEY
hoeck 8c Ruprecht. 1976 “Coptic Language.” In ZDBS, 174-79.
BARNES, JOHN 1979 The Gnostic Treatise on Resuwe&n fmNag Hammadi.
1975 “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Scholars Press.
Hammadi Codices.” In Krause, 1975, 9-18. MACRAE, GEORGE W.
BARNES, JOHN (ED.) 1976 “Nag Hammadi.” In IDBS, 613-19.
(completed by J. C. SHELTON and G. M.BROWNE) 1979 Review of NHC. In BA 4214.249-50.
1981 Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Pappn’from the PACEIS,ELAINEH.
Carbnmge ofthe Covers. CGL/NHS, 16. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1972 “A Valentinian Interpretation of Baptism and Eucharist
Times Book Review ’This book may
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THE ART OF
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and: its critique o~:~rthodox* 1980 Pre-publication re
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SCHMIDT, CARL(ED.)
1892 Gnostische Schn@n in
BrucianuF. Texte und Untersuc

Fortress Press.
1979 Review of NHL. In BA 4214, 250r51.
1980 The Cnoslic Gospels. Random House. ’ ischen christlichen Schriftstel
PEARSON, BIRCERA. SCHOLER, DAVID M.
1978 “The Tractate Marsanes (NHC X) and the Platonic 1971 Nag Hammadi Biblw
Tradition.” In Aland, 1978, 373-84. tum.” Annual
1979 Review of NHS, 11. In BA 4214.251-52.
POLOTSKY, HANSJACOB
1944 Etudes dasyntaxe copte. Publications d 1955 Koptische Grammatik
logie copte. Cairo. das Studium der orientalisc
1971 “Coptic.” In Cuwent Trends in Li witz.
by T. A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton. TURNER, ERICG.
QUASTEN, JOHANNES 1977 The Trpobgyofthe Early Co
1950-60 Patrobgy. 3 vols. Newman. Press.
ROBINSON, JAMES M. VERMES, GEZA
1968 “The Coptic Gnostic Library Today.” New Testament 1975 The Dead Sea Scrolls in E
Studies 14,356-40 1. WILLIAMS,MICHAELA.
1972 “Introduction” to NHC. Reprinted as Occasional Papers, 1978 Review of NHL. In JBL
4, by the Claremont Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. WILSON.ROBERT McL.
1975 “The Construction of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” In
Krause, 1975, 18490.
1977a “The Jung Codex: The Rise and Fall of a Monopoly.”
RSR 311, 17-30.
*1977b The Nag Hammadi Codices: A G e w a l Introduction to the
Nature and SipjTuarue ofthe Coptic Gnostic Libraryfrom Nag Ham-
madi. Claremont: Institute for Antiquity and
1979a “Introduction.” BA 4214,201-04.
1979b “The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” BA
4214, 206-24. YAMAUCHI,EDWIN
1979c “Getting the NHL into ‘EngliSh.” BA 4214, 239-48.

Notes on Recent Publications

Comparative Studies
THE ALTERNATIVE TRADITION RELIGION AND THE
REJECTION OF RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. By
James Thrower. The Hague: Mouton, 1980. Pp. 286. $35.25.
Thrower’s theme is the early history of “naturalism,” the view
that reality can be explained without positing divine causation; he
wishes to combat the notion that naturalism is an entirely modern
phenomenon. He begins with Eastern religion-a long section on
India, stressing LokZysta and Ssmkhya, and a shorter one on
China, highlighting the naturalistic and skeptical current in Con-
fucianism. He then moves to the classical Western tradition, cover-
ing Greece from the beginnings of Ionian naturalism, through the
Sophists, to the Epicureans and Sceptics, and, briefly, the essen-
tially derivative Roman naturalism. Israel, Babylon, and Egypt are
mentioned in an appendix. It is useful to have this material col-
lected, but Thrower’s theory of religion-little more than old-
fashioned “humanism”-is inadequate for a clear definition of
“the rejection of religion.” The density of misprints is intolerable,
the transliteration of oriental terms is not alwaxg wnsistent, and
the dust cover carries a subtitle different from that on the title
page.
David Jobling, St. Andrew’s College
S a s b o n , Saskatchewan S7N OW3
INTER-FAITH ORGANIZATIONS, 1893-1919: AN HISTOR-
ICAL DIRECTORY. By Marcus Braybrooke. New York: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1980. Pp. 213. $24.95.
A useful sourcebook which traces the various interfaith con-
ferences beginning with the celebrated World Parliament of Reli-
gions in Chicago in 1893. The change of attitudes from one con-
ference to the next-from the acceptance of Christianity by all
humanity to a search for fellowship and mutual appreciation
among different faiths of the world-is stri\ring. The second part
of the book deals with the past twenty years, especially after the
establishment of the Secretad for Non-Christian Religions by the
Vatican in 1964and thesub-unitof the World Council of Churches
calledDialoguewithMenofOtherFaithsandZduologiesin1971. Under
their auspices interfaith conferences are held with an understarrd-
ing that ”full and loyal commitment to one’s own faith does not
stand in the way of dialogue.“ The book covers several outstanding