A short chapter is devoted to Jainism; and then follows a very full and interesting treatment of post-Buddhistic Hinduism, which occupies half the volume. First the deities of the different orthodox sects; then a sketch of the history and doctrines of those sects; then the various reformers, before and after the influence of Mahommadanism became felt; then the modern rites and idolatries, the sacred symbols and objects, the festivals and pilgrimages, are successively passed in careful and elaborate review.

This is not only on the whole the best, but the only manual of the religions of India, apart from Buddhism, which we have in English. Professor Monier Williams's Indian Wisdom and Hinduism scarcely do more than touch upon the Vedic beliefs; and Professor Max Müller has never travelled far beyond them. The present work is in every way worthy of the promising school of young French scholars to which the author belongs, and shows not only great knowledge of the facts, and power of clear exposition, but also great insight into the inner history and the deeper meaning of the great religion-for it is in reality only onewhich it proposes to describe. The list of authorities given in the notes is both ample and well chosen; and, subject to what has been said above about Buddhism, it can be strongly recommended as a useful manual, and a very complete and accurate sketch.

T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS.

DR. TIELE'S COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN

AND MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGIONS.

*

Twin reach of a larger circle of readers than its Dutch Original

THE publication of this translation will place this valuable work

could secure. Dr. Tiele's labours on the history of religion are now so well known and so highly esteemed, that a few words will suffice to call the attention of students to this important volume. It really represents the first great instalment of a comprehensive History of the Ancient Religions, and embraces the religion of Egypt with those which may be briefly designated Mesopotamian, viz., the pre-Semitic and the Semitic Religions of the Valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, and of the Phenicians and Israelites. Dr. Tiele's general views on these different developments have been summarised in the Outlines of the History of Religion, already in the hands of English readers, and recently translated also into German and French. But whoever would fill up the sketches there traced must consult the larger work before us, into which Dr. Tiele has woven the results of nine years' additional study since the treatise was first composed.

* Histoire Comparé des Anciennes Religions de l'Egypte et des Peuples Sémitiques. Par C. P. TIELE. Traduite du Hollandais par G. Collins. Paris.

These nine years have been fruitful in further discovery. The cuneiform Scholars, in particular, have been hard at work, and an immense mass of material has been placed in their hands by the publication of new texts, and the accumulation of knowledge for their decypherments. Amid these Dr. Tiele threads his way with steady step; cautiously withholding assent (especially in the matter of some of the Akkadian theories) from unproved conjectures, and waiting for further revision and more assured results. The progress of investigation has, however, cleared up a number of obscure and difficult points, and the author has accordingly recast the portion of the treatise specially devoted to the religions of Babylonia and Assyria. A new chapter has been added on the religion of the Sumirs and Akkads, and the other chapters have been largely re-written. This division may be, in fact, regarded as almost a new work; and the amount of labour which it must have cost the author is a significant testimony to his love of truth. Several changes have also been made in the first part, devoted to the religion of Egypt. These have been to some extent necessitated by the development of inquiry in fresh directions in other respects they are designed to indicate the effect of religion on the morals and social condition of the Empire at different periods of its history. In the older treatise this great subject was rather ignored; and the reader was left with but scanty information on one of the most deeply interesting questions connected with the organisation of any religion, viz., its influence on ethics. This defect has been largely repaired, and several pregnant generalisations afford the student provisional guidance, as he prepares to attempt the difficult task of estimating the value of particular forms of belief for the culture of the conscience and the regulation of life. In the third section, on the religions of Phenicias and Israel, there has been less need of change. The main views of Dr. Tiele were framed in accordance with the theory of the late origin of the Levitical legislation, which has so completely altered our whole conception of the development of Hebrew religion. The progress of inquiry during the last ten years has tended steadily to confirm this once startling idea, and our author accordingly has found little to modify or suppress. His hypothesis of the Kenite orgin of Yahvism remains unshaken, for the simple reason that it is not capable of disproof; while the part which he ascribes to Moses in establishing the primitive religious institutions of Israel places him among those who may almost in a sense be called conservative, from their recognition of the value of religious tradition, compared with critics who have less faith in historic continuity.

Why, however, should the religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine be grouped together? Externally, of course, there is a certain significance in thus comparing with the religion of Israel the religions of the great powers with which it was successively in contact, and whose movements exercised again and again such decisive influence upon its history. But this is not the point of view which Dr. Tiele adopts. He describes the faiths of the Nile and the Euphrates for their own sakes, quite apart from all question of their place upon the map. And he finds

in them certain common elements amid their multitudinous differences. These are not mere outward resemblances-such as between Hathor of Egypt, and Ishtar of Mesopotamia (Athtar in Yemen), or between the Theban Amun and the Chaldean Anu, both signifying "the hidden.” It is not a question of the likeness of the brick pyramids, the tombs of Apis, among the most ancient monuments of Egypt, and the terraced temples of Babylonia-which were regarded as the tombs of the gods. Rather is it the essential ideas, the fundamental conceptions, which lie parallel with each other. Remote in origin, they advanced in a similar direction-viz., towards a theocratic constitution of the most definite kind. The Kings reign as the representatives of the gods; in Egypt they are the objects of an actual cult; in Assyria, they reign in the name of the deity Asur; in Babylonia, royalty had a distinctly sacerdotal character. The signi ficance of the Egyptian name for divine beings-nuteru-was, if Mr. Renouf may be followed, the same as that of the Semitic ilāni—viz., “ the strong ones." Dr. Tiele shows in an interesting manner how the circumstances of Egypt led to a modification of this idea into that of revolutions of life and the renewal of being, with which was closely connected the doctrine of existence after death. The sterner climate of Assyria, and, possibly, varying political conditions, gave to the northern theocracy an austerer form, wherein religious thought, working under other modifying causes, rested more simply in the ideas of naked power, and became more exclusive and less accommodating.

Midway between the two, geographically speaking, but far above them both, spiritually, was the religion of Israel. Its numerous points of contact with the Phenician and other Semitic faiths, are necessarily exhibited with great fulness by our author, who plants himself on the firm ground of historical connection, proved by community of language, usage, and ideas, and can deal with the records of its development without the necessity of vindicating any pre-established view. The religion of Israel, like that of the two great powers who so often aimed at each other across it, was a theocracy. But the leading idea which its prophets infused into it, was that neither of cyclic life, nor of pure might, but of an absolute holiness. The causes of this new departure, for such it essentially was, remain still obscure. Why Israel alone should have produced an order of prophets to enter on the long struggle with idolatry; why the ethical conception should have attached itself so early to the religious, so as completely to triumph over all the lower mythological elements, whose presence, nevertheless, in the older phases of belief and practice can still be detected—these are questions which our author does not essay to solve. The time is not yet come, he would perhaps say, for attempting their solution. He is content with a clear statement of the facts and of the conditions immediately preceding them : it is for the philosopher to discover the ultimate causes, or to abandon the quest and confess his impotence. In this matter, however, we fancy that Dr. Tiele's estimate of the value of the prophetic teachings is perhaps lower than our own; at any rate, we confess that we are not disposed to

find fault with them because they were unacquainted with the doctrine of development, and had no notion of the historical method.

It is impossible in this brief notice to give any adequate idea of the richness of learning, the wealth of illustration and happy suggestiveness, of this treatise. The lucidity of Dr. Tiele's style is well preserved in the French translation by the practised hand of M. Collins. Press of matter has, we suppose, excluded several interesting notes; and we particularly regret the disappearance of many references likely to be of great service to the student. Moreover, we cannot help also protesting against the omission of the detailed table of contents, and the absence of any guidance by means of page-headings. There is no way of finding anything in the book except by reading it through from end to end, or guessing in which chapter it is likely to occur. The value of such a book of reference as this would be doubled by a good index. It is much to be hoped that some English publisher will follow the enterprising example of his brethren in Amsterdam and Paris, and reproduce the work in this country. It is a matter of just pride to us to count up the honoured names of our own scholars who have been among the foremost in original discovery and in subsequent research in some of the fields which Dr. Tiele here surveys. But no one has yet brought to the treatment of the material they have so amply provided, the ripe knowledge, the calm judgment, the broad sympathies, the clear insight, which are so conspicuous in this history of the Ancient Religions of Egypt and the Semitic Peoples.

J. E. C.

ROF. SCHOLTEN'S works on the Gospel of Luke and the authorship of the book of Acts, published in Holland in 1870 and 1873 respectively, have at last been made accessible to a wider circle of readers by Dr. Redepenning's German translation.* Even in Holland this trans. lation will be welcomed, for when Scholten wrote his " Pauline Gospel,” he was still under the dominion of the almost undisputed critical tradition of the identity of the authorship of the third Gospel and the book of Actsa tradition with which his own researches and conclusions were in reality at war. Hence, the book, though an extremely valuable contribution to the literature of Gospel criticism, was to some extent unsatisfactory, more especially its concluding portion, which dealt with the "tendency of the Acts, giving a painfully obvious example of a theory rough-ridden over the facts. All this was corrected in a small supplementary work on the authorship of the Book of Acts, in which Scholten broke with the received opinion as to the connection of that book with the Gospel of

Das Paulinische Evangelium, &c. J. H. SCHOLTEN. Übersetzt von

E. R. Redepenning, Elberfeld, 1881.

Luke, ascribing only the final editing of Luke and the insertion of certain specified passages to the author of Acts. This view was sustained with such ability and supported by arguments of such weight, that it is difficult to explain the comparative silence with which they have been passed over, except on the supposition that their having been presented in a Dutch dress only prevented their finding their way into the general current of theological studies. Prof. Scholten has now recast his earlier work and united it with its corrective sequel, so that Dr. Redepenning's translation presents his views in a more compact and uninterrupted form, as well as in a more widely read language, than those in which they have hitherto been accessible, and we can hardly doubt that they will now produce an impression proportionate to their high critical significance and value.

P. H. W.

TH

EWALD'S 'PROPHETS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.'

[HE fifth and concluding volume of Mr. J. Frederic Smith's translation of Ewald's "Prophets of the Old Testament" * completes a work of the highest importance to Biblical scholarship in England, and we heartily congratulate the publishers and translator on its issue. The present volume contains the feeble and dying echoes of the old prophetic literature, already paralysed by the growing strength of the priestly spirit, together with the great type of the revived prophecy of Apocalypse -the Book of Daniel. The dull and spiritless exhortations of Haggai, the livelier visions and discourses of Zachariah, the son of Berekiah-a finger post on the road that leads from Ezekiel to Daniel-and Malachi's rekindled zeal and passion, together with the scattered and anonymous oracles of the period immediately before them are brought into connection on the one hand with the historical circumstances of their origin, and, on the other, with the literary history of prophecy and the deeper religious thoughts which they suggest or embody. Then follows a survey of the prophetic "aftergrowths." Jonah represents a mass of legendary matter grouped round the names of the older prophets; while the Greek Baruc and Epistle of Jeremiah represent the simpler form of the newer prophetic style.

Then comes the Book of Daniel, the most interesting portion of the volume, and a fitting close to the whole work. In an elaborate introduction Ewald explains the significance of this great Apocalypse under all its aspects, and develops his theory of an older prophetic work on the same subject (representing Daniel as living in the court of Nineveh) upon which our present Daniel to some extent rests.

The translation strikes us as most successful where it might be supposed to be most difficult. In point of accuracy Mr. Smith's work is,

* Williams and Norgate. 1881.