It is not my purpose to make anything like a systematic bibliography, but a few recommendations may be useful to some students who approach this subject, as I have done, from the side of classical Greek.
For Greek Philosophy I have used besides Plato and Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Philodemus, Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker; Diels, Doxographi Graeci; von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta; Usener, Epicurea; also the old Fragmenta Philosophorum of Mullach.
For later Paganism and Gnosticism, Reitzenstein, Poimandres; Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen; Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgic (also Abraxas, Nekyia, Muttererde, &c.); P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-Römische Kultur; Cumont, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (also The Mysteries of Mithra, Chicago, 1903), and Les Religions Orientales dans l'Empire Romain; Seeck, Untergang der antiken Welt, vol. iii; Philo, de Vita Contemplativa, Conybeare; Gruppe, Griechische Religion and Mythologie, pp. 1458-1676; Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 1907, with good bibliography in the introduction; articles by E. Bevan in the Quarterly Review, No. 424 (June 1910), and the Hibbert Journal, xi. 1 (October 1912). Dokumente der Gnosis, by W. Schultz (Jena, 1910), gives a highly subjective translation and reconstruction of most of the Gnostic documents: the Corpus Hermeticum is translated into English by G. R. S. Meade, Thrice Greatest Hermes, 1906. The first volume of Dr. Scott's monumental edition of the Hermetica (Clarendon Press, 1924) has appeared just too late to be used in the present volume.
For Jewish thought before the Christian era Dr. Charles's Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; also the same writer's Book of Enoch, and the Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments by Carl Clemen, Giessen, 1909.
Of Christian writers apart from the New Testament those that come most into account are Hippolytis (✝ a. d. 250), Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, Epiphanius (367-403), Panarion, and Irenaeus (✝ a. d. 202), Contra Haereses, i, ii. For a simple introduction to the problems presented by the New Testament literature I would venture to recommend Prof. Bacon's New Testament, in the Home University Library, and Dr. Estlin Carpenter's First Three Gospels. In such a vast literature I dare not make any further recommendations, but for a general introduction to the History of Religions with a good and brief bibliography I would refer the reader to Salomon Reinach's Orpheus (Paris, 1909; English translation the same year), a book of wide learning and vigorous thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[124:1] Mr. Marett has pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists class the feelings bound up with flight, cowering, and prostration under the common head of "asthenic emotion". In plain English they are all forms of heart-sinking, of feeling unstrung. This general type of innate disposition would seem to be the psychological basis of Humility. Taken in its social setting, the emotion will, of course, show endless shades of complexity; for it will be excited, and again will find practical expression, in all sorts of ways. Under these varying conditions, however, it is reasonable to suppose that what Mr. McDougall would call the "central part" of the experience remains very much the same. In face of the sacred the normal man is visited by a heart-sinking, a wave of asthenic emotion.' Mr. Marett continues: 'If that were all, however, Religion would be a matter of pure fear. But it is not all. There is yet the positive side of the sacred to be taken into account.' It is worth remarking also that Schleiermacher (1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence without attempting to define the object towards which it was directed.
[129:1] Usener, Epicurea (1887), pp. 232 ff.; Diels, Doxographi Graeci (1879), p. 306; Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (1903-5), Chrysippus 1014, 1019.
[133:1] Juv. x. 365 f.; Polyb. ii. 38, 5; x. 5, 8; xviii. 11, 5.