Revelation, Book of, by the Rev. Dr. Robert Henry Charles, lecturer in Biblical studies, Oxford. This book, and this article, should be studied in connection with the article, also by Dr. Charles, on Apocalyptic Literature, and the canonical apocalyptic passages in Mark 13, Mathew 24, Luke 21 and 2nd Thessalonians 2, as well as the extra-canonical apocalypses described in Apocalyptic Literature and in the separate articles Isaiah, Ascension of, and Hermas, Shepherd of. Besides see the articles Eschatology, Millenium. The student should read the article Nero, even if “666” does not certainly refer to him, and the articles Domitian and Vespasian on the possibility that one of them may have been “the beast that was and is not, ... himself also an eighth” (see footnote on p. 220, Vol. 23).

Apocryphal Literature

As an epilogue the student should read the articles Apocryphal Literature, both of the Old and New Testament periods, by Dr. Charles and at least the first part, by Dr. A. C. McGiffert of Union Theological Seminary, New York City, of the article Church History.

A Biblical Encyclopaedia

The study outline sketched in this chapter will give the student some idea of the possibilities of the Britannica in helping him. The list of articles dealing with the Bible on pp. 944–945 of the Index (Vol. 29) will show that in the Britannica there is an adequate and excellent encyclopaedia of the Bible or text-book of Bible Study.

CHAPTER XLII
HISTORY, INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL

When you turn to the new Britannica to study history, you naturally expect to learn a great deal that will be new to you. But you can anticipate something more and better than that. You will find a great deal that is new to everyone, even to those who have been reading history for years. For the contributors to the work, in making a completely fresh survey of the whole field of human knowledge, were helping one another to obtain new light upon the history of even the earliest periods. As all the articles were completed before a single volume was printed, there was such an opportunity for comparison and revision as has never before existed. When research upon one subject had disclosed new evidence that was of value in relation to another subject, the contributors and editors could co-operate as fully as if they had all been assembled in a great international congress. And the result of this collaboration is that the publication of the new Britannica does more, at one stroke, to advance historical knowledge, to solve historical doubts, and to correct historical mistakes than is done by isolated historians in the course of a generation.

Authority

With this idea of combined effort clearly before you, consider for a moment the accumulated individual authority of such individual specialists as those who deal with history in the Britannica. There are, to name only a few, the Germans Eduard Meyer and Schiemann of Berlin, Hashagen of Bonn, von Pastor of Innsbruck, Pauli of Göttingen, Keutgen of Hamburg, and Count Lützow; Frenchmen like Mgr. Duchesne, Luchaire, Valois, Anchel, Halphen, Babelon and Bémont; the Italians Villari, Barnabei and Balzani; the Canadians Doughty, Grant, Dionne and Wrong; among Americans, J. H. Robinson, W. A. Dunning, H. L. Osgood, C. H. Hayes, G. W. Botsford, and J. T. Shotwell of Columbia; President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, and Drs. Edward Channing, F. J. Turner and Charles Gross of Harvard; Drs. A. D. Morse, R. B. Richardson and Preserved Smith of Amherst; Dr. T. F. Collier of Williams; Professors William Graham Sumner, G. Burton Adams and J. C. Schwab of Yale; Prof. Grant Showerman of Wisconsin; Prof. William MacDonald of Brown; Profs. Fleming and Scroggs of Louisiana; Dr. McMaster of Pennsylvania; Prof. I. J. Cox of Cincinnati; the late Alexander Johnston of Princeton; Prof. W. Roy Smith of Bryn Mawr; Henry Cabot Lodge, Carl Schurz and James Ford Rhodes; and—to mention only a few English names—S. R. Gardiner, Edward Freeman, Thomas Hodgkin, James Bryce, James Gairdner, J. D. Bury, C. W. C. Oman, A. F. Pollard, J. H. Round, H. W. C. Davis, Osmund Airy, G. W. Prothero, John Morley, Reginald Lane Poole, J. Holland Rose, F. J. Haverfield, W. Alison Phillips, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, R. Nisbet Bain, W. Warde Fowler, J. L. Myres, J. S. Reid, W. J. Brodribb and H. F. Pelham.

So much for the quality of the historical matter in the Britannica. The quantity is equally remarkable.