Swete, Henry Barclay. Apocalypse of St. John: the Greek text with introd., notes and indices. *$3.50. Macmillan.
Preceding the text and occupying about half the book such introductory subjects are discussed as Prophecy in the apostolic church, Jewish and Christian apocalypses, Contemporary scholarship and thought in western Asia, Origin of the apocalypse of St. John, including a discussion of its grammatical, rhetorical and literary style and an interpretation of the text from the religious, symbolical, mystical, historical and biographical point of view.
“Dr. Swete’s work is marked by all the care, thoroughness, and precision of scholarship in linguistic and grammatical interpretation which distinguished all his work and secure to him his place as a member of the famous ‘Cambridge’ school. But to the present writer he appears, by the complete rejection of the methods applied, e. g., by Boussett, to exclude the only possible means of arriving at an interpretation of the book which is at once consistent and primary; i.e., an interpretation of what was in the mind of the author.” C. Anderson Scott.
| + − | Am. J. Theol. 11: 540. Jl. ’07. 1140w. |
“We must be content with adding an emphatic commendation of Dr. Swete’s volume to the attention of our readers.”
| + + | Spec. 98: 1005. Je. 29, ’07. 420w. |
Swettenham, Sir Frank Athelstane. British Malaya: an account of the origin and progress of British influence in Malaya. *$4.50. Lane.
7–7542.
Essentially historical. “Of the fourteen chapters, the first deals with the milieu, the next with the early history according to native and European sources; then follow two chapters on the dawn of British influence; they are not always pleasant reading, for our treatment of the Sultan of Kedah was anything but creditable. The next two chapters cover the middle fifty years of the last century. This was a period of anarchy, brought to an end, though not at once, by the appointment of British residents.... Not the least attractive portions of the work are of the author’s testimony to the virtues of the Chinese and his condemnation of the ordinary system of building railways in British colonies.... The final chapter gives us the author’s views on the future of the British colony with some more criticism of irrational methods.”—Acad.