The completion of Alfred von Reumont's History of the City of Rome, (Geschichte der Stadt Rom,) which has now reached its third volume, is looked for by European scholars with great interest. It is universally praised as a work of remarkable research, learning, and unusual impartiality.
Testamenta XII Patriarcharum, ad fidem Cantabrigiensis edita; accedunt lectiones cod. Oxoniensis. The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs; an Attempt to estimate their Historic and Dogmatic Worth. By R. Sinker, M.A., Chaplain of Trinity College. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell. London: Bell & Daldy. 1869.
An elegant edition of this apocryphal work, carefully revised and annotated from manuscripts preserved at Cambridge and Oxford, with a learned and judicious treatise. Ecclesiastical antiquity has left us but little positive information concerning these testaments. We are certain that the testaments of the twelve patriarchs were known to Tertullian and to Origen, but we do not know who wrote them. Was the author a Jew, a Christian from among the Gentiles, or a Christian of Jewish race? Was he an Ebionite or a Nazarene? Is the work all from one hand, or is it interpolated? On all these points there is a difference of opinion. Equally in doubt are the points, When was the book written? for what class of readers was it specially intended? and what was the author's object in writing it? Mr. Sinker discusses the subject with great firmness, and concludes, but without any dogmatism, that the author was a Jewish Christian of the sect of the Nazarenes, and that the work was composed at a period between the taking of Jerusalem by Titus and the revolt of the Jew Barcochba in 135. One of the most important portions of Mr. Sinker's work is on the Christology of the Testaments, (pages 88-116.) He is satisfied that the author expresses his belief in the mystery of the incarnation, and he sets forth the doctrine of the Testaments on the Messiah, king and pontiff, descendant of Juda and Levi, priest and victim, Lamb of God, Saviour of the world, etc. etc. The work really merits a longer notice, and should be in the hands of all who can profit by its perusal. Many important questions concerning the primitive history of Christianity, obscured by the fallacious conjectures of anti-Christian critics, may have much light thrown upon them.
Some of the English periodicals are not especially brilliant or profound in their appreciation of and comments upon foreign literature. Take the London Athenæum, for instance, the same periodical which last year approved with such an air of wisdom the author who undertook to revive the old exploded fable of a female pope. It informs its readers, (number of 6th November last,) "The Man with the Iron Mask continues to occupy the learned in search of problematical questions. M. Marius Topin has come to the conclusion that Lauzun was the man. We believe this theory has already been advocated." Now, from the most superficial reading of M. Topin's work, (provided the reader knows a little more French than the Athenæum,) it is perfectly clear that, although M. Topin speaks of Lauzun as a prisoner at Pignerol, he expressly says that it is impossible to think seriously of him as a candidate for the iron mask, for the simple reason that Lauzun was set at liberty some years before the death of the masked prisoner.
A Scripture Concordance, prepared and written by a lawyer, is something of a novelty in Catholic ecclesiastical literature. And the concordance is not an ordinary one of words and names. It is exclusively of texts of Scripture and words relating to our ideas and sentiments, our virtues and our vices, our duties to God and our neighbor, our obligations to ourselves, thus strikingly demonstrating the grandeur of its precepts, the beauty of its teachings, and the sublimity of its moral. Texts purely doctrinal are rigorously excluded, and but one name is retained—the divine name of the Saviour. The book is entitled, SS. Scripturæ Concordantiæ Novæ, seu Doctrina moralis et dogmatica e sacris Testamentorum Codicibus ordine alphabetico desumpta, in qua textus de qualibet materia facilius promptiusque quam in aliis concordantiis inveniri possunt, auctore Carolo Mazeran, Advocato. Paris and Brussels. 1869. 8vo.