CONGRES INTERNATIONAL D’ HISTOIRE DES RELIGIONS. 27 
What are the existing pagan monuments of Slavonic 
paganism in Northern Ge ermany ? 
What indications of Slavonic paganism exist in the place- 
names of Northern Germany ? 
SECTION H.—Christianity. 
The earlier centuries: Can Essenism be considered as one of 
the factors of Christianity as it was at first ? 
What contributions to a knowledge of the evolution of the 
ideas and rites of primitive Christianity have new Christian 
texts, discovered within the last thirty years, furnished ? 
What part had Greece and Judea in the elaboration of 
ancient Christian eschatology ? 
What is our real knowledge to-day of the origin and 
history of Gnosticism ? 
Is it possible to reconcile the system of Basilides (according 
to Irene) and the parallel system of Hypolitus ? 
The middle ages: The Asiatic (Greek, Latin, Arab, Jewish, 
and Byzantine) sources from which the theologians of the 
West drew in the middle ages. 
The relations of Byzance with pagan Russia in the eleventh 
century, and particularly concerning the foundation of the 
first Christian churches in Russia. 
Modern times: The influence of Kant’s and Hegel’s philo- 
sophies upon historical criticism as applied to the origins of 
Christianity. 
As will be seen trom this résumé, the Congress had set 
itself no light task, and there is every reason to believe that 
those who had offered to write papers did not realise what 
was expected of them. Indeed, I doubt whether some of 
the questions were capable of being answered, but no doubt 
the originators of the Congress wished to provide material 
for many years to come, and if this was the case, they have 
succeeded. Of course I am not capable of speaking with 
regard to all the points, but this is certainly the case in my own 
speciality. In the first question of the Semitic section we 
are asked how we are to reconcile the Chaldean belief in the 
eternity of the world with the account of the creation of the 
heavens, the earth, the gods, and the stars? We have, how- 
ever, it seems to me, first to prove that the Chaldeans really 
had a belief in the eternity of the world before we try to 
