42 THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON THE 
inordinate length. I shall only refer to those which seem 
to be the most interesting to English readers. 
Averroism occupied the first place, the opening paper of 
this section being ‘“Averroism and Averroists of the 
Thirteenth Century,” according to the De Unitate Intellectus 
contra Averroistos of St. Thomas of Aquinas, by M. Picavet. 
He showed that the Averroists, from the thirteenth century 
onwards, opposed reason to faith. M. Alphandéry followed 
with a paper entitled, * Was there a popular Averroism in 
the Thirteenth Century ? ”—a question which he answered in 
the negative. 
The next paper was by Mr. Conybeare, of Oxford, upon 
the sacrifice of animals in the Oriental churches, notably 
that of the Armenians, and how these sacrifices persisted to 
an exceedingly late date in certain parts of Christendom. 
In the discussion which followed, references were made to 
the relation of these sacrifices with love-feasts and the 
Eucharist, and the outcome of the matter was the passing of 
a resolution recommending the study by scholars of those 
aspects of Christianity in the East which had escaped the 
action of Graeco-Roman eivilization. 
At the second meeting of this section the opening paper 
was by M. Piepenbring, who read and made abstracts of a 
long paper upon the fundamental principles of the teaching 
of Jesus, in four parts—the authority of the Old Testament 
according to Jesus; His ideas of the Kingdom of God; His 
conception of the Messiah; and the way in which Jesus 
represents the Heavenly Father. An interesting discussion 
followed, the consensus of opinion being that M. Piepenbring 
had enclosed the Saviour too closely in the current Jewish 
Apocalyptic element, without taking account of other 
influences (prophetism, etc.); and of having spoken too 
strongly against the exaggerated spiritualization of the 
teaching of Jesus in a modern sense, falling into an excess 
the other way. 
Rabbi Klein, of Stockholm, then communicated a long 
paper in German relative to the influence of Essenism on 
Christianity. This was summed up by the acting president, 
M. Bonet-Maury, in French. Herr Klein emphasized the 
continued existence, in Israel, of a small Church within the 
large one—a society of “pious folk” (anavim, ebionim), of 
which he finds traces even in the ninth century before Christ. 
He distinguished between the Essenians by race and those 
forming a community of initiated. 
