vi 



PREFACE. 



Calendar, which supplied Mrs. Maunder with her chief criterion 

 for determining the date and place of some of the more important 

 pseudepigraphical books, such as the Book of Enoch, and for 

 establishing their dependence upon Persian rather than upon 

 Jewish influences. This paper was most appropriately followed 

 by Professor J. Hope Moulton's discussion on "The Zoroastrian 

 Doctrine of a Future Life," which, in its turn, admirably prepared 

 the way for Dr. St. Clair TisdalPs exposition of Mahayana Bud- 

 dhism. The Kev. D. Gath Whitley drew from the vestiges which 

 primeval man has left behind him evidence that even in the Pleisto- 

 cene Period man was not devoid of some kind of religious belief ; 

 while, on the other hand, Canon McClure summarized the principal 

 features of the decadent attitude adopted by some in our own days, 

 and contended that Modernism had departed widely from primitive 

 Christianity. Three further papers touched in different ways on 

 that literary disintegration of Scripture which has been carried out 

 under the name of the Higher Criticism. Professor Margoliouth 

 dealt with this kind of analysis as it has been applied to the works 

 of Homer, and maintained, as against ib, the unity of authorship 

 of the Homeric poems. Dr. T. G. Pinches drew attention to the 

 Old and New Babylonian records of the Creation and the Flood, 

 showing a parallelism to the records in Genesis. While in the 

 Annual Address which concluded the Session, Professor H. Edouard 

 Naville demonstrated how strong was the internal evidence that the 

 Book of Genesis was essentially the work of a single author. 



The papers, therefore, were either themselves original researches 

 of importance or valuable reviews of certain intellectual move- 

 ments ; and the discussions to which they gave rise have often 

 usefully supplemented the papers themselves. 



The Institute is greatly indebted to the distinguished Authors 

 who, during a time of universal strain and distress, have given 

 such important assistance to the objects and purpose of the 

 Institute. 



September, 1915. 



E. Walter Maunder, Editor. 



