Excerpt from The Open Court, Vol. 40: April, 1926 But far more important than these merely mechanical changes is what Loisy himself contributes to the work. He writes a gen eral introduction to. The whole volume and then each book receives its own special introduction, in which its contents are set forth from the angle of Loisy's scholarship. These introductions are weighted with deep - cutting thoughts. Embodying his latest critical conclusions. Even the liberal school Of New Testament critics, who hitherto num bered Loisy as one Of their brightest lights, will hardly follow him in his newest conclusions, for he has practically deserted the liberals and advanced to radical ground. One is reminded at times of the views of our own Prof. William Benjamin Smith, a scholar whose work has attracted widespread attention in Europe, although in his own country he still lives behind that smoke-screen. For Loisy adopts at least two of Smith's positions, and that without credit! He adopts the symbolical interpretation Of the miracles and much other matter: and Smith's View that the first preaching Of Christi amity was a crusade for monotheism and an onslaught upon idolatry, takes with Loisy a slightly different form: it is the evangelization Of the pagans. With Loisy it is a fundamental proposition that Judaism finally clothed itself in the form of a mystery religion, like the other orien tal cults, and that this new mystery religion was Christianity in its early form. But in proportion as the cult of the dead and risen Messiah expanded it ceased to be a simple variation of the Jewish religion. In fact, it was precisely the Opposition of the young off shoot to its parent that later on proved Of vital importance in shap ing the Christian tradition. The singularity Of early Christian liter ature he finds to consist precisely in the circumstance that it sought to present as the authentic fact Of Israelitish faith and hope the Hellenistic religion, the mystery of universal salvation which Chris tianity had become. That Paul knew little or nothing about the earthly life Of Jesus is emphasized, without pushing this fact to an extreme conclusion; Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews appear to know much more about the actions of the Christ in heaven before and after his epiphany than about the life of Jesus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.