29 JUNE 1895, Page 11

The Oracles of Papias. (Longmans.)—This " contribution to the criticism

of the New Testament" is of too technical a kind to be dealt with in detail. The writer starts the theory that the Oracles (iaeria), which Papiaa of Hierapolis attributes to St. Matthew as having been written by him in the Hebrew language, were a collection of Messianic prophecies in Hebrew, and that Papias wrote a commentary on them. In this we are to find, so we are told, some of the material afterwards worked up into the Canonical Gospels. Various moot-points, as, e.g., the date of the Crucifixion, are discussed in the appendix.