THE PA1JLINE EPISTLES.
The Pauline Epistles. By Rev. R. D. Shaw, M.A., B.D. (T. and T. Clark. 8s. net.)—Mr. Shaw's book is full of interest, not only from the point of view of Scriptural exegesis—the purpose of his work is twofold, critical and historical—but for the picture it gives of the ordinary life of the citizens to whom St. Paul's letters were addressed. The author enters minutely into the arguments of what is called the Dutch school—that school of Biblical critics named from the nationality of their most promi- nent members—who deny that the Epistles of St. Paul contain more than a small amount of Paul's writing, and who believe that the Epistles as we have them belong to the second century, and consequently affirm that the man we call St. Paul, whose character we make out from his writings, is a creation of the imagination. This argument Mr. Shaw refutes,—as it seems to the ordinary reader, unanswerably. The chapter on "Pagan Rome," the second half of which deals with the Jews in Rome, is extraordinarily vivid in style and conception. Mr. Shaw dwells particularly upon the fact that the widespread dispersion of the Jewish people conduced more than any other single factor to the rapid spread of the Gospel in the Roman Empire. "Their settle- ments were the centres to which the evangelists naturally and immediately turned, and they and their proselytes were as a rule the first-fruits of the conversion." The chapters on "Slavery," written et propos of the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, are well worth reading. They deal with the history of slavery, the causes of its mitigation and aholition, and the attitude of the Bible towards it. We congratulate Mr. Shaw on his learned, varied, and interesting book.
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