Literature on Church History, 1914–1920. I. Early Church History

Abstract

In the preparation of the following survey two methods were possible. I might select for fuller notice certain of the most important productions and by means of them illustrate the progress in this branch of historical science during the period of the war, or I might endeavor to give as complete an account of the literature as possible, including notices of less significant but nevertheless useful publications. I decided upon the second course, partly because the mass of production seemed to me too large and varied to be satisfactorily exhibited by the more or less arbitrary selection of a few works, partly because it often happens that a seemingly unimportant note may be of worth to some scholar who happens to be pursuing research in that particular field—something which in the many years during which I edited the Theologische Jahresbericht I have often found true in my own experience and that of others. Unfortunately the Jahresbericht, which seemed to us indispensable, as well as the Theologische Rundschau, edited by Bousset, whose untimely death we mourn, have both succumbed to the unfavorable conditions of the times. All the more necessary does it seem to create at least a partial substitute for them, and I embraced the opportunity offered me by the editors of this Review the more gladly because in my own country it will for the present be quite impossible to publish such a survey.