diffuse 62.diff.0 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

We have as yet no true critical edition of this book: one is in preparation, by E. von Dobschutz, to be included in the Berlin corpus of Greek Ante-Nicene Christian writers. A short statement of the authorities available at this moment is therefore necessary.

Tischendorf in his Evangelia Apocrypha divides the whole writing into two parts: (1) the story of the Passion; (2) the Descent into hell; and prints the following forms of each: six in all:

1. Part I, Recession A in Greek from eight manuscripts, and a Latin translation of the Coptic version in the notes.

2. Part I, Recession B in Greek from three late manuscripts.

3. Part II (Descent into Hell) in Greek from three manuscripts.

4. Part I in Latin, using twelve manuscripts, and some old editions.

5. Part II in Latin (A) from four manuscripts.

6. Part II in Latin (B) from three manuscripts.

Tischendorf's must be described as an eclectic text not representing probably, any one single line of transmission: but it presents the book in a readable, and doubtless, on the whole, correct form.

There are, besides the Latin, three ancient versions of Part I of considerable importance, viz.:

Coptic, preserved in an early papyrus at Turin, and in some fragments at Paris. Last edited by Revillout in Patrologia orientalis, ix. 2.

Syriac, edited by Rahmaui in Studia Syriaca, II.

Armenian, edited by F. C. Conybeara in Studia Biblica, IV (Oxford, 1896): he gives a Greek rendering of one manuscript and a Latin one of another.

All of these conform to Tischelldorf's Recession A of Part I: and this must be regarded as the most original form of the Acta which we have. Recession B is a late and diffuse working-over of the same matter: it will not be translated here in full.

The first part of the book, containing the story of the Passion and Resurrection, is not earlier than the fourth century. Its object in the main is to furnish irrefragable testimony to the resurrection. Attempts have been made to show that it is of early date-that it is, for instance, the writing which Justin Martyr meant when in his Apology he referred his heathen readers to the 'Acts' of Christ's trial preserved among the archives of Rome. The truth of that matter is that he simply assumed that such records must exist. False 'acts' of the trial were written in the Pagan interest under Maximin, and introduced into schools early in the fourth century. It is imagined by some that our book was a counterblast to these.

The account of the Descent into Hell (Part II) is an addition to the Acta. It does not appear in any Oriental version, and the Greek copies are rare. It is in Latin that it has chiefly flourished, and has been the parent of versions in every European language.

persecuted 992per.21 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Having come to power in October 1917 by means of a coup d'état, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks spent the next few years struggling to maintain their rule against widespread popular opposition. They had overthrown the provisional democratic government and were inherently hostile to any form of popular participation in politics. In the name of the revolutionary cause, they employed ruthless methods to suppress real or perceived political enemies. The small, elite group of Bolshevik revolutionaries which formed the core of the newly established Communist Party dictatorship ruled by decree, enforced with terror.

This tradition of tight centralization, with decision-making concentrated at the highest party levels, reached new dimensions under Joseph Stalin. As many of these archival documents show, there was little input from below. The party elite determined the goals of the state and the means of achieving them in almost complete isolation from the people. They believed that the interests of the individual were to be sacrificed to those of the state, which was advancing a sacred social task. Stalin's "revolution from above" sought to build socialism by means of forced collectivization and industrialization, programs that entailed tremendous human suffering and loss of life.

Although this tragic episode in Soviet history at least had some economic purpose, the police terror inflicted upon the party and the population in the 1930s, in which millions of innocent people perished, had no rationale beyond assuring Stalin's absolute dominance. By the time the Great Terror ended, Stalin had subjected all aspects of Soviet society to strict party-state control, not tolerating even the slightest expression of local initiative, let alone political unorthodoxy. The Stalinist leadership felt especially threatened by the intelligentsia, whose creative efforts were thwarted through the strictest censorship; by religious groups, who were persecuted and driven underground; and by non-Russian nationalities, many of whom were deported en masse to Siberia during World War II because Stalin questioned their loyalty.

Although Stalin's successors also persecuted writers and dissidents, they used police terror more sparingly to coerce the population, and they sought to gain some popular support by relaxing political controls and introducing economic incentives. Nonetheless, strict centralization continued and eventually led to the economic decline, inefficiency, and apathy that characterized the 1970s and 1980s, and contributed to the Chernobyl' nuclear disaster. Mikhail Gorbachev's program of perestroika was a reaction to this situation, but its success was limited by his reluctance to abolish the bastions of Soviet power--the party, the police, and the centralized economic system--until he was forced to do so after the attempted coup in August 1991. By that time, however, it was too late to hold either the Communist leadership or the Soviet Union together. After seventy-four years of existence, the Soviet system crumbled.