A short review can offer only a sampling of this rich and magisterial collection, from which a longer one might draw up a detailed balance-sheet setting the new against the old in ancient Christianity. Many will be surprised to read that the notion of humility as a virtue is neither Christian nor biblical (‘Antike Höflichkeit und christliche Demut’, 12), and that Christians were following popular rather than apostolic counsels when they began to treat piety and probity as complementary virtues (‘Der Kanon der zwei Tugenden’). Augustine is not so much shaping a Christian polity as denying the possibility of anticipating heaven on earth (‘Antikes und Unantikes in der frühchristlichen Staatstheorie’, 68); in this he concurs with Ambrose against the civically-minded Symmachus (‘Zum Streit um den Altar der Viktoria’, 51). The Gospels, for all their superficial resemblances, have no true antecedents in the pagan biographical tradition, which lacks any concept of salvation-history (‘Die Evangelien und die griechische Biographie’, 129). Only on such teleological premisses was it possible for the Church to inculcate the new virtue of hope (‘Von der Hoffnung’, 244). Whereas Greek Christians catch the tone of Plato in defending free will against fatalism (‘Die Schicksalslehren des Philosophie in der Alten Kirche’, 173), the Syrian Bardesanes conscripted Peripatetic arguments against astrology (‘Astrology in the doctrine of Bardesanes’, 213). The two other English pieces are an erudite review of Loveday Alexander's monograph on the prologue to Luke and a judicious compilation of the evidence for early Christian missions in India.