Politically, indeed, the whole period was one of retrogression and stagnation.

nominally the beginning Df the rise of the Nile, was the beginning of the year, and as the ~ile commences to rise very regularly at about the date of the annual heliacal rising of the conspicuous dog-star Sothis (Sirius~ (which itself follows extremely closely the slow retrogression af the Julian year), the primitive astronomers found in the heliacal rising of Sothis as observed at Memphis (on July 9 Julian) a very correct and useful, starting-point for the seasonal year.

9 f., is to be taken as "only a symptom of the general retrogression of religious energy" (Jiilicher), and not as bearing directly on the main danger of these "Hebrews."

In virtue of this defect, due largely to the failure to enter into the Apostolic experience of mystic union with Christ, he can rightly speak of "an immense retrogression" in theology visible "at the end of the century, and in circles where it might have been least expected" (ii.

He had no profound insight into the problem of Judaism, and there was no lasting validity in his view that the problem - the thousands of years' old mystery - could be solved by a retrogression to local nationality.