In one of the Pauline epistles, which are usually understood to belong to the second generation after that of the founder, there is mention of three chief Apostles with whom Paul had disputes, but none of any contemporary group of Twelve; and the only historical allusion to the latter number is in one of the interpolations in First Corinthians, where it appears to be a patch upon a patch. In the Acts of the Apostles, which though a fraudulent is an ancient compilation, there is a preliminary story of the election of an apostle to fill the place of Judas, deceased and disgraced; but not only is there no further pretence of such a process of completion, the majority of the twelve themselves speedily disappear from the history. Once more we are dealing with a myth. In the Apocalypse, again, after the original Judaic document has pictured a New Jerusalem with twelve gates and angels, named after the twelve tribes, the Christian interpolator has betrayed himself by the awkward invention of twelve "basement courses" named after the "twelve Apostles of the Lamb," where an original Christian author would have given the apostles the gates if anything, had a list of twelve Jesuist apostles existed for him. In heaven the Lamb is surrounded, not by twelve disciples, but by the "four and twenty presbyters" of an older cult, probably that of Babylonia, which had twenty-four "Counsellor Gods." In the gospels the lack of historic foundation is no less decisive. Circumstantial but irreconcilable accounts, obviously mythical, are given of the selection of four or five apostles, whereafter the narratives, without a word of preparation or explanation, proceed to a sudden constitution of the group of twelve, with only the mythological detail, in one case, that they were "called" by the Master on a mountain. Thus the element of the Twelve is not even an early item in the records. It has been imposed on documents which set out with no such datum, but with primary groups of five, four, and three.