A severance between the Jewish and the Gentile Christists was the necessary condition of any wide spread of the cult. Though it was the success of Jewish proselytism that paved the way for the propaganda of Christism, only a handful of Gentiles would willingly bow to the Jewish pretension of holding all the sources of "salvation." That a Græcized Jew, as Paul is represented to have been, should begin to make the cult cosmopolitan, in despite of opposition from Jerusalem, is likely enough; and continued opposition would only deepen the breach. The Judaic claim involved a financial interest; and as local economic interest was a factor in the development of every Gentile group of Christists, a theological argument for Gentile independence was sure to be evolved. As the composition of the Christ-myth proceeded, accordingly, various episodes to the discredit of the mythic twelve disciples of Jesus are framed: "one of the twelve" figures as the betrayer; Peter openly denies his Master, and the others forsake him in a body in the hour of trial; while their incapacity to understand him in life is often insisted on. John the Baptist and Jesus, again, are made explicitly to teach that the "Kingdom of God" is taken away from the Jews, though Jesus also promises the twelve that they shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes. Finally, there is a manipulation of narratives on the question of the responsibility for Jesus' execution, the outcome being that it lies neither with the Roman governor nor with the sub-Roman king, but with the Jewish priests and people, even as the life of the Child-God at his birth is menaced by the Jewish King. In all likelihood most of those episodes were first set forth in a Gentile Passion-play, whence they passed into the common stream of tradition; but such an item as the part played by Pilate is likely to have been first introduced from the Jewish side, Pilate having been an object of special Jewish detestation.