Churches; (3) in the veneration paid to apostles, prophets, and teachers, or the "elders" and leaders of the individual communities. A. _The Transformation of the Baptismal Confession into the Apostolic Rule of Faith._ It has been explained (vol. I. p. 157) that the idea of the complete identity of what the Churches possessed as Christian communities with the doctrine or regulations of the twelve Apostles can already be shown in the earliest Gentile-Christian literature. In the widest sense the expression, [Greek: kanon tes paradoseos] (canon of tradition), originally included all that was traced back to Christ himself through the medium of the Apostles and was of value for the faith and life of the Church, together with everything that was or seemed her inalienable possession, as, for instance, the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. In the narrower sense that canon consisted of the history and words of Jesus. In so far as they formed the content of faith they were the faith itself, that is, the Christian truth; in so far as this faith was to determine the essence of everything Christian, it might be termed [Greek: kanon tes pisteos, kanon tes aletheias] (canon of the faith, canon of the truth).[23] But the very fact that the extent of what was regarded as tradition of the Apostles was quite undetermined ensured the possibility of the highest degree of freedom; it was also still allowable to give expression to Christian inspiration and to the intuition of enthusiasm without any regard to tradition.