7. Christianity’s origin from Judaism is proved by its religious documents as well as by its very name, which is derived from the Greek for the title Messiah (_Christos_), bestowed on the Nazarene by his followers. Still the name Christianity arose in Antioch among non-Jews who scarcely knew its meaning. All the sources of the New Testament, however much they conflict in details, agree that the movement of Christianity began with the appearance of John the Baptist, a popular Essene saint. He rallied the multitude at the shore of the Jordan, preparing them for the approaching end of the Roman world-kingdom with the proclamation, “Wash yourselves clean from your sins!” that is, “Take the baptismal bath of repentance, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh.”(1396) He conferred the baptismal bath of repentance upon Jesus of Nazareth and the first apostles.(1397) Jesus took up this message when John was imprisoned and finally killed by Herod Antipas on account of his preachment against him.(1398) The life of Jesus is wrapt in legends which may be reduced to the following historical elements:(1399) The young Nazarene was of an altogether different temperament from that of John the Baptist, the stern, Elijah-like preacher in the wilderness;(1400) he manifested as preacher and as a healer of the sick a profound love for, and tender sympathy with suffering humanity, a trait especially fostered among the Essenes. This drew him toward that class of people who were shunned as unclean by the uncompromising leaders of the Pharisees, and also by the rigid brotherhoods of the Essenes, whose chief object was to attain the highest degree of holiness by a life of asceticism. His simple countrymen, the fishers and shepherds of Galilee, on hearing his wise and humane teachings and seeing his miraculous cures, considered him a prophet and a conqueror of the hosts of demons, the workers of disease. In contrast to the learned Pharisees, he felt it to be his calling to bring the good tidings of salvation to the poor and outcast, to “seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and win them for God. He soon found himself surrounded by a multitude of followers, who, on a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, induced him to announce himself as the expected Messiah. He attracted the people in Jerusalem by his vehement attacks upon the Sadducean hierarchy, which he threatened with the wrath of heaven for its abuses, and also by his denunciations of the self-sufficient Pharisean doctors of the law. Soon the crisis came when he openly declared war against the avarice of the priests, who owned the markets where the sacrificial fowl for the Temple were sold, overthrowing the tables of the money-changers, and declaring the Temple to have become “a den of robbers.”(1401) The hierarchical council delivered him to Pontius Pilatus, the Roman prefect, as an aspirant to the royal title of Messiah, which in the eyes of the Romans meant a revolutionary leader. The