The expectation of immortality conferred by Baptism and membership in the Church of the Lord Jesus varied in form. The Greek eschatology was different from the Jewish, and looked for an immortality for each individual immediately after death. It was, moreover, an immortality of the soul, not of the body. Probably there were many variations of thought on the subject. Some of the most highly educated Greeks may have understood the arguments for and against immaterial Reality, and accepted or rejected them. Roughly speaking, Platonists accepted, Stoics and Epicureans rejected; and it was at least possible for Platonists, if they identified Mind with immaterial Reality, to believe in the immortality of the human mind. But did such Platonists actually exist before Plotinus, or possibly Ammonius Saccus? The fragmentary evidence which exists seems to show that philosophic Greeks were interested in other problems--mainly epistemological and psychological. The belief in the immortality of the soul was preserved by the tradition of the Mysteries,[8] not by the Academy. Stoics and Epicureans, far more important for the {89} first century than Academics, were materialists; but that does not mean that they did not believe in the existence of a human soul or spirit. Spirit was for them merely the most attenuated form of matter. The spirit of man might be dissipated after death, as the grosser material composing his body would be, or it might survive and retain consciousness and memory until the cycle came round when all things, including human careers, would be repeated. But the first Greek Christians were scarcely influenced by an intelligent comprehension of Stoic metaphysics, and attempts made to trace their direct influence in Paul or elsewhere only show that their vocabulary was more widely used than their problems were understood--a phenomenon not peculiar to the first century. All that can be said with any confidence is that the expectation of blessed immortality--not for all but for the chosen few--fostered by the mysteries was probably most often conceived as the survival of the soul after death, and the soul in turn was conceived as "Spirit," a highly attenuated material existence, which was found until death in the body, and was then released from it. In some such way the Greeks in Corinth who were converted to Christianity expected immortality. So they did also in the other cults offering salvation. The points of difference in Christianity are in the kind of life which was demanded from initiates, and in the final consummation expected.