Under this distinctive name the method attained to influence and honour in connexion with the critical study of the Old Testament and the Graeco-Oriental cults. In the former department of study it made an end of the prepossession that Judaism had developed entirely by its own inner impulses, and showed how much material of a generally Oriental character it had adopted. In particular it showed that Late-Jewish Apocalyptic is full of conceptions from the Babylonian and the Irano-Zarathustrian religions, and represents a combination of universal cosmological speculations with the future-hope of the ancient Jewish prophetism._(_145_)_ In the comparative study of the heathen religions it became apparent that the Mystery-religions, which [pg 176] entered on their conquering progress westwards about the same time as Christian Gnosticism, combined Greek religious feeling and a Greek cosmogony with Oriental cultus-ideas. In both these cases it is a question of contacts and influences which were due to political and cultural relations, and produced their effect in the course of extended periods of time and under favourable historical circumstances. The method cannot simply be applied without more ado to the explanation of the ideas of an individual man, since most of its presuppositions would not here be valid. In the case of religions, syncretism can work its way in and develop; in the case of individuals it can only be recognised in a very limited degree. The taking over and remoulding of foreign conceptions is a process requiring numbers and time. The individual comes into question only so far as he is organically united with a community which is active in this way, and allows its instincts to influence him. Paul belongs to Late Judaism. Whatever he received in the way of influences such as Comparative Religion takes account of came to him mainly through this channel. The suggestion that apart from this he might be personally and directly affected by “Oriental” influences calls for very cautious consideration. In particular we ought to be very careful to guard against raising this possibility to a certainty by general considerations regarding all that the child of the Diaspora might have seen, heard, and read. The question can only be decided by what we actually find in the Epistles.