Since they did not enter on such considerations it was difficult for them to do justice to Harnack. Here and there they took occasion to accuse him of being behind the times and reproach him with having given too much importance to the influence of philosophy in relation to the Hellenising of Christianity, and too little to that of the Mystery-religions. They are not wholly wrong in this. He does not give sufficient recognition to the “physical” and sacramental elements in Paulinism, and does not work out sufficiently fully the parallel between the Mystery-religions and the Johannine and early Greek theology. In laying the foundations of his history of dogma he is too exclusively interested in the development of the Christology, instead of starting from the curious complex of Christology, soteriology, and sacramental doctrine which is characteristic of the Pauline as well as of the Johannine and early Greek theology, and determines the course of the history of dogma. But this somewhat one-sided view of primitive and early Christianity is far from affording the complete explanation of his attitude of reserve in regard to the results arrived at by the students of Comparative Religion. If he forms a low estimate of the influence of the Mystery-religions upon Paul and the earliest period of Christianity, he is led to that result by pressing considerations from the history of dogma, by which the consequences of the theory put forward by the students of Comparative Religion are made clear to him. Like Anrich, he recognised from the beginning the weaknesses of the theory, which remained hidden from the champions of the method. It is not possible for any one who holds that Paulinism shows the influence of the Mystery-religions to stop half-way; he has to carry his conclusion back into primitive Christianity in general and to explain even the genesis of the new faith as due to syncretism. The latter [pg 232] stand-point is taken up by Hermann Gunkel_(_189_)_ and Max Maurenbrecher._(_190_)_ They hold that the belief in a redeemer-god, such as was present in Jewish Messianism, was also widely current in the Graeco-Oriental religions, and that subsequently, in consequence of the historic coming of Jesus, these two worlds of thought came into a contact which generated a creative energy. From the process thus set in motion primitive Christianity arose. This account of its genesis also explains, they think, why it goes much beyond the “teaching of Jesus” and the religious ideas which formed the content of Late Judaism, and includes mystical and sacramental beliefs.