89 _Christus und die Cäsaren,_ 1877, 387 pp. What the diffusely told story of the Roman court has to do with the origin of Christianity has certainly never been quite clear to any reader. In attempting to describe its contents one is never quite certain whether the author’s meaning has been rightly represented. 90 A spiritual descendant of Bauer’s who writes on popular lines is Albert Kalthoff _(Die Entstehung des Christentums,_ 1904, 155 pp.). But neither as regards the problem nor its solution has he contributed anything to Pauline scholarship. 91 Allard Pierson, _De Bergrede en andere synoptische Fragmenten,_ 1878, 260 pp.; on Paul, 98-112. With his doubt of the Epistles the author associates a doubt of the Gospels, and asks whether Christianity as they represent it can have been founded by a historical Jesus. 92 A. Pierson and S. A. Naber, _Verisimilia. Laceram conditionem Novi Testamenti exemplis illustrarunt et ab origine repetierunt,_ 1886, 295 pp. The work gives a running analysis of the letters in the course of which very interesting questions are thrown out. Why is nothing said about the earthly life of Jesus? Why is no trace of the influence of this Paul’s thought to be found in history? Do the various characteristics and actions of his which are recorded show us a character which is at all intelligible? The authors assume that the Jewish movement which led up to “Christianity” at first had only to do with the Messianic belief in general. Only later, through the blending of Greek myths with Isaiah liii., did the belief arise that the expected Messiah had already come and had passed through death and resurrection. The analysis of the Pauline Epistles is followed by essays upon the Paul of Acts and some chapters on the Fourth Gospel. The close is formed by an essay on the gradual origin of the conception of Christ in the New Testament. The theory that Christianity developed out of an already existing Jewish movement is maintained also by M. Friedländer in his popular and unimportant work, _Das Judentum in der vorchristlichen griechischen Welt,_ a contribution towards explaining the origin of Christianity (1897, 74 pp.). The opposition between a conservative and a freer tendency as regards the law, which appear in the primitive Church, are here held to have appeared previously in the Judaism from which Christianity originated.