It has not even attained to clearness in regard to the condition in which the Gospel existed prior to its Hellenisation. It has not ventured to mark off with perfect distinctness the two worlds of thought with which the process is concerned, and to formulate the problem as being that of explaining how the Gospel, which was originally purely Jewish and eschatological, became Greek in form and content. That this could really have come about, it takes to be à priori [pg ix] impossible. It therefore seeks to soften down the antitheses as much as possible, to find in the teaching of Jesus thoughts which force their way out of the frame of the Jewish eschatological conceptions and have the character of universal religion, and in the teaching of Paul to discover a “genuinely Christian,” and also a Hellenic element, alongside of the Rabbinic material. Theological science has in fact been dominated by the desire to minimise as much as possible the element of Jewish Apocalyptic in Jesus and Paul, and so far as possible to represent the Hellenisation of the Gospel as having been prepared for by them. It thinks it has gained something when in formulating the problem it has done its best to soften down the antitheses to the utmost with a view to providing every facility for conceiving the transition of the Gospel from one world of thought to the other. In following this method Baur and Renan proceed with a simple confidence which is no longer possible to present day theology. But in spite of that it must still continue to follow the same lines, because it has still to work with the old presuppositions and the weakening down of the problem which they imply. The result is in every respect unsatisfactory. The solution remains as impossible as it was before, and the simplifications which were supposed to be provided in the statement of the problem have only created new difficulties. The thoroughgoing application of Jewish eschatology to the interpretation of the teaching and work of Jesus has created a new fact upon which to base the history of dogma. If the view developed at the close of my “Quest of the Historical Jesus” is sound, the teaching of Jesus does not in any of its aspects go outside the Jewish world of thought and project itself into a non-Jewish world, but represents a deeply ethical and perfected version of the contemporary Apocalyptic. Therefore the Gospel is at its starting-point exclusively Jewish-eschatological. The sharply antithetic formulation of the problem of the Hellenisation of Christianity, which it was always hoped to avoid, is proved by the facts recorded in the Synoptists to be the only admissible one. Accordingly, [pg x] the history of dogma has to show how what was originally purely Jewish-eschatological has developed into something that is Greek. The expedients and evasions hitherto current have been dismissed from circulation.