The historical examples in which we are able to test the tradition of later generations by the reality which has subsequently come to light, are calculated to shake our faith in the assumption that it can do so. What did Beethoven’s time know of the achievements of the period of Bach? Mention is made of the elaborate fugues which had their origin at that time; but that the eighteenth century had produced choral works of deep feeling and an elevation secure against change of fashion, was entirely unknown to the second generation after Bach, although there had been nothing to interrupt tradition. Moreover, it ought not to be forgotten that we possess the history of Judaism only in fragments. As regards the political events of the first century we are [pg 051] comparatively well informed, but of the religious movements we know little, and what does come to our knowledge is so disconnected and self-contradictory that it cannot be combined into a single picture. The Baptist, Jesus, Philo, Paul, Josephus, and the authors of the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch cover together about two generations. They are at first sight as entirely different as if they belonged to widely separated periods. The destruction of Jerusalem interrupts the continuity of development of the Jewish people and of its thought. Its life is extinguished. Hellenism dies out. There arises a Rabbinism which is no longer borne on the tide of great national and spiritual movements. It becomes ossified, and confines itself to mere unproductive commentating upon the law. From the past its tradition takes only what lies within the field of its own narrow interests. The problems and ideas which moved the earlier, many-sided period no longer come into view, but fall into as complete oblivion as if they had never occupied Jewish religious thought. The scholarship of the period after Baur is indeed far enough from embarking on reflexions of this kind. It takes scarcely any notice of what remains of the Late-Jewish non-Hellenistic literature. Even the commentators make scarcely any use of the parallels to Pauline ideas and conceptions which are found in Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Ezra, and here and there in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.