On the third day after his death, Jesus is said to have risen from the grave, and appeared to a faithful few of his disciples. On the fortieth day after his resurrection he is said to have ascended to heaven. Both these statements rest on the authority of the biographies which were compiled some years after his death. Jesus wrote nothing himself; therefore the "brethren," as his intimate followers called one another, had no other sacred books than those of the Old Testament. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah predicted in Daniel and some of the apocryphal writings, and they cherished certain "logia" or sayings of his which formed the basis of the first three Gospels. The earliest of these, that bearing the name of Mark, probably took the shape in which we have it (some spurious verses at the end excepted) about 70 A. D. The fourth Gospel, which tradition attributes to John, is generally believed to be half a century later than Mark. It seems likely that the importance of collecting the words of Jesus into any permanent form did not occur to those who had heard them, because the belief in his speedy return was all-powerful among them, and their life and attitude toward everything was shaped accordingly. Without sacred books, priesthood, or organization, these earliest disciples, whom the fate of their leader had driven into hiding for a time, gathered themselves into groups for communion and worship. "In the church of Jerusalem," says Selden in his Table Talk (xiv), "the Christians were but another sect of Jews that did believe the Messias was come." From that sacred city there went forth preachers of this simple doctrine through the lands where Greek-speaking Jews, known as those of the Dispersion, had been long settled. These formed a very important element in the Roman Empire, being scattered from Asia Minor to Egypt, and thence in all the lands washed by the Mediterranean. As their racial isolation and national hopes made them the least contented among the subject-peoples, a series of tolerant measures securing them certain privileges, subject to loyal behaviour, had been prudently granted by their Roman masters. The new teaching spread from Antioch to Alexandria and Rome. But early in the onward career of the movement a division broke out among the immediate disciples of Jesus which ended in lasting rupture. A distinguished convert had been won to the faith in the person of the Apostle Paul. He is the real founder of Christianity as a more or less systematized creed, and all the development of dogma which followed are integral parts of the structure raised by him. He converted it from a local religion into a widespread faith. This came about, at the start, through his defeat of the narrower section headed by Peter, who would have compelled all non-Jewish converts to submit to the rite of circumcision.