The abolition of the causal connection between the death of Jesus and the realisation of the Kingdom was fatal to the early Christian eschatology. With the secret of the Passion, the secret of the Kingdom likewise perished. This, however, meant nothing less than that eschatology lost precisely that specific “Christian” character which Jesus had imparted to it. The active ethical element which served to moralise it dropped out. Thus the eschatology of the early Church was “dechristianised” by Jesus’ death. Therewith it sank back again to the level of contemporary Jewish thought. The Kingdom is again an object of expectation merely. That moral conversion is effective actively to hasten its coming,—this secret was buried with Jesus. Now men repented and strove after moral renewal _as in the days of the Baptist._ This dechristianising was manifest especially in the matter of the final Affliction. [pg 246] According to the Passion idea of the first period, the believers must suffer along with the Messiah; according to that of the second, he was resolved to endure the Affliction for them. In the early Church the believers expected the Affliction _before_ the appearing of the Messiah, as was the case in the contemporary Jewish conception; for the Passion secret of Jesus was not known to them. Therefore the Jewish apocalypses belonged to them just as much as to the other Jews, only with the difference that the crucified Jesus was to be the coming Messiah. Early Christian eschatology was therefore still “Christian” only through the _person_ of Jesus, no longer through his _spirit,_ as was the case in the secret of the Kingdom of God and in the secret of the Passion. This furnishes a criterion for judging “the Synoptic apocalypse” (Mark 13). Even though it may contain single eschatological sayings attributable to Jesus, the discourse as such is necessarily unhistorical. It betrays the perspective of the time after Jesus’ death. During the days at Jerusalem Jesus could speak of no general Affliction before the coming of the Son of Man. The Synoptic apocalypse stands in direct contradiction to the secret of the Passion, since this indeed simply [pg 247] abolishes the general Affliction of the last times. Therefore it is unhistorical. Apocalyptic discourses with intimation of the final Affliction belong to the Galilean period at the time of the mission of the Twelve. The discourse to the Apostles on that occasion is the historical Synoptic apocalypse. About a time of affliction after his death Jesus never uttered a word to his Disciples, for it lay beyond his field of vision.