The primitive Christian consciousness made the most strenuous efforts to fill the breach, trying in spite of it to conceive of Jesus’ resurrection as the dawn of the messianic era in the general rising of the dead. There was an effort to make it intelligible as analogous to a somewhat protracted interval between two scenes of the first act of a drama. Properly, however, they already stood within the messianic Resurrection. Thus for Paul, Jesus Christ, proved to be the Messiah through the Resurrection of the dead, “is the first fruits of them that sleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). The whole structure of Pauline theology and ethics rests upon this thought. Because they find themselves within this period, believers are in reality buried with Christ and with him raised again through baptism. They are “new” creatures, they are the “righteous,” whose citizenship is in heaven. Until we grasp this fundamental notion we cannot perceive the unity in the manifold complications of St. Paul’s world of thought. The Christian historical tradition sought another way out. It assumed a sort of preresurrection which coincided with the resurrection [pg 213] of Jesus. It lent to this the colouring of the messianic Day. Mt 27:50-53 furnishes an example in legendary form of such a method of reconciling fact and theory. With Jesus’ death upon the cross a new world era dawned. When he yielded up his spirit the veil of the Temple was rent from the top to the bottom and earthquakes, the signs of the end of the world, shook the earth; the rocks were rent; the graves opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised. After Jesus’ resurrection they go forth out of the tombs into the holy city and appear unto many. So this narrative clings to the conception that the general Resurrection of the dead under the omens of the messianic Day comes in conjunction with Jesus’ death and consequent resurrection,—but still only as a sort of prelude.