Time, indeed, proved mightier than the original conceptions. Inexorably it thrust itself like a splitting wedge between Jesus’ resurrection and the expected general Resurrection of the messianic Day, and with the temporal coincidence it destroyed also the casual [causal] connection in the original sense. The messiahship of Jesus stood up solidly out of the past. Those who confessed it and at the same time expected the Kingdom as a future [pg 214] event lost all consciousness of the fact that in the preaching of Jesus his messiahship and the Kingdom were both of them future and coincident events. They began to regard the Gospel history from the point of view that _Jesus was the Messiah._ The title for this new view of the Gospel history was written by St. Paul. It reads: _“Jesus Christ,”_—the office and dignity of the risen Lord is combined with the historical personality in one idea. The Fourth Gospel has drawn the logical consequence therefrom and has so depicted the history of Jesus as if he had come upon earth as the Messiah. It is the task of the historical investigator to emancipate himself for a moment from the unhistorical perspective and place the Synoptic accounts in the right light. Only then, when one has grasped the futuristic element in Jesus’ messianic consciousness, can one understand why he revealed his dignity to the Disciples as a “secret,” why he designated himself thereby as the Son of Man, and in what sense he spoke of his resurrection. 5. The Betrayal by Judas—the Last Disclosure of the Secret of Messiahship. What did Judas actually betray? According to the accounts of our Gospels it [pg 215] looks as if he had informed the Sanhedrin where at a particular hour they could apprehend Jesus. But, even if this indication of the place did play some part in the betrayal of Judas, it could only have been incidental. Where Jesus abode they could at any time find out, since he did nothing to make his coming and going secret. If then they desired to seize him, they had only to send a spy after him as he left Jerusalem in the evening, and they could have got all the information they wanted. For this purpose they did not need one of the inner circle.