Thus Paul was a true follower of Jesus if Jesus was a divine Redeemer, come from heaven to die for the sins of men; he was not a true follower of Jesus if Jesus was a mere revealer of the fatherhood of God. Paulinism was not based upon a Galilean prophet. It was based either upon the Son of God who came to earth for men's salvation and still holds communion with those who trust Him, or else it was based upon a colossal error. But if the latter alternative be adopted, the error was not only colossal, but also unaccountable. It is made more unaccountable by all that has been said above, all that the liberal theologians have helped to establish, about the nearness of Paul to Jesus. If Paul really stood so near to Jesus, if he really came under Jesus' influence, if he really was intimate with Jesus' friends, how could he have misinterpreted so completely the significance of Jesus' person; how could he have substituted for the teacher of righteousness who had really lived in Palestine the heavenly Redeemer of the Epistles? No satisfactory answer has yet been given. In the relation between Jesus and Paul the historian discovers a problem which forces him on toward a Copernican revolution in all his thinking, which leads him to ground his own salvation and the hope of this world no longer in millions of acts of sinful men or in the gradual progress of civilization, but simply and solely in one redemptive act of the Lord of Glory. CHAPTER V THE JEWISH ENVIRONMENT CHAPTER V THE JEWISH ENVIRONMENT Of the three ways in which, upon naturalistic principles, the genesis of the religion of Paul has been explained, one has been examined, and has been found wanting. Paulinism, it has been shown, was not based upon the Jesus of modern liberalism. If Jesus was simply a teacher of righteousness, a revealer of God, then the religion of Paul was not derived from Him. For the religion of Paul was a religion of redemption. But if the religion of Paul was not derived from the Jesus of modern liberalism, whence was it derived? It may, of course, have been derived from the divine Redeemer; the Jesus whom Paul presupposes may have been the Jesus who actually lived in Palestine. But that explanation involves the intrusion of the supernatural into the course of history; it is therefore rejected by "the modern mind." Other explanations, therefore, are being sought. These other explanations are alike in that they derive the religion of Paul from sources independent of Jesus of Nazareth. Two such explanations have been proposed. According to one, the religion of Paul was derived from contemporary Judaism; according to the other, it was derived from the paganism of the Greco-Roman world. The present chapter will deal with the former of these two explanations--with the explanation which derives the religion of Paul from contemporary Judaism.