Despite this difference between the New Testament and the Jewish literature, it is generally recognized that the testimony of the New Testament must be essentially correct. The picture which is given in the Gospels of the intensity of the Messianic hope among the Jews must be founded upon fact even if Jesus Himself did not claim to be the Messiah. Indeed, it is just in that latter case that the testimony in some respects would become strongest of all. For if Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah, the attribution of Messiahship to Him by His disciples could be explained only by the intensity of their own Messianic expectations. As a matter of fact, however, Jesus did claim to be the Messiah; the elimination of His Messianic consciousness has not won the assent of any large body of historians. He did claim to be the Messiah, and He died because the Jews regarded Him as a false claimant. But His opponents, no less than His disciples, were expecting a "King of the Jews." The New Testament throughout, no matter what view may be held as to the historicity of the individual narratives, is quite inexplicable unless the Jews both in Palestine and in the Dispersion had a doctrine of "the Christ." This New Testament representation is confirmed here and there by other writers. Even Philo,[104] as Brückner remarks, pays his tribute, though in an isolated passage, to the common Messianic doctrine.[105] Josephus,[106] also, despite his effort to avoid offending his Roman readers, is obliged to mention the Messianic hope as one cause of the great war, and can only make the reference harmless by finding the Messiah in the Emperor Vespasian![107] On the whole, the fact may be regarded as certain that in the first century after Christ the expectation of the Messiah was firmly established among the Jews. The silence of great sections of the Apocrypha may then be explained partly by the date of some of the books. It may well be that there was a period, especially during the Maccabean uprising, when because of the better present condition of the nation the Messianic hope was less in the forefront of interest, and that afterwards, under the humiliation of Roman rule, the thoughts of the people turned anew to the expected Deliverer. But however that may be, it is altogether probable that the expectation of a Messiah was everywhere cherished in the Judaism of the time of Paul. [104] _De praem et poen._ 16 (ed. Cohn, 1902, iv, p. 357). [105] Brückner, _Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie_, 1903, pp. 102f. [106] _Bell. Jud._ VI. v. 4. [107] Schürer, _op. cit._, ii, 1907, p. 604 (English Translation, Division II, vol. ii, 1885, p. 149).