The importance of such queries must not, indeed, be exaggerated. It is not being maintained here that Paul before his conversion did not believe in the Messiah of the apocalypses; all that is maintained is that it is not certain that he did. Possibly the diffusion of apocalyptic ideas in pre-Christian Judaism was much wider than is sometimes supposed; possibly the youthful Paul did come under the influence of such ideas. But Wrede and Brückner are going too far if they assert that Paul must necessarily have come under such influences. The truth is that the pre-Christian life of Paul is shrouded in the profoundest obscurity. Almost the only definite piece of information is what Paul himself tells us--that he was zealous for the Law. He says nothing about his conception of the Messiah. The utmost caution is therefore in place. Brückner is going much further than the sources will warrant when he makes Paul before his conversion a devotee of the apocalyptic Messiah, and bases upon this hypothesis an elaborate theory as to the genesis of the Pauline Christology. But even if Paul before his conversion was a devotee of the apocalyptic Messiah, the genesis of the Pauline Christology has not yet been explained. For the apocalyptic Messiah is different in important respects from the Christ of the Epistles. In the first place, there is in the apocalypses no doctrine of an activity of the Messiah in creation, like that which appears in 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16. The Messiah of the apocalypses is preëxistent, but He is not thought of as being associated with God in the creation of the world. This difference may seem to be only a difference in detail; but it is a difference in detail which concerns just that part of the Pauline Christology which would seem to be most similar to the apocalyptic doctrine. It is the Pauline conception of the preëxistent Christ, as distinguished from the incarnate or the risen Christ, which Wrede and Brückner find it easiest to connect with the apocalypses. But even in the preëxistent period the Christ of Paul is different from the apocalyptic Messiah, because the Christ of Paul, unlike the apocalyptic Messiah, has an active part in the creation of the world.