The Cross was unto the Jews a stumbling-block.[124] [121] See Schürer, _op. cit._, ii, pp. 648-651 (English Translation, Division II, vol. ii, pp. 184-187). [122] It will be remembered, moreover, that 4 Ezra, at least in its completed form, dates from long after the time of Paul. [123] Townshend, in Charles, _op. cit._, ii, p. 674. [124] B. W. Bacon (_Jesus and Paul_, 1921, pp. 45-49) seeks to bridge the gulf between Jesus and Paul by supposing that Jesus himself, somewhat like the Maccabean hero, finally attained, after the failure of His original program and at the very close of His life, the conception that His approaching death was to be in some sort an expiation for His people. But the idea of expiation which Bacon attributes to Jesus is no doubt very different from the Pauline doctrine of the Cross of Christ. The gulf between Jesus and Paul is therefore not really bridged. Moreover, it cannot be said that Bacon's hypothesis of successive stages in the experience of Jesus, culminating in the idea of expiation attained at the last supper, has really helped at all to solve the problem presented to every historian who proceeds upon naturalistic presuppositions by Jesus' lofty claims. At least, however, this latest investigator of the problem of "Jesus and Paul" has betrayed a salutary consciousness of the fact that the Pauline conception of Jesus' redemptive work is inexplicable unless it find some justification in the mind of Jesus Himself. Only, the justification which Bacon himself has found--particularly his account of the way in which the idea of expiation is supposed to have arisen in Jesus' mind--is entirely inadequate. Thus the warm, personal relation of love and gratitude which Paul sustains to the risen Christ is entirely unexplained by anything in his Jewish environment. It is not explained by the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah; it is not explained by reflection upon the vicarious death of the Messiah. For the Messiah in Jewish expectation was not to suffer a vicarious death. Such a relation of love and gratitude could be sustained only toward a living person. It could be sustained toward Jesus of Nazareth, if Jesus continued to live in glory, but it could not be sustained toward the Messiah of the apocalypses.