But still another objection remains. Suppose the Pauline Christ were simply the Messiah of the Jewish apocalypses; suppose Paul knew so little about the historical Jesus that he could even identify the exalted Messiah with Him. Even then another fact requires explanation. How did Paul come to be so strikingly similar to the historical Jesus both in teaching and in character? Wrede was audacious enough to explain the similarity as due to a common dependence upon Judaism.[130] But at this point few have followed him. For the striking fact is that Paul agrees with Jesus in just those matters to which Judaism was most signally opposed. It would be more plausible to say that Paul agrees with Jesus because both of them abandoned contemporary Judaism and returned to the Old Testament prophets. But even that explanation would be quite inadequate. The similarity between Jesus and Paul goes far beyond what both hold in common with the Prophets and the Psalms. And why did two men return to the Prophets and Psalms at just the same time and in just the same way? The similarity between Jesus and Paul might then be regarded as due to mere chance. Paul, it might be supposed, developed the ideal of Christian love from the death of the Messiah, which he interpreted as an act of self-sacrifice.[131] This ideal of love happened to be just the same as that which Jesus of Nazareth exemplified in a life of service--to which life of service, however, Paul was completely indifferent. Such, essentially, is what the hypothesis of Wrede really amounts to. The hypothesis is really absurd. But its absurdity is instructive. It is an absurdity to which the naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity is driven by an inexorable logic. Paul, it must be supposed, could not have regarded Jesus as a divine being if he had really known Jesus. The similarity of his life and teaching to that of Jesus cannot, therefore, be due to knowledge of Jesus. It must therefore be due to chance. In other words, it is dangerous, on naturalistic principles, to bring Paul into contact with Jesus. For if he is brought into contact with Jesus, his witness to Jesus will have to be heard. And when his witness is heard, the elaborate modern reconstructions of the "liberal Jesus" fall to the ground. For according to Paul, Jesus was no mere Galilean prophet, but the Lord of Glory. [130] Wrede, _Paulus_, 1904, pp. 90, 91 (English Translation, _Paul_, 1907, pp. 157, 158). [131] See Brückner, _op. cit._, p. 237. CHAPTER VI THE RELIGION OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE CHAPTER VI THE RELIGION OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE