But the religion of the Hellenistic age was not limited to the individual cults which have just been considered, and it is not chiefly to the individual cults that recourse is had by those modern scholars who would derive Paulinism from pagan sources. Mention has already been made of the syncretism of the age; various religions were mingled in a limitless variety of combinations. And there was also a mingling of religion with philosophy. It is in the manifold products of this union between Greek philosophy and oriental religion that the genesis of Paulinism is now often being sought. Not oriental religion in its original state, but oriental religion already to some extent Hellenized, is thought to have produced the characteristic features of the religion of Paul. The hypothesis is faced by one obvious difficulty. The difficulty appears in the late date of most of the sources of information. In order to reconstruct that Hellenized oriental mysticism from which the religion of Paul is to be derived, the investigator is obliged to appeal to sources which are long subsequent to Paul's day. For example, in reproducing the spiritual atmosphere in which Paul is supposed to have lived, no testimony is more often evoked than the words of Firmicus Maternus, "Be of good courage, ye initiates, since the god is saved; for to us there shall be salvation out of troubles."[157] Here, it is thought, is to be found that connection between the resurrection of the god and the salvation of the believers which appears in the Pauline idea of dying and rising with Christ. But the trouble is that Firmicus Maternus lived in the fourth century after Christ, three hundred years later than Paul. With what right can an utterance of his be used in the reconstruction of pre-Christian paganism? What would be thought, by the same scholars who quote Firmicus Maternus so confidently as a witness to first-century paganism, of a historian who should quote a fourth-century Christian writer as a witness to first-century Christianity? [157] See above, p. 229, with footnote 3. This objection has been met by the modern school of comparative religion somewhat as follows. In the first place, it is said, the post-Christian pagan usage which at any time may be under investigation is plainly not influenced by Christianity. But, in the second place, it is too similar to Christian usage for the similarity to be explained by mere coincidence. Therefore, in the third place, since it is not dependent upon Christian usage, Christian usage must be dependent upon it, and therefore despite its late attestation it must have existed in pre-Christian times.