The same lordly disregard of dates runs all through the modern treatment of the history of religion in the New Testament period. It is particularly unfortunate in popular expositions. When the lay reader is overwhelmed by an imposing array of citations from Apuleius and from Lucian, to say nothing of Firmicus Maternus and fourth-century inscriptions, and when these late citations are confidently treated by men of undoubted learning as witnesses to pre-Christian religion, and when the procedure is rendered more plausible by occasional references to pre-Christian writers which if looked up would be found to prove nothing at all, and when there is a careful avoidance of anything like temporal arrangement of the material, but citations derived from all countries and all ages are brought together for the reconstruction of the environment of Paul--under such treatment the lay reader often receives the impression that something very important is being proved. The impression would be corrected by the mere introduction of a few dates, especially in view of the fact that oriental religion undoubtedly entered upon a remarkable expansion shortly after the close of the New Testament period, so that conditions prevailing after that expansion are by no means necessarily to be regarded as having existed before the expansion took place. This criticism is here intended to be taken only in a provisional way. The justice of it can be tested only by a detailed examination of the hypothesis against which the criticism is directed. How, then, is the pre-Christian mystical religion of the Hellenistic world to be reconstructed? What sources are to be used? Some of the sources have already been touched upon in the review of the individual oriental cults. And incidentally the unsatisfactory character of some of these sources has already appeared. But it is now necessary to examine other sources which are not so definitely connected with any clearly defined cult.