paganism, with his intense consciousness of the all-sufficiency of Jewish privileges--as being susceptible to the pagan influences that surrounded his orthodox home. The hypothesis must, therefore, at least be modified to the extent that the pagan influence exerted at Tarsus be regarded as merely unconscious. Paul did not deliberately accept the pagan religion of Tarsus, it might be said, but at least he became acquainted with it, and his acquaintance with it became fruitful after he entered upon his Gentile mission. According to this hypothesis, the attitude of Paul toward pagan religion was in the early days in Tarsus merely negative, but became more favorable (whether or no Paul himself was conscious of the real source of the pagan ideas) because of subsequent events. But what were the events which induced in Paul a more favorable attitude toward ideas which were really pagan? When did he overcome his life-long antagonism to everything connected with the worship of false gods? Such a change of attitude is certainly not attested by the Epistles. It will probably be admitted that if pagan influence entered into the heart of Paul's religious life it could only have done so by some more subtle way than by the mere retention in Paul's mind of what he had seen at Tarsus. The way which finds special favor among recent historians is discovered in the pre-Pauline Christianity of cities like Damascus and Antioch. When Paul was converted, it is said, he was converted not to the Christianity of Jerusalem, but to the Christianity of Damascus and Antioch. But the Christianity of Damascus and Antioch, it is supposed, had already received pagan elements; hence the very fact of Paul's conversion broke down his Jewish prejudices and permitted the influx of pagan ideas. Of course Paul did not know that they were pagan ideas; he supposed that they were merely Christian; but pagan they were, nevertheless. The Hellenistic Jews who founded the churches at Damascus and Antioch, unlike the original apostles at Jerusalem, were liberal Jews, susceptible to pagan influence and desirous of attributing to Jesus all that the pagans attributed to their own cult-gods. Thus Jesus became a cult-god like the cult-gods of the pagan religions, and Christianity became similar, in important respects, to the pagan cults.