is a little difficult to suppose that the man who wrote these words was willing to modify the divine foolishness of his message in order to make it conform to the religion of pagan hearers. Two reservations, therefore, are necessary before the investigator can enter upon an actual comparison of the Pauline Epistles with Hermes Trismegistus and other similar sources. In the first place, it has not been proved that the type of religion attested by these sources existed at all in the time of Paul;[185] and in the second place, it is difficult to see how any pagan influence could have entered into Paul's life. But if despite these difficulties the comparison be instituted, it will show, as a matter of fact, not agreement, but a most striking divergence both of language and of spirit. [185] See Chapter VI. The investigation may be divided into three parts, although the three parts will be found to overlap at many points. Three fundamental elements in Paul's religion have been derived from Greco-oriental syncretism: first, the complex of ideas connected with the obtaining of salvation; second, the sacraments; third, the Christology and the work of Christ in redemption.[186] [186] For what follows, compare especially Kennedy, _St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions_, [1913]; Clemen, _Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments_, 1909 (English Translation, _Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources_, 1912), _Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das älteste Christentum_, 1913. These writers deny for the most part any influence of the mystery religions upon the center of Paul's religion. For a thoroughgoing presentation of the other side of the controversy, see, in addition to the works of Bousset and Reitzenstein, Loisy, _Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien_, 1919. The first of the three divisions just enumerated is connected especially with the name of R. Reitzenstein.[187] Reitzenstein lays great stress upon the lexical method of study; it may be proved, he believes, that Paul used terms which were derived from Hellenistic mystical religion, and with the terms went the ideas. The ideas, he admits, were not taken over without modification, but even after the Pauline modifications are subtracted, enough is thought to remain in order to show that the mystery religions exerted an important influence upon Paul. [187] _Poimandres_, 1904; _Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen_, 2te Aufl., 1920; "Religionsgeschichte und Eschatologie," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xiii, 1912, pp. 1-28. Thus Reitzenstein attempts to exhibit in the Pauline Epistles a technical vocabulary derived from the Hellenized mystery religions. This supposed technical vocabulary embraces especially the terms connected with "knowledge"[188] and "Spirit."[189] [188] γνῶσις. [189] πνεῦμα.