But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth, whence was it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinion begin to diverge. According to Wrede, who was supported by M. Brückner,[11] working contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was fundamental in Paul's religious thought and life, was derived from the pre-Christian conception of the Messiah which Paul already had before his conversion. The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews, was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line; sometimes he was regarded rather as a mysterious, preëxistent, heavenly being who was to come suddenly with the clouds of heaven and be the judge of all the earth. This transcendent conception which is attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew, Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, Paul in his Epistles represents Christ as preëxistent, and as standing close to the Supreme Being in rulership and judgment, the phenomenon, though it may seem strange to us, is not really unique; it is exactly what is found in the apocalypses. What was new in Paul, as over against pre-Christian Judaism, was the belief that the heavenly Messiah had already come to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was not derived, Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted moral character of Jesus; on the contrary, if Paul had really come into any close contact with the historical Jesus, he might have had difficulty in identifying Him so completely with the heavenly Messiah; the impression of the truly human character of Jesus and of His subjection to all the ordinary limits of earthly life would have hindered the ascription to Him of the transcendent attributes. Jesus, for Paul, merely provided the one fact that the Messiah had already come to earth and died and risen again. Operating with that fact, interpreting the coming of the Messiah as an act of redemption undertaken out of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the fervor of his Christ-religion. [11] _Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie_, 1903; "Zum Thema Jesus und Paulus," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, vii, 1906, pp. 112-119; "Der Apostel Paulus als Zeuge wider das Christusbild der Evangelien," in _Protestantische Monatshefte_, x, 1906, pp. 352-364. In very recent years, another account of the origin of Paulinism is becoming increasingly prevalent. This account agrees with Wrede in rejecting the liberal derivation of the religion of Paul from an impression of the historical person of Jesus. But it differs from Wrede in its view of the source from which the religion of Paul is actually to be derived. According to this latest hypothesis, Paulinism was based not upon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of the Messiah, but upon contemporary pagan religion.