But it must be remembered that the testimony of Firmicus Maternus is very late, and that the evidence for the prevalence of the conception in the early period is somewhat scanty. The confident assertions of recent writers with regard to these matters are nothing short of astonishing. Lay readers are likely to receive the impression that the investigator can reconstruct the conception of a dying and rising god, and of the share which the worshipers have in the death and resurrection, on the basis of some vast store of information in the extant sources. As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort is the case. The extant information about the conception in question is scanty in the extreme, and for the most part dates from long after the time of Paul. It would be going too far, indeed, to assert that the conception of the dying and rising god, with its religious significance, was not in existence before the Pauline period. An ancient Egyptian text, for example, has been quoted by Erman, which makes the welfare of the worshiper depend upon that of Osiris: "Even as Osiris lives, he also shall live."[236] Very likely some such conceptions were connected also with the mourning and subsequent rejoicing for Attis and Adonis. But if the conception was existent in the pre-Pauline period, it by no means follows that it was common. Certainly its prevalence has been enormously exaggerated in recent years. Against such exaggerations, J. Weiss--who surely cannot be accused of any lack of sympathy with the methods of comparative religion as applied to the New Testament--has pertinently called attention to 1 Cor. i. 23. Christ crucified, Paul says, was "to the Gentiles foolishness."[237] That does not look as though the Gentiles among whom Paul labored were very familiar with the notion of a dying god. If the contentions of Brückner were correct, if the conception of the dying god were as common in Paul's day as Brückner supposes, the Cross would not have been "to the Gentiles foolishness"; on the contrary, it would have seemed to the Gentiles to be the most natural thing in the world. [236] Erman, "A Handbook of Egyptian Religion" (published in the original German edition as a handbook, by the _Generalverwaltung_ of the Berlin Imperial Museum), 1907, p. 95. [237] J. Weiss, "Das Problem der Entstehung des Christentums," in _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, xvi, 1913, p, 490.