The theory of Baur did not long maintain itself in its entirety. It received a searching criticism particularly from A. Ritschl. The conflict of the apostolic age, Ritschl pointed out, was not a conflict between Paul and the original apostles, but between all the apostles (including both Paul and Peter) on the one side, and an extreme Judaizing party on the other; that conflict did not continue throughout the second century; on the contrary, specifically Jewish Christianity soon ceased to be influential, and the legalistic character of the Old Catholic Church of the end of the second century, in which Christianity was conceived of as a new law, was due not to any compromise with the legalism of the Judaizers but to a natural process of degeneration from Paulinism on purely Gentile Christian ground. The Tübingen dating of the New Testament documents, moreover, has been abandoned under a more thorough investigation of early Christian literature. A study of patristics soon rendered it impossible to string out the New Testament books anywhere throughout the second century in the interest of a plausible theory of development. External evidence has led to a much earlier dating of most of the books than Baur's theory required. The Tübingen estimate of the Book of Acts, in particular, has for the most part been modified; the book is dated much earlier, and it is no longer thought to be a party document written in the interests of a deliberate falsification of history. Nevertheless, the criticism of Baur and Zeller, though no longer accepted as a whole, is still influential; the comparison of Acts and Galatians, particularly in that which concerns the Apostolic Council of Acts xv, is still often thought to result unfavorably to the Book of Acts. Even at this point, however, a more favorable estimate of Acts has been gaining ground. The cardinal principle of Baur, to the effect that the major epistles of Paul should be interpreted entirely without reference to the Book of Acts, is being called in question. Such a method of interpretation, it may well be urged, is likely to result in one-sidedness. If the Book of Acts commends itself at all as containing trustworthy information, it should be allowed to cast light upon the Epistles. The account which Paul gives in Galatians is not so complete as to render superfluous any assistance which may be derived from an independent narrative. And as a matter of fact, no matter what principles of interpretation are held, the Book of Acts simply must be used in interpreting the Epistles; without the outline given in Acts the Epistles would be unintelligible.[16] Perhaps it may turn out, therefore, that Baur produced his imposing reconstruction of the apostolic age by neglecting all sources except Galatians and the Corinthian Epistles--and then by misinterpreting these.