There is not the slightest evidence, therefore, for supposing that Paul spent his early years in an atmosphere of "liberal Judaism"--a Judaism really though unconsciously hospitable to pagan notions and predisposed to relax the strict requirements of the Law and break down the barrier that separated Israel from the Gentile world. Whether such a liberal Judaism even existed in Tarsus we do not know. At any rate, if it did exist, the household of Paul's father was not in sympathy with it. Surely the definite testimony of Paul himself is here worth more than all modern conjectures. And Paul himself declares that he was in language and in spirit a Jew of Palestine rather than of the Dispersion, and as touching the Law a Pharisee. According to the Book of Acts, Paul went at an early age to Jerusalem, received instruction there from Gamaliel, the famous rabbi, and finally, just before his conversion, persecuted the Jerusalem Church (Acts xxii. 3; vii. 58-viii. 1; ix. 1, etc.). In recent years, this entire representation has been questioned. It has been maintained by Mommsen,[25] Bousset[26], Heitmüller,[27] and Loisy[28] that Paul never was in Jerusalem before his conversion. That he persecuted the Church is, of course, attested unequivocally by his own Epistles, but the persecution, it is said, really took place only in such cities as Damascus, and not at all in Palestine. [25] _Op. cit._, pp. 85f. [26] _Kyrios Christos_, 1913, p. 92. Bousset's doubt with regard to the early Jerusalem residence of Paul extended, explicitly at least, only to the persecution in Jerusalem, and it was a doubt merely, not a positive denial. In his supplementary work he has admitted that his doubt was unjustified (_Jesus der Herr_, 1916, p. 31). [27] "Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xiii, 1912, pp. 320-337. [28] _L'épitre aux Galates_, 1916, pp. 68-73; _Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien_, 1919, pp. 317-320.