Perhaps no current opinion is more unfounded than the notion that mob movements are sudden and unpredictable. They are almost incredibly slow of development. The range of action found in the mob is more narrowly and rigidly circumscribed than in almost any other social group. A crowd is open to suggestions that are in line with its previous experience, and to no others. The initial success of Christ with the Jewish crowds was only possible because for generations the whole Jewish public had been looking forward to a Messiah and a Messianic kingdom. In so far as Christ appeared to fulfill this preconceived expectation he gained popular support. When he disappointed it, he lost his popularity and his life. The early and enormous success of the apostles on the day of Pentecost and immediately afterwards was due primarily to the fact that the Chiliastic expectation preached to the Jerusalem crowds was very closely in line with their inherited beliefs. As soon as Christianity began to develop doctrines and practices even slightly at variance with those traditional to Judaism it lost the support of the Jewish public. Beginning as a strictly Jewish sect, it alienated practically the whole Jewish race within little more than a generation. This alienation was the inevitable effect of an idea of universalism opposed to the hereditary Jewish nationalism. This idea of universalism was not a new thing. It was to be found in the ancient Jewish scriptures. But it had never become popularized. It formed no part of the content of contemporary public opinion among the Jews. Christianity met with success in the great cosmopolitan centers, like Antioch and Alexandria, where universalism was a tradition and had become a part of the crowd sentiment. It succeeded best of all in Rome where universalism reached its highest development. Yet even here a limitation is to be noted. Christianity was universal in its willingness to receive people of all races and nations. It was not universal in its willingness to acknowledge the validity of other religions. This variation from the traditional Greek and Roman universalism had momentous results. It made the propagation of the Christian Gospel much more difficult and involved the church, at least temporarily, in the current syncretism which was a popular movement. So e.g., we find Justin calling Socrates a Christian and asserting that the stories of Noah and Deucalion are merely versions of the same event.