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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gala- 

 tians i. 12). 



Tbe relation of the first Christians to the cur- 

 rent apocalyptic was of a different kind. The 

 Messianic hopes already current among the first 

 hearers of the gospel were unquestionably of 

 apocalyptic color. And though the contents of 

 Christian hope were new, and expressed them- 

 selves in a revival of prophetic gifts (1 Corinth- 

 ians xii. 10; Acts xi. 27, etc.), it was not a 

 matter of course that apocalyptic forms should 

 be at once dropped, especially as Old Testament 

 prophecy itself had inclined in its later stages 

 toward an increasing concreteness in delineat- 

 ing the Messianic kingdom, and so had at least 

 formed the basis for many apocalyptic concep- 

 tions. The apocalyptic book continued to be 

 read, as appears from the influence of the book 

 of Enoch on the epistle of Jude; and, after the 

 new spirit of prophecy had died away, a Chris- 

 tian apocalyptic followed the Jewish models. 

 But the way in which a genuine Christian proph- 

 ecy, full of "the testimony of Jesus" (Revela- 

 tion xix. 10), retained not a little of the apoca- 

 lyptic manner (mainly, it is true, in dependence 

 on the book of Daniel), appears clearly in the 

 Revelation of John, which, whether we accept 

 the prevalent tradition of its apostolic author- 

 ship, or, with some ancients and many moderns, 

 ascribe it to a different John, is at least an undis- 

 puted monument of the prophecy of the apostolic 

 age (according to modern critics, earlier than the 

 fall of Jerusalem). 



The influence on Christianity of Hellenistic 

 philosophy, and, in general, of that floating spirit 

 of speculation which circulated at the time in the 

 meeting-places of Eastern and Western thought, 

 was for the most part later than the New Testa- 

 ment period. Yet the Alexandrian education of 

 a man like Apollos could not fail to give some 

 color to his preaching, and in the epistle to the 

 Hebrews, whose author, a man closely akin to 

 Paul, is not a direct disciple of Jesus (Hebrews 

 ii. 3), the theological reflection natural to the 

 second generation, which no longer stood so 

 immediately under the overpowering influence 

 of the manifestation of Christ, is plainly affected 

 in some points by Alexandrian views. In the 

 case of other books the assertion of foreign 

 speculative influences is generally bound up with 

 the denial of the authenticity of the book in 

 question. That Ihe gospel of John presents a 

 view of the person of Christ dependent on Phi- 

 Ionic speculation is not exegetically obvious, but 

 is simply one side of tbe assertion that this gos- 



pel is an unhistorical product of abstract reflec- 

 tion. In the same way other attacks on the 

 genuineness of New Testament writings are 

 backed up by the supposed detection of Orphic 

 elements in the epistle of James, and so forth. 



Motives and Origin of the First Christian 

 Literature. — We have seen that the earliest cur- 

 rents of Christian life and thought stood in a 

 very secondary relation to the intellectual ac- 

 tivity of the period. The only books from which 

 the Apostolic Church drew largely and freely 

 were those of the Old Testament, and the Chris- 

 tian task of proclaiming the gospel was not in the 

 first instance a literary task at all. The first 

 writings of Christianity, therefore, were of an 

 occasional kind. The care of so many churches 

 compelled Paul to supplement his personal efforts 

 by epistles, in which the discussion of incidental 

 questions and the energetic defense of his gos- 

 pel against the Judaizers, are interwoven with 

 broad applications of the fundamental principles 

 of the gospel to the whole theory and practice of 

 Christian life. In these epistles, and generally in 

 the teaching of Paul and his associates, Christian 

 thought first shaped for itself a suitable literary 

 vehicle. It was in Greek that the mission to the 

 Gentiles was carried on, for that language was 

 everywhere understood. Already in the mouths 

 of Hellenistic Jews, and in the translation of the 

 Old Testament, the koivt\, or current Greek of the 

 Macedonian period, had been tinctured with Se- 

 mitic elements, and adapted to express the ideas 

 of the old dispensation. Now, a new modifica- 

 tion was necessary, and soon in the circle of the 

 Pauline churches specifically Christian ideas be- 

 came inseparably bound up with words which to 

 the heathen had a very different sense. Whether 

 the epistolary way of teaching was used upon oc- 

 casion by the older apostles before the labors of 

 Paul, is not clear; for most scholars have de- 

 clined to accept the ingenious view which sees in 

 the epistle of James the earliest writing of the 

 New Testament. The other epistles are certainly 

 later, and the way in which several of them are 

 addressed, not to a special community in refer- 

 ence to a special need, but to a wide circle of 

 readers, seems to presuppose a formed custom of 

 teaching by letter which extended from Paul not 

 only to so like-minded a writer as the author of 

 Hebrews (Apollos or Barnabas?), but to the old 

 apostles and their associates. 



Besides epistles we have in the New Testa- 

 ment a solitary book of Christian prophecy, and 

 a fourfold account of the gospel history, with a 

 continuation of the third gospel in the Acts of 



