FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 455 



the thought and life of Jesus, and it is in a state of constant flux. In 

 so far as it is possible to ascertain what Jesus said, and did, and was, 

 his teaching and manner of life leave the impression of incalculable 

 worth, but not of absolute finality. 



The evolution of man's religious life is not along a straight line, 

 so that it would be possible to declare "post hoc ergo propter hoc." A 

 subsequent phenomenon may be determined by a number of other 

 factors beside the one from which it may seem to be immediately 

 derived. The Yajur-Veda is unquestionably later than the Rig- Veda, 

 but the religious ideas it contains are not to be explained as the 

 natural development of those found in the earlier work, seeing that 

 the change of physical environment from the valley of the Indus to 

 that of the Ganges and the new racial element in the latter place seem 

 to have entered in as modifying factors. In the development of 

 Christianity, the genuine nucleus of the Pauline literature no doubt 

 follows closely upon the very different type of faith held by the 

 immediate disciples of Jesus; but the peculiarities of the former 

 are not to be explained as having been derived from the latter, since 

 they are manifestly due to a wholly divergent tendency of thought 

 prevalent in the Greek-speaking branch of Jewry. Such phenomena 

 do not in the least invalidate the conclusion as to the law-bound 

 development of religious life. 



So strongly intrenched is this conviction of a natural development 

 in historical theology that it has to some extent been used as a means 

 of determining the relative age of undated documents. In some 

 striking instances such conclusions have been subsequently verified 

 or confirmed by other indications of date. Thus there can be little 

 doubt that the Hegelian conception of an historic development of 

 religion according to the fixed laws that determine the unfolding of 

 the ideal contents of human consciousness, led investigators of the 

 Old Testament to the conviction that large sections of the Pentateuch 

 were later than the great prophetic movement in Israel, or that the 

 doctrine of evolution formulated as the result of biological studies 

 exercised a determining influence in commending these conclusions 

 to competent and independent students in more recent times. Yet 

 they now rest upon philological, literary, and historical data sufficient 

 in themselves to prove the contention. If it seems impossible at 

 present to solve in a similar manner such a perplexing problem as 

 that concerning the age of the Gathas and their relation to other 

 parts of the Avesta, it is not because the principle is likely to render 

 less service in this case, but because a chronologically fixed point 

 is lacking, and because it is not known in what country the peculiar 

 dialect of the Gathas was spoken. If it should become possible to 

 prove that this was the speech of Bactria, where contact with India 

 may at a comparatively early time have produced a type of thought 



