612 NEW TESTAMENT 



anything like their just proportion. This, however, but makes it 

 the more important to obtain the clearest possible picture of Christ- 

 ianity as it was before Paul became a factor in the situation. Yet 

 of literature from this period there is none, if the early date of James 

 be denied, and we are therefore thrown back chiefly upon the tes- 

 timony of the early chapters of Acts and the indirect evidence of 

 the epistles of Paul. On the basis of a critical examination of this 

 evidence, New Testament scholarship has to frame for itself as accu- 

 rate a representation as possible of the company of Jesus' disciples, 

 their faith, their hopes, their relation to one another, their thought 

 about Jesus, especially concerning his death and resurrection, their 

 relation to their fellow Jews, the steps by which they became more 

 and more differentiated as a religious community from them, and the 

 outward expressions of their religious life in organization, worship, 

 and ritual. 



In the life and work of Paul New Testament scholarship finds a 

 problem surpassed in interest and importance only by that which is 

 presented by the life of Jesus. The end to be achieved is the discov- 

 ery of the significance of that life as a reflection of, and a contribution 

 to, Christianity in its plastic and formative period. The problem is 

 psychological and biographical in its content, historical in its aim. 

 It is a study of the experience of a man for the purpose of understand- 

 ing a great historic movement. It can be solved only by a genetic 

 study, which, taking full account of the environment, Greek, Jewish, 

 and Christian, shall trace the course of Paul's experience, his in- 

 tellectual and religious life, from his youth on through the days of 

 his pharisaic zeal and of his career as a Christian apostle to its end. 

 The recognition of the genetic character of the problem is not new. 

 Weizsacker, Holsten, Feine, and Pfleiderer have all dealt with it 

 from this point of view. Nor is it possible to enlarge the list of 

 the factors which were influential in making Paul what he was: 

 Old Testament history and literature; Pharisaic Judaism; primitive 

 Christianity and its report of Jesus and his teaching; Paul's own 

 personal experience, especially the vision of Jesus as raised from 

 the dead ; and Hellenism, especially in its Alexandrian Jewish develop- 

 ment. But the task of relating all these to one another, and of dis- 

 covering how they acted and interacted in the mind and life of Paul, 

 still calls for further study. Especially do we desiderate a clear 

 perception of the significance which Paul attached to the death of 

 Jesus, and of the sources and nature of his thought about the pre- 

 cxistence of Jesus. Not less do we need that which has already 

 been spoken of as necessary in connection with the problems of 

 literary interpretation, a clearer perception of the values which 

 Paul himself attached to the several sources from which he drew 

 his thought and to the several elements of his thought itself. Was 



