Judaism and the direct teachings of Jesus. It is ap-
parent that within a few years of the death of Jesus
early Christianity had appropriated the ideals that
salvation is freedom from the "world" or from the
"bondage of the flesh," that the means of grace are
sacramental instead of sacrificial, and that the savior
is at once a personality and a cosmic spiritual force,
to name only three of the most important contrasts
between hellenistic Christianity and normative Juda-
ism. In trying to reconstruct that transition the sober
historian has been rather confused than illuminated
by such parallels as have been collected, for example,
in the writings of the Jesus-Myth school. Certainly
these parallels must all be rejected as irrelevant until
they, or some of them, can be shown not only to have
resembled but to have been within the range of
thought of such a man as Paul himself. Rapid assimi-
lation by early Christianity of such a complex of
ideas as mere parallels have presented would have
blasted the early group to atoms.

Yet the fact remains that Christianity did very
early become hellenized, and the parallels still are as
striking as ever. Is there a bridge to be found, over
which these notions, or some of them, could have
reached the early Christians already in so organized
and acceptable a form that their adoption would not
have shattered the early faithful into countless groups
who disagreed about what should be borrowed? Such
a bridge, I have long been convinced, exists in hellen-
istic Judaism. Here for three centuries there seems to

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