years' reflection upon this point, we have several
times been inclined to accept the narrow interpretation of Jesus'
teaching here indicated; yet, on the whole, we do not believe it
can ever be conclusively established. In the first place it must be
remembered that if the third gospel throws a Pauline colouring over
the events which it describes, the first gospel also shows a decidedly
anti-Pauline bias, and the one party was as likely as the other to
attribute its own views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this
tendency has been pointed out by Strauss, who has shown that the verses
Matt. v. 17-20 are an interpolation. The person who teaches men to break
the commandments is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish a text
against Paul's followers, the "Nicolaitans," Jesus is made to declare
that he came not to destroy one tittle of the law, but to fulfil
the whole in every particular. Such an utterance is in manifest
contradiction to the spirit of Jesus' teaching, as shown in the very
same chapter, and throughout a great part of the same gospel. He who
taught in his own name and not as the scribes, who proclaimed himself
Lord over the Sabbath, and who manifested from first to last a more than
Essenian contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil the
law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can any inference adverse to
this conclusion be drawn from the injunction to the disciples (Matt.
x. 5-7) not to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only "to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel"; for this remark is placed before the
beginning of Jesus' Messianic career, and the reason assigned for the
restriction is merely that the disciples will not have time even to
preach to all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose approach
Jesus was announcing (Matt. x. 23)

These examples show that we must use caution in weighing the testimony
even of the first gospel, and must not too hastily cite it as proof that
Jesus supposed his mission to be restricted to the Jews. When we come to
consider what happened a few years after the death of Jesus, we shall
be still less ready to insist upon the view defended by our anonymous
author. Paul, according to his own confession, persecuted the Christians
unto death. Now what, in the theories or in the practice of the Jewish
disciples of Jesus, could have moved Paul to such fanatic behaviour?
Certainly not their spiritual interpretation of Mosaism, for Paul
himself