ion, Theodicy, etc., besides all kinds
of ideas about redemption. Besides these spiritual doctrines there were
not a few spiritualised myths which were variously made use of in the
Apocalypses. A rich, spiritual, figurative style, only too rich and
therefore confused, waited for the theological artist to purify, reduce
and vigorously fashion. There really remained very little of the
Cosmico-Mythological in the doctrine of the great Church.

_Supplement._--The reference to the proof from prophecy, to the current
exposition of the Old Testament, the Apocalyptic and the prevailing
methods of speculation, does not suffice to explain all the elements
which are found in the different types of Christian preaching. We must
rather bear in mind here that the earliest communities were
enthusiastic, and had yet among them prophets and ecstatic persons. Such
circumstances will always directly produce facts in the history. But, in
the majority of cases, it is absolutely impossible to account
subsequently for the causes of such productions, because their formation
is subject to no law accessible to the understanding. It is therefore
inadmissible to regard as proved the reality of what is recorded and
believed to be a fact, when the motive and interest which led to its
acceptance can no longer be ascertained.[107]

Moreover, if we consider the conditions, outer and inner, in which the
preaching of Christ in the first decades was placed, conditions which in
every way threatened the Gospel with extravagance, we shall only see
cause to wonder that it continued to shine forth amid all its wrappings.
We can still, out of the strangest "fulfilments", legends and
mythological ideas, read the religious conviction that the aim and goal
of history is disclosed in the history of Christ, and that the Divine
has now entered into history in a pure form.

_Literature._--The Apocalypses of Daniel, Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra;
Schuerer, History of the Jewish People in the time of Christ;
Baldensperger, in the work already mentioned. Weber, System der
Altsynagogalen palaestinischen Theologie, 1880, Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures,
1883. Hilgenfeld, Die juedische Apokalyptik, 1857. Wellhausen, Sketch of
the History of Israel and Judah, 1887. Diestel, Gesch. des A. T. in der
Christl. Kirche, 1869. Other literature in Schuerer. The essay of Hellwag
in the Theol. Jahrb. von Baur and Zeller, 1848, "Die Vorstellung von der
Praeexistenz Christi in der aeltesten Kirc