hunger and
thirst and mourn, etc."]

[Footnote 97: These words were written before the Apocalypse of Peter
was discovered. That Apocalypse confirms what is said in the text.
Moreover, its delineation of Paradise and blessedness are not wanting in
poetic charm and power. In its delineation of Hell, which prepares the
way for Dante's Hell, the author is scared by no terror.]

[Footnote 98: These ideas, however, encircled the earliest Christendom
as with a wall of fire, and preserved it from a too early contact with
the world.]

[Footnote 99: An accurate examination of the eschatological sayings of
Jesus in the synoptists shews that much foreign matter is mixed with
them (see Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, 1875). That the
tradition here was very uncertain because influenced by the Jewish
Apocalyptic, is shewn by the one fact that Papias (in Iren. V. 33)
quotes as words of the Lord which had been handed down by the disciples,
a group of sayings which we find in the Apocalypse of Baruch, about the
amazing fruitfulness of the earth during the time of the Messianic
Kingdom.]

[Footnote 100: We may here call attention to an interesting remark of
Goethe. Among his Apophthegms (no. 537) is the following: "Apocrypha: It
would be important to collect what is historically known about these
books, and to shew that these very Apocryphal writings with which the
communities of the first centuries of our era were flooded, were the
real cause why Christianity at no moment of political or Church history
could stand forth in all her beauty and purity." A historian would not
express himself in this way, but yet there lies at the root of this
remark a true historical insight.]

[Footnote 101: See Schuerer, History of the Jewish people. Div. II. vol.
II. p. 160 f., yet the remarks of the Jew Trypho in the dialogue of
Justin shew that the notions of a pre-existent Messiah were by no means
very widely spread in Judaism. (See also Orig. c. Cels. I. 49: "A Jew
would not at all admit that any Prophet had said, the Son of God will
come: they avoided this designation and used instead the saying: the
anointed of God will come"). The Apocalyptists and Rabbis attributed
pre-existence, that is, a heavenly origin to many sacred things and
persons, such as the Patriarchs, Moses, the Tabernacle, the Temple
vessels, the city of Jerusalem. That the true Temple and the real
Jerusalem were with God in heaven and would come down from heaven at