e beginning. But even in the communities which Paul
had founded and for a long time guided, the remembrance of the
controversies of the Apostolic age must have been very soon effaced, and
the vacuum thus produced filled by a theory which directly traced back
the _status quo_ of the Gentile Christian communities to a tradition of
the twelve as its foundation. This fact is extremely paradoxical, and is
not altogether explained by the assumptions that the Pauline-Judaistic
controversy had not made a great impression on the Gentile Christians,
that the way in which Paul, while fully recognising the twelve, had
insisted on his own independent importance, had long ceased to be really
understood, and that Peter and John had also really been missionaries to
the Gentiles. The guarantee that was needed for the "teaching of the
Lord" must, finally, be given not by Paul, but only by chosen
eye-witnesses. The less that was known about them, the easier it was to
claim them. The conviction as to the unanimity of the twelve, and as to
their activity in founding the Gentile Churches, appeared in these
Churches as early as the urgent need of protection against the serious
consequences of unfettered religious enthusiasm and unrestrained
religious fancy. This urgency cannot be dated too far back. In
correspondence therewith, the principle of tradition in the Church
(Christ, the twelve Apostles) in the case of those who were intent on
the unity and completeness of Christendom, is also very old. But one
passed logically from the Apostles to the disciples of the Apostles,
"the Elders," without at first claiming for them any other significance
than that of reliable hearers (Apostoli et discentes ipsorum). In coming
down to them, one here and there betook oneself again to real historical
ground, disciples of Paul, of Peter, of John.[193] Yet even here legends
with a tendency speedily got mixed with facts, and because, in
consequence of this theory of tradition, the Apostle Paul must needs
fall into the background, his disciples also were more or less
forgotten. The attempt which we have in the Pastoral Epistles remained
without effect, as regards those to whom these epistles were addressed.
Timothy and Titus obtained no authority outside these epistles. But so
far as the epistles of Paul were collected, diffused, and read, there
was created a complex of writings which at first stood beside the
"Teaching of the Lord by the twelve Apostles", withou