nce of the twelve in the main body of the
Church may at any rate be measured by the facts, that the personal
activity of Jesus was confined to Palestine, that he left behind him
neither a confession nor a doctrine, and that in this respect the
tradition tolerated no more corrections. Attempts which were made in
this direction, the fiction of a semi-Gentile origin of Christ, the
denial of the Davidic Sonship, the invention of a correspondence between
Jesus and Abgarus, meetings of Jesus with Greeks, and much else, belong
only in part to the earliest period, and remained as really inoperative
as they were uncertain (according to Clem. Alex., Jesus himself is the
Apostle to the Jews; the twelve are the Apostles to the Gentiles in
Euseb. H. E. VI. 141). The notion about the twelve Apostles evangelising
the world in accordance with the commission of Jesus, is consequently to
be considered as the means by which the Gentile Christians got rid of
the inconvenient fact of the merely local activity of Jesus (compare how
Justin expresses himself about the Apostles: their going out into all
the world is to him one of the main articles predicted in the Old
Testament, Apol. 1. 39; compare also the Apology of Aristides, c. 2, and
the passage of similar tenor in the Ascension of Isaiah, where the
"adventus XII. discipulorum" is regarded as one of the fundamental facts
of salvation, c. 3. 13, ed. Dillmann, p 13, and a passage such as Iren.
fragm. XXIX. in Harvey II., p. 494, where the parable about the grain of
mustard seed is applied to the [Greek: logos epouranios] and the twelve
Apostles; the Apostles are the branches [Greek: hup' hon kladon
skepasthentes hoi pantes hos ornea hupo kalian sunelthonta metelabon tes
ex auton proerchomenes edodimou kai epouraniou trophes] Hippol. de
Antichr. 61. Orig. c. Cels. III. 28). This means, as it was empty of
contents, was very soon to prove the most convenient instrument for
establishing ever new historical connections, and legitimising the
_status quo_ in the communities. Finally, the whole catholic idea of
tradition was rooted in that statement which was already, at the close
of the first century, formulated by Clement of Rome (c. 42): [Greek: hoi
apostoloi hemin euengelisthesan apo tou kuriou Iesou Christou, Iesous ho
christos apo tou theou exepemphthe. ho christos oun apo tou theou, kai
hoi apostoloi apo tou Christou; egenonto oun amphotera eutaktos ek
thelematos theou, k.t.l.] Here, as in all