s of the
law, especially, as a rule, the sacrificial precepts, which were no
longer in keeping with the spiritual conception of religion. They
conceived the creator of the world as a subordinate being distinct from
the supreme God, which is always the mark of a syncretism with a
dualistic tendency; introduced speculations about AEons and angelic
powers, among whom they placed Christ, and recommended a strict
asceticism. When, in their Christology, they denied the miraculous
birth, and saw in Jesus a chosen man on whom the Christ, that is, the
Holy Spirit, descended at the baptism, they were not creating any
innovation, but only following the earliest Palestinian tradition. Their
rejection of the authority of Paul is explained by their efforts to
secure the Old Testament as far as possible for the universal
religion.[337] There were others who rejected all ceremonial
commandments as proceeding from the devil, or from some intermediate
being, but yet always held firmly that the God of the Jews was the
supreme God. But alongside of these stood also decidedly anti-Jewish
groups, who seem to have been influenced in part by the preaching of
Paul. They advanced much further in the criticism of the Old Testament
and perceived the impossibility of saving it for the Christian universal
religion. They rather connected this religion with the cultus-wisdom of
Babylon and Syria, which seemed more adapted for allegorical
interpretations, and opposed this formation to the Old Testament
religion. The God of the Old Testament appears here at best as a
subordinate Angel of limited power, wisdom and goodness. In so far as he
was identified with the creator of the world, and the creation of the
world itself was regarded as an imperfect or an abortive undertaking,
expression was given both to the anti-Judaism and to that religious
temper of the time, which could only value spiritual blessing in
contrast with the world and the sensuous. These systems appeared more or
less strictly dualistic, in proportion as they did or did not accept a
slight co-operation of the supreme God in the creation of man; and the
way in which the character and power of the world-creating God of the
Jews was conceived, serves as a measure of how far the several schools
were from the Jewish religion and the Monism that ruled it. All possible
conceptions of the God of the Jews, from the assumption that he is a
being supported in his undertakings by the supreme God, to h