phic elements. The impression made by this fact has caused some
scholars to describe the treatise as a document of Jewish Christianity.
But the attitude of the Didache is rather the ordinary one of
universalistic early Christianity on the soil of the Graeco-Roman world.
If we describe this as Jewish Christian, then from the meaning which we
must give to the words "Christian" and "Gentile Christian", we tacitly
legitimise an undefined and undefinable aggregate of Greek ideas, along
with a specifically Pauline element, as primitive Christianity, and this
is perhaps not the intended, but yet desired, result of the false
terminology. Now, if we describe even such writings as the Epistle of
James and the Shepherd of Hermas as Jewish Christian, we therewith
reduce the entire early Christianity, which is the creation of a
universal religion on the soil of Judaism, to the special case of an
indefinable religion. The same now appears as one of the particular
values of a completely indeterminate magnitude. Hilgenfeld (Judenthum
und Juden-christenthum, 1886; cf. also Ztschr f. wiss. Theol. 1886, II.
4) advocates another conception of Jewish Christianity in opposition to
the following account. Zahn, Gesch. des N.T-lich. Kanons, II. p. 668 ff.
has a different view still.]

[Footnote 404: Or even Ebionitism; the designations are to be used as
synonymous.]

[Footnote 405: The more rarely the right standard has been set up in the
literature of Church history, for the distinction of Jewish
Christianity, the more valuable are those writings in which it is found.
We must refer, above all, to Diestel, Geschichte des A. T. in der
Christl. Kirche, p. 44, note 7.]

[Footnote 406: See Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1883. Col. 409 f. as to the attempt
of Joel to make out that the whole of Christendom up to the end of the
first century was strictly Jewish Christian, and to exhibit the complete
friendship of Jews and Christians in that period ("Blicke in die
Religionsgesch." 2 Abth. 1883). It is not improbable that Christians
like James, living in strict accordance with the law, were for the time
being respected even by the Pharisees in the period preceding the
destruction of Jerusalem. But that can in no case have been the rule. We
see from, Epiph., h. 29. 9. and from the Talmud, what was the custom at
a later period.]

[Footnote 407: There were Jewish Christians who represented the position
of the great Church with reference to the Old Testament religion