nded
disastrously, for the spirit of nationalism and unreasoning hate to the
government of Rome roused a rebellion which inevitably led to the fall
of Jerusalem and the violent destruction of Jewish national life.
Henceforward the official Jewish religion remained a foreign element in
the life of the western world. It could not die, for in spite of
rabbinical extravagances it possessed more ethical truth than
heathenism, and was more sincere in its protest against superstition.
But neither could it form a synthesis with the better elements of the
Roman world; the process of accommodation to Greek philosophy was
stopped for many centuries, and the Jew had neither part nor lot in the
life of the empire in which necessity compelled him to live.

Nevertheless in the end the inevitable synthesis between Judaism and
Greek thought was accomplished, though the official world was unable to
bring it about. The small and at first despised sect of Christians was
driven out of the Synagogue and forced into contact with the heathen
world, at first probably against its will. There is nothing to show
that Christians originally desired to break away from Judaism or to
approach the Greeks; yet they did both. When their fellow-countrymen
refused to {8} hear they turned to the Gentiles, and there ensued
rapidly the abandonment of Jewish practice and the assimilation of
Greek and Graeco-Oriental thought.

From that time on the history of Christianity might be written as a
series of syntheses with the thought and practice of the Roman world,
beginning with the circumference and moving to the centre. The first
element which was absorbed was the least Roman, the Graeco-Oriental
cults. Christianity had been originally the worship of God, as he was
understood by the Jews, combined with the belief that Jesus was he whom
God had appointed, or would appoint, as his representative at the day
of judgement. To this were now joined the longings for private
salvation of the less fortunate classes in the Roman Empire, and their
belief that this salvation could come from sacraments instituted by a
Lord who was either divine by nature or had attained apotheosis. It
thus became, partly indeed, the recognition of the Jewish God as
supreme, but chiefly the recognition of Jesus as the divine Lord who
had instituted saving mysteries for those who accepted him.
Christianity became the Jewish contribution to the Oriental cults,
offering, as the Synagogu