assume the most diverse
forms of expression, and follow very different impulses, and so far it
frequently separates instead of uniting. But so long as criticism and
reflection are not yet awakened, and a uniform ideal hovers before one,
it does unite, and in this sense there existed an identity of
disposition between the earliest Jewish Christians and the still
enthusiastic Gentile Christian communities.

10. But, finally, there is a still further uniting element between the
beginnings of the development to Catholicism, and the original condition
of the Christian religion as a movement within Judaism, the importance
of which cannot be overrated, although we have every reason to complain
here of the obscurity of the tradition. Between the Graeco-Roman world
which was in search of a spiritual religion, and the Jewish commonwealth
which already possessed such a religion as a national property, though
vitiated by exclusiveness, there had long been a Judaism which,
penetrated by the Greek spirit, was, _ex professo_, devoting itself to
the task of bringing a new religion to the Greek world, the Jewish
religion, but that religion in its kernel Greek, that is,
philosophically moulded, spiritualised and secularised. Here then was
already consummated an intimate union of the Greek spirit with the Old
Testament religion, within the Empire and to a less degree in Palestine
itself. If everything is not to be dissolved into a grey mist, we must
clearly distinguish this union between Judaism and Hellenism and the
spiritualising of religion it produced, from the powerful but
indeterminable influences which the Greek spirit exercised on all things
Jewish, and which have been a historical condition of the Gospel. The
alliance, in my opinion, was of no significance at all for the _origin_
of the Gospel, but was of the most decided importance, first, for the
propagation of Christianity, and then, for the development of
Christianity to Catholicism, and for the genesis of the Catholic
doctrine of faith.[54] We cannot certainly name any particular
personality who was specially active in this, but we can mention three
facts which prove more than individual references. (1) The propaganda of
Christianity in the Diaspora followed the Jewish propaganda and partly
took its place, that is, the Gospel was at first preached to those
Gentiles who were already acquainted with the general outlines of the
Jewish religion, and who were even frequently view