2. STRUGGLE WITH THE JEWS.

If Christianity was to become a world-religion, it had to break away more and more from Judaism; and this cer tainly could not be done without a struggle. The great majority of the Jews from the time of the Apostle Paul had already adopted a hostile attitude towards Christianity: this would make the Christians despise them all the more. The way in which Jesus is represented as speaking of the Jews, the Law, the feasts of the Jews, as matters of utter indifference to him, and which to us seems inconceivable (p. 15 f.), entirely harmonises with the ideas of Christians in the second century, who were for the most part Gentiles by birth, and is most appropriate if the Evangelist was alive at the time of the rising of Bar Cochba (p. 200 f.). When he represents Jesus as being continually engaged in controversies with the Jews, all those points are touched 236upon which were in question between Christians and Jews in the second century: Jesus is really the Son of God; the Jews refusal to believe this is simply due to obstinacy, &c. In this way, the author answers all the needs of his time. We must leave the question whether there were also followers of John the Baptist to be refuted, and whether it is against these that proof is offered of the great superiority of Jesus (p. 80).