[Footnote 96: The Gospel reliance on the Lamb who was slain, very significantly pervades the Revelation of John, that is, its Christian parts. Even the Apocalypse of Peter shews Jesus Christ as the comfort of believers and as the Revealer of the future. In it (v. 3,) Christ says; "Then will God come to those who believe on me, those who hunger and thirst and mourn, etc."]
[Footnote 97: These words were written before the Apocalypse of Peter was discovered. That Apocalypse confirms what is said in the text. Moreover, its delineation of Paradise and blessedness are not wanting in poetic charm and power. In its delineation of Hell, which prepares the way for Dante's Hell, the author is scared by no terror.]
[Footnote 98: These ideas, however, encircled the earliest Christendom as with a wall of fire, and preserved it from a too early contact with the world.]
[Footnote 99: An accurate examination of the eschatological sayings of Jesus in the synoptists shews that much foreign matter is mixed with them (see Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, 1875). That the tradition here was very uncertain because influenced by the Jewish Apocalyptic, is shewn by the one fact that Papias (in Iren. V. 33) quotes as words of the Lord which had been handed down by the disciples, a group of sayings which we find in the Apocalypse of Baruch, about the amazing fruitfulness of the earth during the time of the Messianic Kingdom.]
[Footnote 100: We may here call attention to an interesting remark of Goethe. Among his Apophthegms (no. 537) is the following: "Apocrypha: It would be important to collect what is historically known about these books, and to shew that these very Apocryphal writings with which the communities of the first centuries of our era were flooded, were the real cause why Christianity at no moment of political or Church history could stand forth in all her beauty and purity." A historian would not express himself in this way, but yet there lies at the root of this remark a true historical insight.]
[Footnote 101: See Schürer, History of the Jewish people. Div. II. vol. II. p. 160 f., yet the remarks of the Jew Trypho in the dialogue of Justin shew that the notions of a pre-existent Messiah were by no means very widely spread in Judaism. (See also Orig. c. Cels. I. 49: "A Jew would not at all admit that any Prophet had said, the Son of God will come: they avoided this designation and used instead the saying: the anointed of God will come"). The Apocalyptists and Rabbis attributed pre-existence, that is, a heavenly origin to many sacred things and persons, such as the Patriarchs, Moses, the Tabernacle, the Temple vessels, the city of Jerusalem. That the true Temple and the real Jerusalem were with God in heaven and would come down from heaven at the appointed time, must have been a very wide-spread idea, especially at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and even earlier than that (see Gal. IV. 26; Rev. XXI. 2; Heb. XII. 22). In the Assumption of Moses (c. 1) Moses says of himself: Dominus invenit me, qui ab initio orbis terrarum præparatus sum, ut sim arbiter ([Greek: mesitês]) testamenti illius ([Greek: tês diathêkês autou]). In the Midrasch Bereschith rabba VIII. 2. we read, "R. Simeon ben Lakisch says, 'The law was in existence 2000 years before the creation of the world.'" In the Jewish treatise [Greek: Proseuchê Iôsêph], which Origen has several times quoted, Jacob says of himself (ap. Orig. tom. II. in Joann. C. 25. Opp. IV. 84): "[Greek: ho gar lalôn pros humas, egô Iakôb kai Isrêl, angelos theou eimi egô kai pneuma archikon kai Abraam kai Isaak proektisthêsan pro pantos ergou, egô de Iakob ... egô prôtogonos pantos zôos zôoumenou hupo theou]." These examples could easily be increased. The Jewish speculations about Angels and Mediators, which at the time of Christ grew very luxuriantly among the Scribes and Apocalyptists, and endangered the purity and vitality of the Old Testament idea of God, were also very important for the development of Christian dogmatics. But neither these speculations, nor the notions of heavenly Archetypes, nor of pre-existence, are to be referred to Hellenic influence. This may have co-operated here and there, but the rise of these speculations in Judaism is not to be explained by it; they rather exhibit the Oriental stamp. But, of course, the stage in the development of the nations had now been reached, in which the creations of Oriental fancy and Mythology could be fused with the ideal conceptions of Hellenic philosophy.]