Note 125 — II THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS

But Paul could very justly object that to him also the transfigured Jesus had appeared.125 Then they made the justification for the apostolic vocation consist in this, that an apostle must not only have seen Christ risen up, but must also have eaten and drunk with him.126 This indeed was not applicable in the case of Judas, who in the Acts i. 16 is nevertheless counted among the apostles; and it was also never asserted of Matthias, who was chosen in the former’s stead, that he had been a witness of Jesus’ resurrection. Much less even does he seem to have fulfilled the condition to which advance was made in the development of the original idea, i.e., that an apostle of Jesus should have been personally acquainted with the living Jesus, that he should have belonged to the “First Apostles” and have been present as eye-witness and hearer of Jesus’ words from the time of John’s baptism up to the Resurrection and Ascension.127 Now Seufert has shown that the passage of the Acts referred to is merely a construction, a transference of later conditions to an earlier epoch; and that the whole point of it is to paralyse Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and to establish the title of the Jew-Christians at Jerusalem as higher than that of his followers.