Note 95 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

Two things must be kept clearly and constantly in view: first, that what we understand by a literary and a historical conscience simply did not exist in the early Christian environment; second, that in all probability the Acts, which to start with would be a blend of tradition and fiction, is much manipulated during a long period. We are not entitled to assume that an “original” writer duplicated the careers of Peter and Paul for purposes of edification. One or more may have wrought one narrative, and a later hand or hands may have systematically interpolated the other.95 We are to remember further that it was an age in which most Christians, assimilating the eschatology of the Persians and the Jews—the spontaneous dream of crushed peoples—expected the speedy end of the world, and did their thinking on that basis. In such a state of mind, critical thought could not exist save as a small element in religious polemic.