But, as has been shown powerfully in recent years, the simplicity of Baur’s idealist scheme was deceptive. The time available for it to have taken effect is simply too short; there is too great a multitude of data to which it has to sit loose (the fact, for instance, that our main evidence for ‘Jewish Christianity’ as such is late, and for ‘Gentile Christianity’ very early); and its pet theories about history-of-religions derivations, especially in the area of christology, have collapsed entirely.
