The last few generations of students and clergy have often been taught, however, that Paul, and indeed Jesus and his earliest followers, believed two things about all this: first, that this coming great event would involve (in some sense or other) the end of the known world, and, second, that this coming event would take place within a generation. So, because the world did not end after the first Christian generation, it has been common coin, particularly among those who have wanted to distance themselves from early Christian ideas in general and Paul’s in particular, to say, sometimes with
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