Page:Early Christianity outside the Roman empire.djvu/14

Rh The very earliest stage of all, that stage which it is most important for all of us to know and understand, is not Greek but Semitic. Our Lord was not sent save unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel. He lived the life of a Jew. He spoke in the current dialect of Palestine to His fellow-countrymen, and His conversations with his friends and His controversies with His foes turned on the things which troubled or interested the Jewish community of Palestine in the early part of the first century of our Era. Christ came not to promulgate a Creed, a form of words containing the quintessence of philosophical truth, but to live a life among men; and for us to feel the true force of His words, to appreciate the attitude He took up towards the current hopes and beliefs of those among whom He lived, we must find out and understand those beliefs. We must learn the language that His contemporaries spoke and study their phraseology.

When we attempt to do this we catch a glimpse of a very different world from that of Greek