Jerusalem at the time. He was not an eye-witness. He was a member of the mission to the Gentiles and a product of the Diaspora movement. He was not in cultural or indeed doctrinal sympathy with the Pentecostal apostles; in this situation he was an outsider and a misinformed one. The evangelical speeches he produces are to some extent reconstructions, inspired by appropriate passages in the Septuagint, a Diaspora document not in use among Jerusalem Jews. Even granted all this, however, Luke's account of the religion preached immediately after Pentecost does not bear much resemblance to Jesus’ teaching. Its starting-point is the resurrection, but otherwise it is Christianity without Christ. Indeed, the word Christ had not yet come into use - that was a product of the later Diaspora and gentile mission. What the apostles were preaching was a form of Jewish revivalism. It had strong apocalyptic overtones - very much part of the Jewish tradition - and it used the resurrection event to prove and heighten the urgency of the message. But what was the message? In all essentials it was: repent and be baptized - the revivalist doctrine preached by John the Baptist before Jesus’ mission even began! Only disjointed fragments of Jesus’ mechanism of salvation, his redefinition of the deity, and his own central role in the process survived. The Jerusalem apostles were in danger of slipping into the theological posture of Jewish Baptists. Their Judaic instincts were still powerful and conservative. They were orientated wholly to Temple-worship. Luke's gospel tells us that -after the apostles parted with Jesus at Bethany, ‘they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and spent all their time in the Temple praising God.’ Again, after the first Pentecost campaign, we learn from Acts that ‘With one mind, they kept up their daily attendance at the Temple.’ The inference is that the leaders of the movement in Jerusalem were much closer to Judaism than Jesus, and indeed had been all along. Alas, we know very little about them. The gospel of John says that the earliest disciples came from the circle of the Baptist, and this at a time when Jesus’ early, simple teaching was strongly reflective of the Baptist's, at least according to Mark's account of it. Our authorities give a very confusing picture of Jesus’ following, both during his ministry and afterwards, when the personnel seem to have changed radically. The synoptic agree that twelve men were constituted, in Mark's words, ‘to be with him, and to send them to preach and to have authority to cast out demons’. Both John and Paul refer to the figure twelve. But were the twelve the same as the apostles? The synoptic and Acts provide lists, but only agree on the first eight. John gives only half. Most of them are just names, if we leave aside later traditions. ‘The Twelve’ seem to relate to the ‘true people’ of the twelve tribes; but apostle in Greek implies an expedition across the sea and must refer primarily to the gentile or Diaspora mission. Luke, in the Acts, does not tell us what rights or duties or privileges were enjoyed by ‘the twelve’ or by ‘the apostles’. Indeed, when he gets to Paul's work he forgets all about them, and thenceforth refers to him as ‘the apostle’. Only with Peter can we trace any activity; with John it is barely possible, though we can assume it since he was martyred. And it is quite impossible with the rest. James, Jesus’ brother, is an identifiable personality, indeed an important one. But he is not an ‘apostle’, nor one of 'the twelve’. It is thus misleading to speak of an ‘apostolic age’, and equally misleading to speak of a primitive Pentecostal Church and faith. The last point is important, because it implies Jesus left a norm, in terms of doctrine, message, and organization, from which the Church subsequently departed. There was never a norm. Jesus held his following together because he was, in effect, its only spokesman. After Pentecost, there were many; a Babel of voices. If the famous Petrine text in Matthew is genuine and means what it is alleged to mean, Peter was a very unsteady rock on which to found a Church. He did not exercise powers of leadership and seems to have allowed himself to be dispossessed by James and other members of Jesus’ family, who had played no part in the original mission. Finally, Peter went on foreign mission and left the Jerusalem circle altogether. The impression we get is that the Jerusalem Church was unstable, and had a tendency to drift back into Judaism completely. Indeed, it was not really a separate Church at all, but part of the Jewish cult. It had Ne SagriNlGes OF IS QWN, NQ holy places and times, no priests. {it met for meals, like the Essene groups, and 17