[2034] The problem of life is stated to be how to get rid of desire, which is the source of all suffering; the Buddhist answer is that desire is eliminated by moral living, for which knowledge is necessary. So the Socratic school based virtue and happiness on knowledge. Cf. also the Biblical book of Proverbs.
[2035] It does not follow that every founder of a religion will establish a church; other things than the person of the founder, such as the nature of his teaching and the character of his social milieu, enter into the problem.
[2036] On current proposed reforms of Buddhism in Japan see Underwood, Religions of Eastern Asia, p. 222 ff.
[2037] The two last of these functions ceased on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (70 A.D.), the first remained.
[2038] Proselytes arose mostly from the general liberal tendency of the times (from about the second century B.C. and on), sometimes from lower impulses, sometimes they were made by force. See articles in Cheyne, Encyclopædia Biblica; Hastings Dictionary of the Bible; and Jewish Encyclopedia.
[2039] They were virtually identified with the Jewish people. On the early form of voluntary devotion to a foreign deity see W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 75 ff.
[2040] § 1115.
[2041] On attempts to discover forms of Christianity before Jesus see W. R. Smith, Der vorchristliche Jesus, and Ecce Deus; M. Friedländer, Synagoge und Kirche.
[2042] The two passages in the Gospels (Matt. xvi, 18; xviii, 17) in which the word "church" occurs appear clearly, on exegetical grounds, to be scribal insertions of the later period.
[2043] "Elder" and "apostle" are Jewish titles, and the reading of the Scriptures, prayer, and exhortation formed part of the synagogal service; see Schürer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Eng. tr.), II, ii, 52 ff., and article "Apostle" in Jewish Encyclopedia. Other offices arose in the church out of the peculiar conditions; the eucharistic meal appears to have been developed under non-Jewish influence.