Excerpt from The Gospel and Its Tributaries My aim in the book has been to indicate how Chris tianity drew into itself many tributary elements, and in so doing transformed them, so that the result was not some nondescript composite religion, but a new and in some ways more adequate expression of the message of Jesus. The survey is limited to the period covered by the New Testament. My first intention was to extend it to the time of the Council of Nicaea, for it was in the second and third centuries that the fusion of Christian belief with contemporary thought was carried fully into effect. But the traditional View of the New Testa ment as complete in itself is not wholly artificial. In that first century the gospel was formulated, the forces which were to modify it came definitely into play, the task which lay before it was clearly envisaged. The subsequent period only wrote out again in larger characters what may be read in the New Testa ment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.