language of Judaism, in which he lived and thought. The symbolic structure then is the result of the translation of Paul’s primordial experience into his basal language and constitutes for him the necessary interpretation of the Christ-event. The primordial experience of the Christ-event then nourishes, intensifies, and modifies Paul’s traditional apocalyptic language. It is in this sense that I speak about the coherent center of Paul’s gospel as a symbolic structure: it is a Christian apocalyptic