[lbo-talk] Karl Kautsky on Christianity

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Sat Aug 4 20:57:57 PDT 2007


"Paul" wrote:
>
>After Kautsky wrote, I think we learned much more about the
>extraordinary *Palestinian* context of early Christianity. AFAIK,
>today's knowledge shows that early Christianity was very much a
>product of its Palestinian context...

Unless "early" is taken in the absolutely strictest of senses this is precisely opposite to the reality. What *all* Christians regard as "early Christianity" is not the entirely Jewish movement comprising the direct followers of Jesus as Davidic Messiah (=King), led by his brother and heir James and known now as the "Jerusalem Church," but the whole complex of Orthodox, Heretical, and Gnostic sects deriving from the activities of that police agent-swindler-religious genius Saul of Tarsus--not a Palestinian but a *Roman* citizen. The Jerusalem Church as such was crushed in the Roman suppression of the 67-70 uprising, though its successors, known as the "Ebionites" (poor people) continued on for another century or so. The gentile Paulinistic Church, fraudulently posing as successor to Jesus the Jew, modeled itself on the hierarchichal structure of the Roman Empire so closely that it was ready-made to serve as the main armature of a shaken Empire in the 4th century CE and, alas, for the rest of history to date.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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