Kautsky on Christianity
By Shelley Ettinger
The German Marxist Karl Kautsky, in his 1908
book "Foundations of Christianity," made a scholarly
examination of the class relations and material conditions of
life in the time and place in which Jesus was supposed to have
lived.
The vast majority of Jews were desperately poor. The Roman
military occupiers ruthlessly exploited and suppressed them.
Because of all this, it was a period of great social turmoil.
Movements arose to organize rebellion.
Rome, with its vast military might, struck back. Each
attempt at insurrection was met by horrific violence.
According to Kautsky, a shepherd named Athronges led a mass
uprising just before Jesus was born. Roman legions, with great
difficulty, crushed the insurrection. "There began an
unspeakable slaughtering and plundering; 2,000 of those
captured were crucified, many others sold into slavery."
Of Jesus of Nazareth, Kautsky wrote: "Tradition declared
that the Romans had crucified Jesus as a Jewish Messiah, a king
of the Jews, in other words, a champion of Jewish independence,
a traitor to Roman rule."
Kautsky emphasized that the Jewish masses had just welcomed
Jesus into Jerusalem. "It therefore follows ... that the Jews
sympathized with Jesus" and would have had no reason to call
for his death.
In light of Mel Gibson's claim that he "stuck to the
Gospels" in his cinematic version that blames Jewish people for
Jesus's execution, Kautsky's observations are pertinent. He
pointed out, as have many scholars since, that the four Gospels
were written long after everyone who might have been present at
Jesus's execution had died.
By this time, "Christianity was now in open opposition to
the Jews, and wished to be on good terms with the Roman
authorities. It was now important to distort the tradition in
such a manner as to shift the blame for the crucifixion of
Christ from the shoulders of the Romans to those of the Jews,
and to cleanse Christ not only from every appearance of the use
of force, but also from every expression of pro-Jewish,
anti-Roman ideas."
Many commentators have taken Mel Gibson to task for
exonerating the Roman oppressors and blaming the Jewish
oppressed for the suffering and death of Jesus, which, Kautsky
said, "was for many centuries one of the best means of arousing
hatred and contempt for the Jews."
Kautsky classified the crucifixion as "an incident in the
history of the sufferings of the Jewish people."
Reprinted from the March 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page