Karl Kautsky
G. I. Ezrin
Karl Kautsky and his book "The Origin of Christianity"
A huge, in fact an unlimited number of books, articles and other publications have been written about the origins of Christianity. Christian authors, enlightenment philosophers, representatives of biblical criticism, and atheist authors worked in this field. This is understandable, since we are talking about a historical phenomenon - Christianity, which arose 2000 years ago, created numerous churches with millions of followers, occupied and still occupies a large place in the world, in the ideological, economic and political life of peoples and states.
Few of these books have stood the test of time. Most of them are forgotten, others are known only to a small circle of specialists. But some books have remained relevant in our time and therefore may be of interest to a wide reader.
One of these books is “The Origin of Christianity” by Karl Kautsky.
Kautsky is an extraordinary and controversial figure, who played a significant role in the ideological life of the late 19th–20th centuries. He was born in 1854 in Prague. His father, a Czech by nationality, Johann Kautsky worked as a theater set designer. Mother Minna Kautskaya, a German, began her career as an actress and then became a famous writer.
After graduating from high school, Karl Kautsky studied at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1879. In 1875, he joined the German Social Democratic Party, defining his ideological and political choice for life.
In 1878, during the period of the “exceptional law against socialists,” Kautsky actively collaborated in the illegal social democratic organ “Social Democrat”, published in Zurich, where he went in 1880 after graduating from university. But soon Kautsky moved to London, where in 1881 he met K. Marx and F. Engels. This acquaintance finally determined Kautsky’s ideological choice, his transition to the position of Marxism.
In 1883, Kautsky founded the journal New Times, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, of which he was editor from its founding until 1917.
In 1885–1888 Kautsky lives in London, working in close collaboration with F. Engels. Since 1890, he has lived permanently in Germany, actively participating in the activities of the German Social Democratic Party, and then the Second International. In 1934, after fascism came to power in Germany, Kautsky moved to Vienna, and after the capture of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, he left for Prague. From there he moved to Amsterdam, where he died in the same year, 1938.
It is not possible here to fully explore Kautsky’s ideological evolution, but we note that Kautsky believed all his life in the historical inevitability of socialism, always considered himself a Marxist and was proud of it, served the cause of socialism as he understood it. His enormous capacity for work, activity and conviction in the correctness of socialist ideas, and undoubted literary talent make him one of the most prominent figures in the international labor movement.
Kautsky highly appreciated the revolution of 1905 in Russia, devoting a number of brilliant works to its analysis.
In 1910–1912 Kautsky becomes the ideologist of so-called centrism. In 1914, centrism, together with the right-wing Social Democrats, declared the imperialist war to be “defensive,” waged for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Lenin called Kautsky’s attempts to theoretically justify these actions “a boundlessly vulgar mockery of socialism.”
In 1917, Kautsky, in protest against the policies of the SPD leadership, left the party, left his post as editor of Novoe Vremya and organized the independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which did not last long.
Kautsky's attitude towards the October Revolution certainly deserves independent analysis. Here we will only note that he wrote a number of articles and brochures about this revolution (“Democracy and Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1918; “Democracy or Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1921; “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 1918 g.; “From democracy to state slavery”, 1921).
V. I. Lenin responded to Kautsky’s pamphlet “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” with the book “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918).
Karl Kautsky
G. I. Ezrin
Karl Kautsky and his book "The Origin of Christianity"
A huge, in fact an unlimited number of books, articles and other publications have been written about the origins of Christianity. Christian authors, enlightenment philosophers, representatives of biblical criticism, and atheist authors worked in this field. This is understandable, since we are talking about a historical phenomenon - Christianity, which arose 2000 years ago, created numerous churches with millions of followers, occupied and still occupies a large place in the world, in the ideological, economic and political life of peoples and states.
Few of these books have stood the test of time. Most of them are forgotten, others are known only to a small circle of specialists. But some books have remained relevant in our time and therefore may be of interest to a wide reader.
One of these books is “The Origin of Christianity” by Karl Kautsky.
Kautsky is an extraordinary and controversial figure, who played a significant role in the ideological life of the late 19th–20th centuries. He was born in 1854 in Prague. His father, a Czech by nationality, Johann Kautsky worked as a theater set designer. Mother Minna Kautskaya, a German, began her career as an actress and then became a famous writer.
After graduating from high school, Karl Kautsky studied at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1879. In 1875, he joined the German Social Democratic Party, defining his ideological and political choice for life.
In 1878, during the period of the “exceptional law against socialists,” Kautsky actively collaborated in the illegal social democratic organ “Social Democrat”, published in Zurich, where he went in 1880 after graduating from university. But soon Kautsky moved to London, where in 1881 he met K. Marx and F. Engels. This acquaintance finally determined Kautsky’s ideological choice, his transition to the position of Marxism.
In 1883, Kautsky founded the journal New Times, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, of which he was editor from its founding until 1917.
In 1885–1888 Kautsky lives in London, working in close collaboration with F. Engels. Since 1890, he has lived permanently in Germany, actively participating in the activities of the German Social Democratic Party, and then the Second International. In 1934, after fascism came to power in Germany, Kautsky moved to Vienna, and after the capture of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, he left for Prague. From there he moved to Amsterdam, where he died in the same year, 1938.
It is not possible here to fully explore Kautsky’s ideological evolution, but we note that Kautsky believed all his life in the historical inevitability of socialism, always considered himself a Marxist and was proud of it, served the cause of socialism as he understood it. His enormous capacity for work, activity and conviction in the correctness of socialist ideas, and undoubted literary talent make him one of the most prominent figures in the international labor movement.
Kautsky highly appreciated the revolution of 1905 in Russia, devoting a number of brilliant works to its analysis.
In 1910–1912 Kautsky becomes the ideologist of so-called centrism. In 1914, centrism, together with the right-wing Social Democrats, declared the imperialist war to be “defensive,” waged for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Lenin called Kautsky’s attempts to theoretically justify these actions “a boundlessly vulgar mockery of socialism.”
In 1917, Kautsky, in protest against the policies of the SPD leadership, left the party, left his post as editor of Novoe Vremya and organized the independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which did not last long.
Kautsky's attitude towards the October Revolution certainly deserves independent analysis. Here we will only note that he wrote a number of articles and brochures about this revolution (“Democracy and Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1918; “Democracy or Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1921; “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 1918 g.; “From democracy to state slavery”, 1921).
V. I. Lenin responded to Kautsky’s pamphlet “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” with the book “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918).
A huge, in fact an unlimited number of books, articles and other publications have been written about the origins of Christianity. Christian authors, enlightenment philosophers, representatives of biblical criticism, and atheist authors worked in this field. This is understandable, since we are talking about a historical phenomenon - Christianity, which arose 2000 years ago, created numerous churches with millions of followers, occupied and still occupies a large place in the world, in the ideological, economic and political life of peoples and states.
Few of these books have stood the test of time. Most of them are forgotten, others are known only to a small circle of specialists. But some books have remained relevant in our time and therefore may be of interest to a wide reader.
One of these books is “The Origin of Christianity” by Karl Kautsky.
Kautsky is an extraordinary and controversial figure, who played a significant role in the ideological life of the late 19th–20th centuries. He was born in 1854 in Prague. His father, a Czech by nationality, Johann Kautsky worked as a theater set designer. Mother Minna Kautskaya, a German, began her career as an actress and then became a famous writer.
After graduating from high school, Karl Kautsky studied at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1879. In 1875, he joined the German Social Democratic Party, defining his ideological and political choice for life.
In 1878, during the period of the “exceptional law against socialists,” Kautsky actively collaborated in the illegal social democratic organ “Social Democrat”, published in Zurich, where he went in 1880 after graduating from university. But soon Kautsky moved to London, where in 1881 he met K. Marx and F. Engels. This acquaintance finally determined Kautsky’s ideological choice, his transition to the position of Marxism.
In 1883, Kautsky founded the journal New Times, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, of which he was editor from its founding until 1917.
In 1885–1888 Kautsky lives in London, working in close collaboration with F. Engels. Since 1890, he has lived permanently in Germany, actively participating in the activities of the German Social Democratic Party, and then the Second International. In 1934, after fascism came to power in Germany, Kautsky moved to Vienna, and after the capture of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, he left for Prague. From there he moved to Amsterdam, where he died in the same year, 1938.
It is not possible here to fully explore Kautsky’s ideological evolution, but we note that Kautsky believed all his life in the historical inevitability of socialism, always considered himself a Marxist and was proud of it, served the cause of socialism as he understood it. His enormous capacity for work, activity and conviction in the correctness of socialist ideas, and undoubted literary talent make him one of the most prominent figures in the international labor movement.
Kautsky highly appreciated the revolution of 1905 in Russia, devoting a number of brilliant works to its analysis.
In 1910–1912 Kautsky becomes the ideologist of so-called centrism. In 1914, centrism, together with the right-wing Social Democrats, declared the imperialist war to be “defensive,” waged for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Lenin called Kautsky’s attempts to theoretically justify these actions “a boundlessly vulgar mockery of socialism.”
In 1917, Kautsky, in protest against the policies of the SPD leadership, left the party, left his post as editor of Novoe Vremya and organized the independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which did not last long.
Kautsky's attitude towards the October Revolution certainly deserves independent analysis. Here we will only note that he wrote a number of articles and brochures about this revolution (“Democracy and Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1918; “Democracy or Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1921; “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 1918 g.; “From democracy to state slavery”, 1921).
V. I. Lenin responded to Kautsky’s pamphlet “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” with the book “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918).
Kautsky's literary heritage is very great. He created such fundamental works as “The Economic Doctrine of Karl Marx” (1887, Russian translation 1956), “Ethics and the Materialist Understanding of History” (1906, Russian translation 1922), “Predecessors socialism" (1909–1921), "Materialist understanding of history" (1927), etc.
Among the most significant books written by Kautsky is The Origin of Christianity. This book was published in Germany in 1908 and soon (in 1909) was published in Russia in a translation by D. Ryazanov under a different title. This translation has been approved and authorized by the author. This book is based on the 1909 edition, with the exception of the paragraph “Christianity and Social Democracy” in the last chapter, which is omitted in this edition. Now it is difficult to judge why the title of the book was changed in its Russian edition. It can be assumed that this was done for censorship reasons, since the new name looks more neutral than in the German original. In any case, the post-revolutionary edition of this book in Russian in the same translation was published under the title of the original. Under Soviet rule, this book went through four editions in a relatively short period of time (from 1919 to 1930). After 1930 it was never published, essentially becoming a bibliographic rarity. And the point here is not in the book itself, but in its author, whose life path, as we see, was not straightforward and unambiguous.
Kautsky’s book is not alone in this. Unfortunately, it shared the fate of many scientific and artistic works that were withdrawn from use, which, as we see, caused significant damage to the development of our culture. This attitude towards Kautsky’s book is not accidental. For many years, the attitude towards the author was clearly negative. In our literature, after the death of V.I. Lenin, Kautsky, contrary to historical truth, was viewed as a kind of antipode to Marxism. It has become a bad tradition to evaluate Kautsky’s entire activity as a continuous chain of mistakes and direct actions against Marxism. It was customary to speak and write about Kautsky in this spirit for many years. The basis for this was V.I. Lenin’s sharp criticism of K. Kautsky during the First World War, and then the October Revolution. It is known that V.I. Lenin at this time called Kautsky a renegade. Does this mean that such an assessment given by V.I. Lenin in a certain period negates all of Kautsky’s pre-war activities? Certainly not. If Kautsky’s theoretical and political activity after 1909 was criticized by V.I. Lenin, then Lenin assessed the previous periods completely differently. Thus, noting that Karl Kautsky, one of the leaders of the proletarian party, was highly valued by all future Bolsheviks, Lenin called him an “outstanding socialist.” He wrote: “We know from Kautsky’s many works that he knew how to be a Marxist historian, that such works of his will remain the lasting property of the proletariat, despite his later renegadeism.”
This Leninist assessment of Kautsky’s theoretical activity refers entirely to the book “The Origin of Christianity,” written during the period when Kautsky was
"an outstanding socialist." Its publication is not only useful, but also necessary for at least partial restoration of historical justice.
Karl Kautsky
Origin of Christianity
G. I. Ezrin. Karl Kautsky and his book “The Origin of Christianity” 1
Preface 10
Division I. Sources of Early Christianity 16
Chapter 1. Pagan sources 16
Chapter 2. Christian sources 19
Chapter 3. The struggle for the image of Christ 24
Division II. Social system during the era of the Roman Empire 27
Chapter 1. Slavery 27
Chapter 2. Political system 47
Chapter 3. Mental and moral state of Roman society 62
Division III. Judaism 98
Chapter 1. Israel 98
Chapter 2. Judaism after the Babylonian captivity 119
Chapter 3. Party struggle in Jerusalem 141
Division IV. Early Christianity 167
Chapter 1. The original Christian community 167
Chapter 2. Christian Messianism 182
Chapter 3. Judeo-Christians and Pagan Christians 196
Chapter 4. The story of the sufferings of Christ 202
Chapter 5. Evolution of the internal structure of the original Christian community 209
Name index 245
G. I. Ezrin. Karl Kautsky and his book "The Origin of Christianity"
A huge, in fact an unlimited number of books, articles and other publications have been written about the origins of Christianity. Christian authors, enlightenment philosophers, representatives of biblical criticism, and atheist authors worked in this field. This is understandable, since we are talking about a historical phenomenon - Christianity, which arose 2000 years ago, created numerous churches with millions of followers, occupied and still occupies a large place in the world, in the ideological, economic and political life of peoples and states.
Few of these books have stood the test of time. Most of them are forgotten, others are known only to a small circle of specialists. But some books have remained relevant in our time and therefore may be of interest to a wide reader.
One of these books is “The Origin of Christianity” by Karl Kautsky.
Kautsky is an extraordinary and controversial figure who played a significant role in the ideological life of the late 19th and 20th centuries. He was born in 1854 in Prague. His father, Czech by nationality, Johann Kautsky worked as a theater set designer. Mother Minna Kautskaya, a German, began her career as an actress and then became a famous writer.
After graduating from high school, Karl Kautsky studied at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1879. In 1875, he joined the German Social Democratic Party, defining his ideological and political choice for life.
In 1878, during the period of the “exceptional law against socialists,” Kautsky actively collaborated in the illegal social democratic organ “Social Democrat”, published in Zurich, where he went in 1880 after graduating from university. But soon Kautsky moved to London, where in 1881 he met K. Marx and F. Engels. This acquaintance finally determined Kautsky’s ideological choice, his transition to the position of Marxism.
In 1883, Kautsky founded the journal New Times, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, of which he was editor from its founding until 1917.
In 1885-1888. Kautsky lives in London, working in close collaboration with F. Engels. Since 1890, he has lived permanently in Germany, actively participating in the activities of the German Social Democratic Party, and then the Second International. In 1934, after fascism came to power in Germany, Kautsky moved to Vienna, and after the capture of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, he left for Prague. From there he moved to Amsterdam, where he died in the same year, 1938.
It is not possible here to fully explore the ideological evolution of Kautsky, however, we note that Kautsky believed all his life in the historical inevitability of socialism, always considered himself a Marxist and was proud of it, served the cause of socialism as he understood it. His enormous capacity for work, activity and conviction in the correctness of socialist ideas, and undoubted literary talent make him one of the most prominent figures in the international labor movement.
Kautsky highly appreciated the revolution of 1905 in Russia, devoting a number of brilliant works to its analysis.
In 1910-1912 Kautsky becomes the ideologist of so-called centrism. In 1914, centrism, together with the right-wing Social Democrats, declared the imperialist war to be “defensive,” waged for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Lenin called Kautsky’s attempts to theoretically justify these actions “a boundlessly vulgar mockery of socialism.”
In 1917, Kautsky, in protest against the policies of the SPD leadership, left the party, left his post as editor of Novoe Vremya and organized the independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which did not last long.
Kautsky's attitude towards the October Revolution certainly deserves independent analysis. Here we will only note that he wrote a number of articles and brochures about this revolution (“Democracy and Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1918; “Democracy or Dictatorship,” Russian translation, 1921; “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 1918 g.; “From democracy to state slavery”, 1921).
V. I. Lenin responded to Kautsky’s pamphlet “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” with the book “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918).
Kautsky's literary heritage is very great. He created such fundamental works as “The Economic Doctrine of Karl Marx” (1887, Russian translation 1956), “Ethics and the Materialist Understanding of History” (1906, Russian translation 1922), “Predecessors socialism" (1909-1921), "Materialist understanding of history" (1927), etc.
Among the most significant books written by Kautsky is The Origin of Christianity. This book was published in Germany in 1908 and soon (in 1909) was published in Russia in a translation by D. Ryazanov under a different title. This translation has been approved and authorized by the author. This book is based on the 1909 edition, with the exception of the paragraph “Christianity and Social Democracy” in the last chapter, which is omitted in this edition. Now it is difficult to judge why the title of the book was changed in its Russian edition. It can be assumed that this was done for censorship reasons, since the new name looks more neutral than in the German original. In any case, the post-revolutionary edition of this book in Russian in the same translation was published under the title of the original. Under Soviet rule, this book went through four editions in a relatively short period of time (from 1919 to 1930). After 1930 it was never published, essentially becoming a bibliographic rarity. And the point here is not in the book itself, but in its author, whose life path, as we see, was not straightforward and unambiguous.
Kautsky’s book is not alone in this. Unfortunately, it shared the fate of many scientific and artistic works that were withdrawn from use, which, as we see, caused significant damage to the development of our culture. This attitude towards Kautsky’s book is not accidental. For many years, the attitude towards the author was clearly negative. In our literature, after the death of V.I. Lenin, Kautsky, contrary to historical truth, was viewed as a kind of antipode to Marxism. It has become a bad tradition to evaluate Kautsky’s entire activity as a continuous chain of mistakes and direct actions against Marxism. It was customary to speak and write about Kautsky in this spirit for many years. The basis for this was V.I. Lenin’s sharp criticism of K. Kautsky during the First World War, and then the October Revolution. It is known that V.I. Lenin at that time called Kautsky a renegade. Does this mean that such an assessment given by V.I. Lenin in a certain period negates all of Kautsky’s pre-war activities? Certainly not. If Kautsky’s theoretical and political activity after 1909 was criticized by V.I. Lenin, then Lenin assessed the previous periods completely differently. Thus, noting that Karl Kautsky, one of the leaders of the proletarian party, was highly valued by all future Bolsheviks, Lenin called him an “outstanding socialist.” He wrote: “We know from Kautsky’s many works that he knew how to be a Marxist historian, that such works of his will remain the lasting property of the proletariat, despite his later renegadeism.”
This Leninist assessment of Kautsky’s theoretical activity refers entirely to the book “The Origin of Christianity,” written during the period when Kautsky was
"an outstanding socialist." Its publication is not only useful, but also necessary for at least partial restoration of historical justice.
The question quite naturally arises: why does Kautsky, one of the leaders of Social Democracy, whose works are devoted to completely different problems, create this book? This is not an accident. In the preface to the book, Kautsky writes: “The history of Christianity and biblical criticism have long been the subject of my studies.” His first work on this topic - the article “The Origin of Biblical History” - was published in the magazine “Cosmos” in 1883, and two years later, in 1885, he published the article “The Emergence of Christianity” in “Neue Zeit”. We see that Kautsky was interested in the problem of the origin of Christianity for a long time. He was not alone in this. Around the same years, the most prominent figures of the labor movement published publications on the problems of the origin of Christianity: F. Engels, A. Bebel, F. Mehring - in Germany, P. Lafargue - in France.
In addition to those mentioned, Kautsky devoted a number of works to the problems of religion and the church. It is enough to mention at least his brochure “The Catholic Church and Social Democracy”, published in Russian translation in 1906.
Thus, this book, offered to the reader, was the result of Kautsky’s many years of work on the study of religious and church issues.
There were several reasons for the increased interest in the problems of early Christianity and its origins.
As you know, in 1869, at the congress in Eisenach, W. Liebknecht and A. Bebel founded the first ever political party of the working class - the German Social Democratic Workers' Party.
From this moment on, a new period began in the history of the labor movement, which required the urgent solution of a number of new problems of a programmatic nature and, in particular, the question of the attitude of the labor party to religion and the church, which in the conditions of Central Europe meant the attitude of the labor party to Christianity. In this situation, it turned out that just a general theoretical approach to the problem of religion and the church is not enough. This circumstance in itself could explain such interest among working class theorists in Christianity.
Another important circumstance that determined the need for a Marxist study of early Christianity was also the desire of some workers to clothe their social protest in religious forms. They followed an already established historical tradition, when the protest of the working masses against social conditions resulted, as a rule, in various kinds of religious movements or found expression in religious ideas. The main idea of any social protest was the opposition of the ideas and spirit of primitive Christianity to the modern ruling church. Under feudalism, when religion in its Christian form was a comprehensive form of ideology, the protest of the masses could not be expressed in any other form.
On this occasion, F. Mehring rightly noted that the increased interest in early Christianity represents “an accompanying phenomenon of instinctive workers’ communism, which in its theoretical formulation takes as its starting point material that is closely familiar to it”, that “in the initial stages of its liberation struggle, the modern proletariat readily recalls primitive Christianity.”
The validity of this remark by F. Mehring will become clear if we consider that in Germany and neighboring France, before the spread of Marxism in the working class, such forms of “instinctive workers’ communism” as the theories of Etienne Cabet and Wilhelm Weitling, not free from religious overlays, had a certain influence.
In addition, one must bear in mind the fact that Christian socialism, which began widespread propaganda of its views, strengthened Christian illusions in the minds of workers, since, as K. Marx and F. Engels noted, “there is nothing easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist shade."
However, in Germany, the issue of attitudes towards religion and the church became particularly acute in connection with the Kulturkampf policy that unfolded in 1872. Despite the name, this struggle had nothing to do with culture. It was purely political in nature, since the unification of Germany by Bismarck under the auspices of Protestant Prussia put the Catholic Church and the center party associated with it in opposition. The Catholic Church, having every reason to fear the decline of its influence, supported anti-Prussian sentiments and contributed to the growth of separatism.
The retaliatory blow from Bismarck and the entire Junker-bourgeois bloc against the Catholic Church was laws (1872-1876) that affected its fundamental interests. These laws, as well as the subsequent police repression and persecution of Catholic clergy, led to results directly opposite to those that Bismarck had in mind: the number of active Catholics increased, and the position of the center party strengthened. Since 1876, the Kulturkampf has been in decline. Subsequently, most of the anti-Catholic laws were repealed.
Bismarck's struggle against Catholicism led to the fact that the religious issue turned out to be one of the most acute in the political life of Germany, not only during the period of the most violent struggle, but also for a number of years after that. The desire of the ruling classes to incite the working people against the Catholic Church as their main enemy, as the primary carrier of social evil, and thereby distract the masses from solving their real problems, required the development of the workers' party's own policy in relation to religion and the church.
Kautsky understood that there could be no alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat on this issue. In the brochure “The Catholic Church and Social Democracy” that we have already mentioned, he wrote: “The bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot wage a joint struggle against the church, since the class position of the proletariat forces it to adhere to a different policy in this matter than the policy of the bourgeoisie.” However, it was possible to answer the question of what this policy should be only after a detailed study of such a phenomenon as Christianity. This task of studying Christianity, its origin and development was set before Marxist researchers by Engels.
In 1882, he wrote that religion, which for 1800 years had dominated a large part of civilized humanity, could not be disposed of by declaring it nonsense, concocted by deceivers. He believed that “it is necessary first to be able to explain its origin and its development, based on the historical conditions under which it arose and achieved dominance.”
Karl Kautsky sought to solve this problem in his book “The Origin of Christianity.”
The study of any ideological phenomenon is always a difficult task. It is necessary to understand and explain from what conditions it arose, what ideas of the past influenced its formation and why they played this role from the entire past ideological heritage. But the difficulties of researching the origins of Christianity are many times greater. There are many reasons for this. First of all, Christianity is not an ordinary ideological phenomenon, if only because its followers even today, after many centuries of its existence, are hundreds of millions of people in all countries of the world without exception. It presents a particular challenge for the researcher, since its content reflects the influence of many ideas that arose in different regions of the ancient world, on different national and ideological grounds. Finally, the difficulty was that until the middle of the 18th century. the undivided dominance of theological views on Christianity, in essence, removed the problem of its origin. According to these views, Christianity arose all at once with all its complex set of ideas. Hence the special attention to the personality of Christ, who, being the son of God and at the same time God, gave people his teaching in a ready-made form. The enlighteners of the 18th century, who strongly criticized Christianity, in contrast to the theological tradition, turned many of their arguments against the historicity of Christ, leaving unanswered questions about why Christianity arose and how it turned into a mass movement, creating many religious organizations, could become a force, influencing not only the ideological, but also the political and economic life of society.
The definition of the enlighteners that every religion is a product of deception and ignorance does not explain much and, of course, does not answer the question of what historical circumstances gave rise to Christianity and what aspirations of the masses it responded to.
With the development of historical science and the emergence of biblical criticism, things changed significantly. A particularly significant contribution to explaining the origins of Christianity was made by Bruno Bauer, who explored the ideas that Christianity adopted and its connection with the development of contemporary culture. At the same time, Bauer rejected the historical existence of Christ, since, as he believed, the emergence of Christianity could be explained even without this detail.
Kautsky writes that in the study of Christianity he follows Bauer. But, unlike Bauer, Kautsky uses a different research methodology, the basis of which is a materialist understanding of history. He writes: “Whoever takes the point of view of a materialist understanding of history can look at the past quite impartially, even if he takes a very active part in the practical struggle of the present.”
Studying in detail the historical circumstances of the emergence of Christianity and following the traditions of biblical criticism, Kautsky examines evidence of the mythological nature of the image of Christ, but unlike Bauer, does not claim that Christ did not exist, but only emphasizes the unreliability of information about him contained both in the gospels and in historical records. works. Kautsky notes that in terms of their historical value, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are no higher than Homer’s poems or the “Song of the Nibelungs.” The activities of historical figures are depicted in them with such poetic license that they cannot be used for the historical description of these personalities and it is even difficult to say which of the heroes described in them are historical figures and which are a figment of fantasy. In other words, Kautsky does not deny the possibility of the historical existence of Christ. (A. Bebel noted that regarding the mythological or historicity of Christ there can be many more or less reliable hypotheses, of which only one can be absolutely unacceptable: the hypothesis that Christ is the son of God).
Most modern scholars connect the historicity of Christ with some new discoveries, in particular, with the Arabic version of the testimony of Josephus (testimoniurn Flavianum), published in 1971 by S. Pines, as well as with the study of the entire body of canonical and apocryphal early Christian sources, not all of which were known to Kautsky. The latter include, for example, the Qumran manuscripts, papyri with fragments of the gospels, and the library of Gnostic Christians, opened in 1945 in Nag Hammadi.
But it is necessary to answer questions about what aspirations of the masses Christianity answered, what historical conditions gave rise to it.
To answer these questions, Kautsky examines the history of Rome and Judaism. In detail (we would even say - in excessive detail) he sets out the history of slavery in Rome, starting from its earliest stages, with the emergence of domestic slavery. He sets out in equal detail the history of Israel and Judah from the moment of the resettlement of the Semitic tribes (12 tribes of Israel) to Palestine.
With amazing knowledge of the era, Kautsky analyzes the nature of the development of production based on slave labor, those aspects and trends that ultimately led to the stagnation of ancient Roman society and created a situation in which the oppressed masses, and then the ruling classes, were overwhelmed by moods of hopelessness and despair.
Analyzing the history of Judea, its contradictions, and often its tragedy, Kautsky emphasizes those changes in the content of religious beliefs that arose in Judaism as a reflection of real social cataclysms experienced by a small people who found themselves at the intersection of the interests of powerful states of antiquity (Egypt, Assyria, and later Babylon) . But of particular interest are the sections devoted to the study of the state of mind both in Rome and in Palestine at the time of the emergence of Christianity.
Kautsky notes that the era in which Christianity arose was a period of severe crisis that engulfed the entire Roman Empire. It led to the complete disintegration of traditional forms of production, the state, ideas and beliefs. The deadlock situation that developed in ancient society gave rise to such phenomena as individualism, gullibility, passion for the miraculous, deceit (as an addition to the passion for the miraculous and gullibility), and all kinds of falsifications. And this same era in the history of the Roman Empire is distinguished by the growth of religiosity and the spread of eschatological and messianic ideas.
Kautsky analyzes in detail the mentality that gripped various segments of the population of Palestine in the last centuries of the past and the beginning of the current era.
The continuous struggle for independence against powerful enemies, endless devastation from enemy invasions, and the ever-increasing exploitation of the oppressed led to the formation of a diaspora (the dispersion of Jews outside their homeland), which subsequently played an important role in the emergence of Christianity. It is no coincidence that Engels called Philo, a resident of the Jewish colony in Alexandria, “the father of Christianity.”
The powerlessness of the oppressed masses of Palestine in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, for independence, against the formidable Roman Empire gave rise to a fiery faith in the Messiah, whose coming would solve all problems. But, as Kautsky rightly notes, each class imagined the coming messiah in its own way. The result of this was the emergence of three movements in Judaism: the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. The first two were traditional. As for Essayism, it arose in the 2nd century. BC e., in its ideas, in the organization of communities already carried a lot of things that were then developed in early Christianity.
The Essenes, mentioned in the works of Josephus, Pliny the Elder, and Philo of Alexandria, are considered by most modern scholars to be the Qumranites, the Qumran community. Qumran (after the name of the area Wadi Qumran) manuscripts and settlements were discovered in the Dead Sea area shortly after the Second World War.
Characterizing the Essenes, Kautsky speaks of their “sharply expressed communism”, that “with them communism was taken to the extreme.” How adequate such characteristics are can now be verified by referring to the written evidence of the Qumran community. Let us only note that the ideas of community of property, common life, etc. were also characteristic of early Christian communities.
Analyzing the content of the teachings of early Christianity, Kautsky notes significant differences between his initial ideas and the views of the Apostle Paul. It was through his efforts that Christianity freed itself from connections with Judaism and was thereby able to overcome ethnic limitations.
The emergence of Christianity beyond the borders of Palestine and its spread in the large cities of the Roman Empire necessarily, as Kautsky shows, led to the loss of the “communist” character of Christian communities. Community of property and common life, characteristic of remote corners of Palestine, became impossible in large cities, where the system of mutual assistance among Christians was reduced mainly to joint meals.
Christianity attracted the poor not only with the totality of its ideas, but also with material support, which required an influx of funds from outside, since the community itself, consisting of the poor, itself only consumed, but did not produce. This, of course, made it easier for representatives of the propertied classes to join the community. However, the change in the social composition of Christian communities was associated not only with their poverty. Kautsky notes that the need to attract the rich into the communities gave rise to the zealous efforts of Christian agitators to convince them that the achievement of eternal bliss was possible only by renouncing property. “And this sermon did not remain without success at that time of general spleen and satiety that gripped the propertied classes.”
No doubt about it. Of course, Christian agitation did play a very important role in the spread of the new creed; spleen and satiation of some segments of the population also occurred. But, it seems, these circumstances alone are not enough to explain the fact that Christianity has become widespread among the propertied classes. The point, obviously, is that many of his ideas corresponded to the mindset of various, including propertied, classes of society, in the awareness of the historical impasse in which slave-owning society found itself, in the inability of all classes without exception to change social reality.
The great German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky wrote the book “The Origin of Christianity” in 1908. In it, from the point of view of revisionist Marxism and political economy, he traced many features of the development (or degradation) of the world of that time, which led to the emergence of Christianity, and to its soon gaining the status of the main religion of the Roman Empire and its environs. For example, among them Kautsky names the decline in the profitability of slavery, the economic advantage of the East of the empire over the West, the reluctance of the lumpen proletariat to work, cowardice and lack of self-confidence, self-humiliation before the powers that be, indifference and satiety with life and the pursuit of miracles; hypocrisy and deceit.
Kautsky approaches the study of early Christianity not only as a Marxist, historian and religious scholar, but also as an economist, ethnographer, demographer and another specialist with a dozen specialties. For the beginning of the twentieth century, this was a new approach. The German Social Democrat, as they would say today, does not at all hurt the feelings of believers; Christianity interests him as an attempt by society from below to improve the society of that time.
In the preface to the book, Kautsky notes that the era in which Christianity arose was a period of severe crisis that engulfed the entire Roman Empire. It led to the complete disintegration of traditional forms of production, the state, ideas and beliefs. The deadlock situation that developed in ancient society gave rise to such phenomena as individualism, gullibility, passion for the miraculous, deceit (as an addition to the passion for the miraculous and gullibility), and all kinds of falsifications. And this same era in the history of the Roman Empire is distinguished by the growth of religiosity and the spread of eschatological and messianic ideas.
In the preface to the book, they indicate that Kautsky analyzes in detail the mentality that gripped various segments of the population of Palestine in the last centuries of the last century and the beginning of the current era. The continuous struggle for independence against powerful enemies, endless devastation from enemy invasions, and the increasing exploitation of the oppressed led to the formation of a diaspora (the dispersion of Jews outside their homeland), which subsequently played an important role in the emergence of Christianity. It is no coincidence that Engels called Philo, a resident of the Jewish colony in Alexandria, “the father of Christianity.”
The powerlessness of the oppressed masses of Palestine in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, for independence, against the formidable Roman Empire gave rise to a fiery faith in the Messiah, whose coming would solve all problems. But, as Kautsky rightly notes, each class imagined the coming messiah in its own way. The result of this was the emergence of three movements in Judaism: the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. The first two were traditional. As for Essayism, it arose in the 2nd century. BC, in its ideas, in the organization of communities already carried a lot of things that were then developed in early Christianity. Characterizing the Essenes, Kautsky speaks of their “sharply expressed communism”, that “their communism was taken to the extreme.”
The emergence of Christianity beyond the borders of Palestine and its spread in large cities of the Roman Empire, as Kautsky shows, led to the loss of the “communist” character of Christian communities. The community of property and common life characteristic of Palestine became impossible in large cities, where the system of mutual assistance among Christians was reduced mainly to joint meals.
Christianity attracted the poor not only with the totality of its ideas, but also with material support, which required an influx of funds from outside, since the community, consisting of the poor, itself only consumed, but did not produce. This, of course, made it easier for representatives of the propertied classes to join the community. However, the change in the social composition of Christian communities was associated not only with their poverty. Kautsky notes that the need to attract the rich into the communities gave rise to the zealous efforts of Christian agitators to convince them that the achievement of eternal bliss was possible only by renouncing property. “And this preaching did not remain without success at that time of general spleen and satiety that gripped the propertied classes,” he writes.
Kautsky, noting changes in the class character of Christianity, in the adaptation of its principles and the activities of communities to this new reality, says that the Christian community, which arose as the antipode of class society, as its negation, ultimately turns into a similarity to this society with its class contradictions and relationships domination and submission.
Kautsky traces in detail how from primitive Christian communities, which at first did not know any intra-community authority other than the personal authority of the apostle or preacher, an entire hierarchy based on strict subordination grows.
The growth of Christian communities, the increase in their wealth with a change in their class character required the performance of a number of functions: organizing meals and serving its participants, purchasing and storing supplies, managing the community’s funds, etc. This entire staff of officials had to be managed. This is how the institution of bishops emerged, whose power increased; the position itself became lifelong.
If previously any member of the community could preach, then as the apostles and prophets are replaced, the bishop becomes the central figure in propaganda activities. Thus, says Kautsky, grew the most reliable support of despotism and exploitation, which represented the complete opposite of the community founded by the poor people of Galilee and Jerusalem.
Kautsky also draws attention to the fact that the main bearers of Christian ideas, free urban proletarians, were imbued with the desire to live at the expense of society without doing anything. Such aspirations of the “free urban proletarians,” as well as the very nature of the economy in the Roman Empire, determined the consumer nature of Christian communism, the essence of which, according to Kautsky, was the distribution of products, and not the socialization of the means of production.
We publish several excerpts from Karl Kautsky's book "The Origin of Christianity" (Political Publishing House, 1990).
Each class had its own preachers who boldly took upon themselves the task of raising people to high moral perfection, holding up their own exalted personality as a model. The proletarians were especially offered their services by philosophers from the Cynic school, followers of the famous Diogenes: they preached in the streets, lived on alms and saw bliss in dirt and the absence of needs, which freed them from all labor, which they hated and despised as a grave sin. Christ and his apostles are also depicted as mendicant street preachers. There is not a single word about work in all the gospels. On this point, despite all their contradictions, they agree with each other.
The falsifications became even bolder when, during the migration of peoples, barbarians flooded the Roman Empire. The new rulers of the world were simple peasants, rich, however, in peasant cunning, sober and well versed in all the things that they understood. For all their simplicity, they were less gullible and prone to the miraculous than the heirs of ancient culture. But the ability to read and write was an unfamiliar art to them. The latter remained the privilege of the Christian clergy, who now alone represented the educated class. It could therefore not fear any criticism of its falsifications in favor of the church, and they began to take advantage of this more often than ever. But now they were no longer limited only to the area of doctrine, they did not serve to support any theoretical, tactical or organizational disagreements, but became a source of acquisition or legal rehabilitation of the expropriation carried out.
The most ambitious falsifications of this kind were, of course, the Donation of Constantine and Isidore’s Decretals. Both documents were fabricated in the 8th century. In the first of them, Constantine (306-337) transfers to the popes unlimited and eternal dominion over Rome, Italy and all Western countries. Isidore's decretals were a collection of church laws allegedly compiled by the Spanish bishop Isidore at the beginning of the 7th century that established the unlimited rule of the pope in the church.
It is the enormous number of distortions that explains to us, to a large extent, why the history of the emergence of Christianity is still shrouded in darkness. Many of these distortions and fakes are easy to spot. Some were discovered many centuries ago: for example, Lavrentiy Balla proved the forgery of the Donation of Constantine back in 1440.
Decline in all respects and areas, economic, political, and at the same time scientific and moral decline. The ancient Romans and Greeks saw virtue in the complete, harmonious development of courage in the best sense of the word. Virtus and apexrj denoted courage and constancy, but at the same time self-esteem, readiness to sacrifice oneself and selfless devotion to society. But the more society became mired in slavery, the more the supreme virtue became servility, servility, from which and along with which beautiful qualities developed - flight from society and limitation of one’s own self, cowardice and lack of self-confidence, the hope of salvation with the help of Caesar or God, and not through his own power or the power of his class; self-humiliation before the powers that be and priestly arrogance before the lower ones; indifference and satiety with life and the pursuit of sensation, miracles; excess and ecstasy, hypocrisy and deceit. This is the picture that Rome presents to us during the times of the empire and the features of which are reflected by Christianity, a product of that time.
It was the development of international relations during the era of the Roman Empire that led to internationalism in the field of religious worship. Foreign merchants and travelers brought their gods with them everywhere. And foreign gods then enjoyed even greater reverence than the native ones, who did not bring any help and turned out to be completely powerless. The despair that was the consequence of the general decline fed doubts about the power of the old gods and led some brave and independent minds to atheism and skepticism, to doubt in any deity or in any philosophy. On the contrary, the wavering, weaker ones were looking for a new savior in whom they could find protection and support. Some thought to find it in the Caesars, whom they idolized, others thought that they were following a more reliable path, turning to gods who had already existed for a long time, but whose power had not yet been tested in the country. Thus foreign cults came into fashion.
But in this international competition of gods, the East defeated the West, partly because the Eastern religions were less naive, were more imbued with deep philosophical meaning, bore a stronger imprint of the civilization of large cities, and partly because the East was industrially superior to the West.
The cultural countries of the East were superior in industrial development to the countries of the West when they were conquered and plundered first by the Macedonians and then by the Romans. One might think that the process of international leveling that began from that time would also lead to industrial leveling, that the West would catch up with the East in industrial terms. But the opposite happened. From the 1st century, the general decline of the ancient world began as a consequence partly of the displacement of free labor by slave labor, and partly of the plunder of the provinces by Rome and usurious capital. But this decline occurred in the West faster than in the East, so that the cultural superiority of the latter, starting from the second century AD, not only did not decrease, but, on the contrary, grew for many centuries, almost until the year 1000. Poverty, barbarity and depopulation are growing faster in the West than in the East.
The reason for this phenomenon lies in the industrial superiority of the East and the growing exploitation of the working classes. The surpluses supplied by the latter flocked increasingly from all over the empire to Rome, this center of all major exploiters. But as soon as the treasures accumulated there were turned into money, the lion's share of them floated back to the East, since only it produced all the luxury goods that large exploiters demanded. It brought skilled slaves and industrial products: glass and purple from Phenicia, linen and knitted goods from Egypt, fine wool and leather goods from Asia Minor, carpets from Babylonia. The declining fertility of Italy turned Egypt into the granary of Rome, since thanks to the floods of the Nile, which annually covered the fields of Egypt with fresh fertile silt, its agriculture was inexhaustible.
Most of the products delivered by the East were taken from it by force, in the form of taxes and interest, but there was still a significant part that had to be paid for with the products of the exploitation of the West, which was becoming increasingly poorer.
And relations with the East were not limited to the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Alexandria grew rich not only by selling the products of Egyptian industry, but also through trade with Arabia and India. A trade route led from Sinop on the Black Sea to China. In his Natural History, Pliny estimates that for Chinese woolen fabrics, Indian jewelry and Arabic spices alone, the empire annually paid 100 million sesterces (over 20 million German marks; approximately 10 million rubles in 1908, or 250 million modern dollars ). And all this without a corresponding equivalent in goods or taxes and interest. The entire amount had to be paid in precious metals.
Along with eastern goods, eastern merchants penetrated into the empire, and with the latter their religious cults. They corresponded to the needs of the West, especially since similar social conditions had already developed in the East, although not in such a dismal form as in the empire. The idea of deliverance with the help of God, whose favor is acquired by renouncing earthly pleasures, was inherent in most of the cults that were now rapidly spreading in Rome, especially the Egyptian cult of Isis and the Persian cult of Mithras.
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