Friederich Engels T he view that dominated from the to the Enlighteners of the century, was that all religions, and thereiore Christianity too. were the work of deceivers.
La religion that brought the Koman world empire into subjection, and dominated the larger part of civilised humanity for 1,800 years, cannot be disposed of merely by declaring it to be nonsense gleaned together O Hauds:
One cannot dispose of it before one succeeds in explaining its origin and its develop. which it arose and reached its dominating The question to be solved, then, is how it came about that the popular masses in the Roman Empire so far preferred this nonsense - which was prcacaca, into the bargain, Dy that the ambitious Constantine finally saw in the adoption of this religion of nonsense the best means of exalting himself to the position Bruno Bauer has contributed far more to the solution of this question than anybody cisc. Fie ureruably proved the caronological order of the Gospels dependence, shown by Wilke from the purely linguistic standpoint, by the very contents of He exposed the utter lack of scientific spirit of Strauss' vague myth theory according to which anybody can hold for Almost nothing from the whole content of the Gospels turns out to be historically provable - so that even the historical existence of a Jesus Christ can be questioned. ground for the solution of the question: what is the origin of the ideas and thoughts that have been woven together into a sort of system in Christianity, and how did they came B auer studied this question until his culminating point in the conclusion that the Alexandrian Jew Philo. who was still living about AD40 but was already very old, was the real father of Christianity, and that the Roman stoic Seneca was, so to speak, its uncle.
The numerous writings attributed to Philo fusion of allegorically and rationalistically conceived Jewish traditions with Greek, parconciliation of western and eastern outlooks already contains all the essentially - the Logos, the word, which is with God and is God and which becomes the mediator between God and man:
• atonement, not oy sacrices of animals, but by bringing one's own heart of God, • and finally the essential feature, that the new religious philosophy reverses the previous world order, seeks its disciples among the rejected, and despises the rich, the powerful, On the other hand, Augustus himself saw to called immaculate conception became formuHe not only had Caesar and himself worshipped as gods, he also spread the notion was not the son of a human father but that his mother had conceived him of the god Apollo. Early Christianity had to beg, steal and borrow from Judaism and stoic philosophy As we see. we need only the keystone and we have the whole of Christianity in its basic features: the incarnation of the Word become man in a actinie person and mis sacrunice on Truly reliable sources leave us uncertain as to when this keystone was introduced into is sure: it was not introduced by philosophers, cither Philo's disciples or stoics. Religions are founded by people who feel a need or religion themselves and have a feeling for ACCOUs As a rule, this is not the case with the classical philosophers. On the other hand, we find that in times of general decay, now, for instance, philosophy and religious dogmatism are generally current in a While classic Greek philosophy in its last - particularly in the Epicurean school — led to atheistic materialism, Greck vulgar immortanty rationally vulgarised judaism in mixture and intercourse with aliens and halfnational god, Jaheh, into the one true God, soul which was alien to carly judaism. presented it with the ready-made one and One can get an idea of what Chris. form by reading the so-called Book of Revelation of John: wild, beginnings of dogmas, only the mortification of the flesh of the so-called Christian morals, The development of the dogmas and moral doctrine belongs to a later period, in which • at least as regards morals - the philosophy of the stoics, of Seneca in partic ular, was unceremoniously made use or Bauer proved that the Epistles often copy the In fact, even the faithful noticed this, but they maintained that Seneca had copied from the New Testament, though it had not yet Dogma developed, on the one hand in connection with the legend of Jesus which was then taking shape, and, on the other hand, in the struggle between Christians of Jewish and The Roman conquest dissolved in all subjugated countries, political conditions, and then, indirectly, also • Firstly by substituting for the former apart) the simple distinction between Roman citizens and subjects. • Secondly, and mainly, by exacting tribute in the name of the Roman state. If, under the empire, a limit was set as far as ernors' thirst for wealth, that thirst was replaced by ever more effective and oppres sive taxation for the benefit of the state treathe effect of which was terribly • Thirdly, Roman law was finally administered everywhere by Roman judges, while the native social system was declared invalid.
T developed a tremendous levelling power, particularly were anplied for several hundred vigorous seeir to which had been car battles preceding, accompanying, and often following, the conquest. nearer and nearer to those obtaining in the more and more sharply divided into three classes, thrown together out of the most vary.
• rich people, including not a few emanci• propertyless free people, who in Rome were fed and mused by the state provinces they got on as they could by them. • and finally the great mass, the slaves.
in the face of the state, i.e. the emperor, the mist two classes had as icw rigats as slaves in the face of their masters. time of liberius to that of Nero, in particular, it was a practice to sentence rich Roman property.
The support of the government was - materially, the army, which was more like an army of hired foreign soldiers than the old Roman peasant army, and that there was no way out of that condition; that not, indeed, this or that Caesar, but the immutable necessity, It was in the midst of this general cconomic, hat Christianity appeared. It entered into a In all previous religions, ritual had been the main thing. Only by taking part in the sacrifices and processions, and in the Orient by observing the most detailed diet and cleanliSHOW gion one belonged. While Rome and Greece were tolerant in the last respect, there was in the Orient a rage for religious prohibitions that contributed no little to the final downPeople of two different religions (Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Chaldeans) could not cat or every-day together, or hardly speak to each other. It was largely due to this segregation of man from man that the Orient collapsed. Christianity knew no distinctive ceremonies, not even the of the Cassis world. By thus rejecting all national reliand their common ceremonies, and addressing seis to au propies without aus tinction, it became the first possible world Judaism, too, with its new universal god, had made a start on the way to becoming a universal religion; but the children of Isracl believers and the circumcised, and Christianaty itsell had to get nid of the notion of the superiority of the Jewish Christians (still dominant in the so-called Book of Revelation of John) before it could really become a universal religion.
Islam, on the other hand, by preserving its specifically Oriental ritual, limited the area or its proposaton to the crica and North Africa, conquered and populated anew by Arab Bedouins; here it coula become the dominating rougion, out not in the West.
Secondly, Christianity struck a chord that was bound to echo in countless bearts. complaints about the wickedness of the times Christian consciousness of sin answered: It is so and it cannot be otherwise; thou art in blame, ye are all to blame for the corruption of the world, thine and your own internal could deny it? Mea culpa! The admission of each one's share in the responsibility for the made the precondition for the spiritual salvation which Christianity at the same time announced.
And this spiritual salvation was so instituted that it could be easily understood by The bedea of at almen to place the of atonement placate offended deity was current in all the old reli gions; how could the idea of self-sacrifice of the medtator atoning once for all for the sins of humanity not casily find ground there?
Christianity, therefore, clearly expressed the guilty of the general corruption as the consciousness of sin of each one; at the same time, it proviace, in tac acata-sacrunce of mi judge, a form of the universally longed-for internal salvation from the corrupt world, the consolation of consciousness; it thus again proved its capacity to become a worid reliworld as it then was So it happened that, among the thousands ol propnets and preacners in ine aesert that filled that period of countless religious innothe founders of Christanity alonc met with success.
Not only Palestine, but the entire Orient swarmed with such founders of religions, and between them there raged what can be called a Darwinian struggle for idcological existioned above, Christianity won the day.
How it gradually developed its character of world religion by natural selection in the struggle of sects against one another and against the pagan world is taught in detail by the history of the Church in the first three Extracted from Engels: letter on death of Bruno Bauer