While we can not know the history and personality of Jesus, we can learn much from the many personalities assigned to Jesus through history.

‘The Struggle for the Image of Jesus’ (1908) by Karl Kautsky from Foundations of Christianity; A Study in Christian Origins. International Publishers, New York. 1925.

At best the historical kernel of the primitive Christian reports concerning Jesus does not appear to be more than what Tacitus tells us: namely, that at the time of Tiberius, a prophet had been executed, to whom the sect of the Christians traced their origin. What this prophet taught and what was his influence, this is a subject on which not the slightest positive information has yet been obtained. At any rate, he surely did not attract the attention with which he is credited in primitive Christian records, for otherwise Josephus would surely have reported something about it, for he recounts many things of much less importance. The agitation and execution of Jesus at any rate did not arouse the slightest interest on the part of his contemporaries. But if Jesus really had been an agitator who was worshiped by a sect as its champion and leader, surely the importance of his personality would grow with the growth of this sect. Now a crown of legends began to form about this character, into which pious spirits would weave whatever they wished their model to have spoken and done. But as Jesus thus came to be regarded more and more as a model for the entire sect, the more did each of the numerous contending groups, of which the sect had consisted from the start, attempt to assign to this personality precisely those ideas to which each group was most attached, in order then to be able to invoke this person as an authority. Thus the image of Jesus, as depicted in legends that were at first merely transmitted from mouth to mouth and later set down in writing, became more and more the image of a superhuman personality, the incarnation of all the ideals developed by the new sect, but it also necessarily became more and more full of contradictions, the various traits of the image no longer being compatible with each other.

When the sect had arrived at a fixed organization, had become an all-embracing Church, in which a specific tendency had come to dominate, one of its first tasks was to outline a fixed canon, a catalog of all those primitive Christian writings which it recognized as genuine. Of course only such writings would be so recognized as were written from the point of view of this dominant tendency. All those Gospels and other writings which contained a picture of Jesus that did not agree with this tendency of the Church were rejected as “heretical”, as forged, or at least apocryphal, and, being therefore not worthy of confidence, they were not disseminated, but even suppressed as far as possible; the manuscripts were destroyed, with the result that very few remained in existence. The writings admitted to the canon were also ‘‘edited’’ in order to introduce the greatest possible uniformity, but fortunately the editing was so unskillfully done that traces of earlier, contradictory accounts still come to light here and there, and permit us to surmise the course of the book’s history.

But the Church did not succeed in its object, which was that of producing in this way a uniformity of views within the Church; this was impossible. The changing social conditions were ever producing new differentiations of views and aspirations within the Church, and thanks to the contradiction which the image of Jesus as recognized by the Church preserved in spite of all the editing and omitting that had been done, these various views always succeeded in finding in the image such points as would serve their purpose. Therefore, the struggle between socially opposed forces within the framework of the Christian Church became ostensibly a mere struggle concerning the interpretation of the words of Jesus, and superficial historians, therefore, are simple-minded enough to believe that all the great and often bloody conflicts within Christendom, which were fought under religious flags, were nothing more than struggles for mere words, and therefore a sad indication of the stupidity of the human race. But whenever a social mass phenomenon is ascribed to a mere stupidity of the men participating, this apparent stupidity in reality is merely the stupidity of the observer and critic, who evidently has not succeeded in finding his bearings among conceptions and opinions foreign to him, or in penetrating to the material conditions and motives underlying these modes of thought. As a rule the war was waged between very realistic interests; when the various Christian sects are disputing over a varying interpretation of the words of Christ it is really such interests that are operative.

The rise of the modern mode of thought and the passing away of the ecclesiastical mode of thought has of course more and more deprived these combats concerning the image of Christ of their practical significance, reducing them to mere quibbles on the part of theologians, who are paid by the state to keep alive the ecclesiastical psychology, and who must make some returns for their salaries.

The modern Bible criticism, applying the historical methods of an investigation of sources to the books of the Bible, gave a new impulse to the effort to create a likeness of the personality of Jesus. This criticism undermined the certainty of the traditional image of Jesus, but, being manipulated chiefly by the hands of theologians, it very rarely advanced so far as the view first proclaimed by Bruno Bauer, and later by others, particularly A. Kalthoff, that it is impossible in view of the present conditions of the sources to set up a new image at all. Criticism has again and again tried to restore this image, with the same result formerly produced by the Christianity of other centuries: each of our theologian friends puts his own ideals, his own spirit, into his image of Jesus. The descriptions of Jesus in the Twentieth Century resemble those written in the Second Century in that they do not depict what Jesus actually taught, but what the producers of these images wish he had taught.

Kalthoff gives us a very neat account of this transformation of the image of Jesus:

“From the social-theological point of view, the image of Jesus is therefore the most highly sublimated religious expression of all the social and ethical forces operative in the era in question; and the transformations which this Christ-image has constantly suffered, its extensions and contractions, the weakening of old traits, and their reappearance in new colors, afford us the most delicate instrument with which to measure the alterations through which contemporary life is passing, from the highest points of its spiritual ideals, to the lower depths of its most material phenomena. This Christ-image will now show the traits of a Greek philosopher, now those of the Roman Caesars, then again those of the feudal lord, of the master of the guild, of the tormented peasant vassal, and of the free burgher, and all these traits are genuine, all are alive until the faculty theologians become possessed with the peculiar notion of proving the individual traits of their particular day as being the original historical features of the Christ of the Gospels. At best, these traits are made to appear historical by the fact that the most varied, even the most opposite, forces were operative in the nascent and constructive periods of Christian society, each one of which forces bears a certain resemblance to the forces that are at work today. But the Christ-image of the present day seems quite full of contradictions at first glance. It still bears to a certain extent the traits of the ancient saint or of the Lord of Heaven, but also the entirely modern features of the friend of the proletarian, even of the labor leader. But this contradiction merely is a reflection of the most fundamental contrasts that animate our modern life.”

And in an earlier passage:

“Most of the representatives of the so-called Modern Theology use their shears when making excerpts according to the critical method beloved of David Strauss: they amputate the mythical elements in the gospels, and declare the remainder to be the historical nucleus. But even the theologians recognize that this nucleus has waxed too lean under their operations…In the absence of all historical certainty, the name of Jesus has therefore become an empty vessel for Protestant Theology, into which each theologian may pour his own intellectual equipment. One of them will make this Jesus a modern Spinozist; the other, a Socialist; while the official professorial theologians will of course view Jesus in the religious light of the modern state; in fact in recent days they have represented him more and more boldly as the religious advocate of all those aspirations that are now claiming dominance in the greater Prussian, national Theology.”¹

In view of this state of affairs it is no cause for surprise that temporal historians have felt but a slight inclination to investigate the sources of Christianity, if these historians begin with the view that Christianity was the work of a single man. If this view were correct, it would of course be reasonable to give up every effort to determine the origin of Christianity, and to leave our theologians in undisputed possession of the field of religious fiction.

But the historian’s attitude becomes quite different if he views a world religion not as the product of an individual superman, but as a social product. The social conditions at the time when Christianity originated are well known. And the social character of primitive Christianity can also be determined with some precision from a study of its literature.

The historical value of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is probably not of higher value than that of the Homeric poems, or of the Nibelungenlied. These may deal with historical personages; but they relate their activities with such poetic license that it is impossible to draw from their accounts even the slightest data for a historical description of these persons, not to mention the fact that they are so interwoven with fabulous elements that we shall never be able on the basis of these poems alone to state which of their characters are historical and which are invented. If we had no information concerning Attila but what is found in the Nibelungenlied, we should have to say of him as we say now of Jesus, that we are not even certain that he ever lived, and that he may have been as mythical a personage as Siegfried.

But such poetic narrations are of incalculable value for the study of the social conditions under which they arose, and which they faithfully reflect, no matter how many liberties their authors may take in their treatment of facts and persons. The extent to which the account of the Trojan War and its heroes is based on historical fact is enveloped in obscurity, and perhaps will always remain so, but we have in the Iliad and the Odyssey two historical sources of the first rank for a study of the social conditions of the Heroic Age.

Poetic works are often far more important for a study of their times than the most faithful historical accounts. For the latter give us only the personal, striking, unusual elements which are least permanent in their historic effect; the former on the other hand afford us a view of the daily life of the masses, which is constant and permanent in its effect, with a lasting influence on society; the historian does not relate these things, because he assumes them to be generally known and self-evident. It is for this reason that Balzac’s novels are one of the most important sources for the social life of France in the first decades of the Nineteenth Century.

Thus, while we may learn from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, nothing definite about the life and doctrine of Christ, we may obtain very important information concerning the social character, the ideals and aspirations of the primitive Christian congregation. When Biblical criticism excavates the various deposits that have been gathered in successive layers in these writings, it affords us an opportunity to trace the development of these congregations to a certain extent at least, while the “pagan” and Jewish sources enable us to cast a glance at the social forces that were simultaneously at work on primitive Christianity. This enables us to recognize and understand the latter as a product of its times; such is the basis of all historical knowledge. Individual persons may influence society, and the delineation of prominent individuals is indispensable for a complete picture of their times. But when measured by historical epochs, their influence is temporary at best, furnishes only the surface adornments which, while they may be the first portion of the structure that strikes the eye, reveal nothing to us concerning its foundation walls. It is the latter that determine the character and permanence of the structure. If we can reveal them, we have accomplished the most important work in an understanding of the edifice.

1. Das Christusproblem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie, 1902, pp. 15, 17, 80, 81.

Foundations of Christianity; a Study in Christian Origins by Karl Kautsky. International Publishers, New York. 1925.

International Publishers was formed in 1923 for the purpose of translating and disseminating international Marxist texts and headed by Alexander Trachtenberg. It quickly outgrew that mission to be the main book publisher, while Workers Library continued to be the pamphlet publisher of the Communist Party.

PDF of full book: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiuo.ark:/13960/t8vc0dv54