first order of importance: the
small insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth
is simply the Jewish instinct _redivivus_--in other words, it is the
priestly instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the
priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a state of existence even more
fantastic than any before it, of a vision of life even more _unreal_
than that necessary to an ecclesiastical organization. Christianity
actually _denies_ the church....

I am unable to determine what was the target of the insurrection said to
have been led (whether rightly or _wrongly_) by Jesus, if it was not the
Jewish church--"church" being here used in exactly the same sense that
the word has today. It was an insurrection against the "good and just,"
against the "prophets of Israel," against the whole hierarchy of
society--_not_ against corruption, but against caste, privilege, order,
formalism. It was _unbelief_ in "superior men," a Nay flung at
everything that priests and theologians stood for. But the hierarchy
that was called into question, if only for an instant, by this movement
was the structure of piles which, above everything, was necessary to the
safety of the Jewish people in the midst of the "waters"--it represented
their _last_ possibility of survival; it was the final _residuum_ of
their independent political existence; an attack upon it was an attack
upon the most profound national instinct, the most powerful national
will to live, that has ever appeared on earth. This saintly anarchist,
who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and "sinners," the
Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of
things--and in language which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would
get him sent to Siberia today--this man was certainly a political
criminal, at least in so far as it was possible to be one in so
_absurdly unpolitical_ a community. This is what brought him to the
cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put
upon the cross. He died for his _own_ sins--there is not the slightest
ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died
for the sins of others.--

28.

As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction--whether,
in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of--that is
quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the
problem of the _psychology of the Saviour_.--I conf