(2 Corinthians 11:23). Paul tried to justify his madness: “If we are besides
ourselves, it is for God” (2 Corinthians 5:13). Nietzsche (1968:165) commented
that Paul expected others to believe his hallucinations which he himself did
not believe. The value rationality of Jesus and Paul was driven to the point
of irrationality.
The succession from Jesus to Paul represents the routinization of the charisma
of Jesus (Schluchter 1989:232). There are differences between the teachings of
Jesus and those of Paul. Jesus and Paul laid the foundations for two differ-
ent movements. The Jesus movement was centered in Palestine. The move-
ment of Paul, on the other hand, was located “in the eastern Mediterranean.”
It received its support from Jews in Diaspora who were an urban population
composed of artisans and merchants (Schluchter 1989:214). While Jesus’ mes-
sage was oriented only toward the Jews, Paul extended it to the gentiles (Acts
11:2–3; Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 3:1, 5).
Rodney Stark (1997:49, 57) argues against Kautsky that early Christianity
was not a proletarian movement but a religion which appealed to the Jewish
middle class living in Diaspora. Yet, Kautsky and Stark deal with two dif-
ferent periods. Kautsky focuses on Christianity in its inception around the
time of Jesus, whereas Stark’s argument is only valid for Jews in Diaspora
after the destruction of the second temple. Kautsky argues that early Christianity
was a religion of the proletariat as long as one does not understand them as
wage laborers (Kautsky 1919:viii; 1925:9). What Kautsky calls a proletariat,
Weber calls plebeians. Weber follows Marx more closely in this respect; he
prefers to use the term plebeian in the context of antiquity.
Paul’s teachings, like those of Jesus, contain a hostility toward material
wealth and an affinity with the poor. Although Jesus Christ was spiritually
rich, “for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become
rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Throughout the New Testament, there is an aver-
sion towards an obsession with money and material wealth: “The Love of
Money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). This rejection of money and
material wealth is a detachment from this world. “Do not love the world or
the things in the world” (1 John 2:15). Like with Jesus, there is an attack on
the rich: it is “the rich who oppress you” and “drag you into court” ( James
2:6). James (5:4–5) too condemns the rich:
Behold the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept
back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears
of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure;
you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughtered.Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity • 219