Warren S. Goldstein
Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity:
A Critical Dialectical/Conflict Approach
to Biblical History
If one wants to find historical documentation of reli-
gious conflict, there is certainly an overwhelming
abundance of it in the Bible: the Hebrew slave revolt
against the Egyptians, the wars against the Canaanites
and Philistines, the tribal confederacy, the united
monarchy, the division of the monarchy, the Baby-
lonian exile, the occupation by the Persians and then
the Greeks, the Maccabeean revolt, the Roman occu-
pation, the emergence of Christianity, the Jewish
War against the Romans, all of which culminated in
the destruction of the second Temple and the sec-
ond Diaspora. The conflicts were internal as well as
external. The internal conflicts, whether between
slave and master, patrician and plebian or prophet
and priest, were dialectical; they took place within
the society and were caused and exacerbated by
external conflicts with other peoples. These con-
flicts were a source of tension, which made Ancient
Judaism and Early Christianity, that emerged from
it, into dynamic religions, which ideologically read-
justed to ever changing political, social, and eco-
nomic conditions.
This article will limit itself to an analysis of Ancient
Judaism and Early Christianity primarily though the
work of Max Weber, Karl Kautsky and Ernst Bloch.
