“As the Christ to whose Parousia the community looks forward this Hero-god of the community bears within Himself the capacity for expansion into the God of the universe, into the Christ of the Church, who is identical in essential nature with God the Father. Thus the belief in the Christ brought the Messianic hope of the future into the minds of the masses, who had already a certain organisation, and by directing their thoughts towards the future it won all those who were sick of the past and despairing about the present.”
The death and resurrection of Jesus represent experiences of the community. “For a Jew crucified under Pontius Pilate there was certainly no resurrection. All that is possible is a vague hypothesis of a vision lacking all historical reality, or an escape into the vaguenesses of theological phraseology. But for the Christian community the resurrection was something real, a matter of fact. For the community as such was not annihilated in that persecution: it drew from it, rather, new strength and life.”
But what about the foundations of this imposing structure?
For what he has to tell us about the condition of the Roman Empire and the social organisation of the proletariat in the time of Trajan—for it was then that the Church first came out into the light—we may leave the responsibility with Kalthoff. But we must inquire more closely how he brings the Jewish apocalyptic into contact with the Roman proletariat.
Communism, he says, was common to both. It was the bond which united the apocalyptic “other-worldliness” with reality. The only difficulty is that Kalthoff omits to produce any proof out of the Jewish apocalypses that communism was “the fundamental economic idea of the apocalyptic writers.” He operates from the first with a special preparation of apocalyptic thought, of a socialistic or Hellenistic character. Messianism is supposed to have taken its rise from the Deuteronomic reform as “a social theory which strives to realise itself in practice.” The apocalyptic of Daniel arose, according to him, under Platonic influence. “The figure of the Messiah thus became a human figure; it lost its specifically Jewish traits.” He is the heavenly proto-typal ideal man. Along with this thought, and similarly derived from Plato, the conception of immortality makes its appearance in apocalyptic.[244] This Platonic apocalyptic never had any existence, or at least, [pg 317] to speak with the utmost possible caution, its existence must not be asserted in the absence of all proof.
But, supposing it were admitted that Jewish apocalyptic had some affinity for the Hellenic world, that it was Platonic and communistic, how are we to explain the fact that the Gospels, which describe the genesis of Christ and Christianity, imply a Galilaean and not a Roman environment?
As a matter of fact, Kalthoff says, they do imply a Roman environment. The scene of the Gospel history is laid in Palestine, but it is drawn in Rome. The agrarian conditions implied in the narratives and parables are Roman. A vineyard with a wine-press of its own could only be found, according to Kalthoff, on the large Roman estates. So, too, the legal conditions. The right of the creditor to sell the debtor, with his wife and children, is a feature of Roman, not of Jewish law.
Peter everywhere symbolises the Church at Rome. The confession of Peter had to be transferred to Caesarea Philippi because this town, “as the seat of the Roman administration,” symbolised for Palestine the political presence of Rome.
The woman with the issue was perhaps Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Nero, “who in view of her strong leaning towards Judaism might well be described in the symbolical style of the apocalyptic writings as the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment.”
The story of the unfaithful steward alludes to Pope Callixtus, who, when the slave of a Christian in high position, was condemned to the mines for the crime of embezzlement; that of the woman who was a sinner refers to Marcia, the powerful mistress of Commodus, at whose intercession Callixtus was released, to be advanced soon afterwards to the bishopric of Rome. “These two narratives, therefore,” Kalthoff suggests, “which very clearly allude to events well known at that time, and doubtless much discussed in the Christian community, were admitted into the Gospel to express the views of the Church regarding the life-story of a Roman bishop which had run its course under the eyes of the community, and thereby to give to the events themselves the Church's sanction and interpretation.”