Was Jesus the first socialist? : Mail & Guardian Online

'n Interessant artikel wat die politieke implikasie van Jesus se uitsprake ondersoek. (Kan egter nie saamstem met wat die skrywer oor Paulus sê nie ...)

Jesus was decidedly not the milksop of Victorian sentimentalists -- the Gospels are studded with his virulent attacks on bigwigs and fat cats (“You cannot serve God and money”), respectable hypocrites, self-righteous moral censors (“Judge not ...) and those who pride themselves on being “saved” (“I thank thee, O God, that I am not like the rest of men ... ”). Shocking the right-minded by mixing with prostitutes and other dregs of Palestinian society, he castigates the religious establishment, personified by the spiritual leaders of Judaism, the Pharisees.

Indeed, it is through Christ’s humanity that many modern Christians, repelled by the traditional theology, understand the crucifixion. Instead of a primitive blood sacrifice organised by a wrathful God to appease himself, it becomes an archetypal tragedy of persecuted innocence.