The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

And Epicurus would have won; every respectable spirit in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean. Then Paul appeared—Paul, the chandala hatred against Rome, against “the world,” become flesh, become genius, the Jew, the eternal Wandering Jew par excellence. What he guessed was how one could use the little sectarian Christian movement apart from Judaism to kindle a “world fire”; how with the symbol of “God on the cross” one could unite all who lay at the bottom, all who were secretly rebellious, the whole inheritance of anarchistic agitation in the Empire, into a tremendous power. “Salvation is of the Jews.” Christianity as a formula with which to outbid the subterranean cults of all kinds, those of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras, for example—and to unite them: in this insight lies the genius of Paul. His instinct was so sure in this that he took the ideas with which these chandala religions fascinated, and, with ruthless violence, he put them into the mouth of the ‟Savior” whom he had invented, and not only into his mouth—he made something out of him that a priest of Mithras too could understand. This was his moment at Damascus: he comprehended that he needed the belief in immortality to deprive “the world” of value, that the concept of “hell” would become master even over Rome—that with the ‟beyond” one kills life. Nihilism and Christianism: that rhymes, that does not only rhyme. 59 The whole labor of the ancient world in vain: I have no word to express my feelings a...