What do you think about this strange quote from Karl Kautsky?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: What do you think about this strange quote from Karl Kautsky?

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:00 am I think that Stahl's view fits better a mythicism with seditious origins. See here:

viewtopic.php?p=125428#p125428
Time to brush off my French I guess lol.
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MrMacSon
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Re: What do you think about this strange quote from Karl Kautsky?

Post by MrMacSon »

I read:


The New Testament gives the basic story found in Saying 100 but it extends it quite a bit in a noticeably ideological direction. The most important difference is that the Synoptics (Mark 12:13-17, Matt 22:15-22, Luke 20:22-26) place the question in the mouths of the Pharisees, along with the Herodians, and have them plot how to entrap Jesus in a seditious statement so that the Romans would punish him. They show Jesus as seeing through their "malice" and "hypocrisy" and devising his answer to be a clever response that could not be accused of being seditious. Jesus' answer is also worded differently: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's". And the last part of Thomas 100 is missing, "give me what is mine."

Amazingly, the Synoptics succeed in turning Jesus' message on its head: instead of having him give a slyly subversive message that tells people not to pay their taxes, they invert it into its reactionary opposite. By leaving out Thomas' third part and changing the verb, they make Jesus essentially tell people to respect the authority of the Roman or any state, as long as they also do their religious duties. Christian theologians usually reject attempts by people like Schweitzer to see his answer as ironic and insist, as Sevenster does, that Jesus is being dead serious here: "the coin with its inscription is a symbol for the warrant of law and power of the emperor" (Sevenster 30-31).

The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas - Detlev Koepke, p.191, [MrMac's bold]



That's all pretty clear (and good). But some of what Koepke says next seems a little circular:

So though the Synoptic version looks similar to Saying 100, it really is not. Firstly, it supports the anti-Jewish, pro-Roman political tendencies of the New Testament. Secondly, it politicizes Jesus' saying and removes the spiritual element from it. Thirdly, it removes the implication in Saying 100 that Jesus might consider himself above God. And fourthly, it continues the obsession with violence, aggression and conflict that is endemic in the Synoptic Gospels.


When he says, "it supports the anti-Jewish, pro-Roman political tendencies of the New Testament", he's referring to the Synoptic version of Saying/Logion 100, so of course it'd [likely] support the general theme of the NT.

The rest seems fine, and interesting in the context of Koepke's arguments in his book eg.


The New Testament is not an authentic original document and is a much later and heavily edited version incorporating pieces of the Gospel of Thomas as well as many other documents. Over and over, the wording of the Gospel of Thomas is consistently quoted by both Christian and Moslem commentators in preference to the wording of the New Testament. This indicates that it was seen as the true source of Jesus’ words.

Detlev Koepke, The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, fourth page of the Introduction (p. xiii(?))


eta: Koepke's version of Saying 100, p. xlviii


..1 They showed 'Jesus' a gold [coin]
..2 and they said to him,
.......3 "Those who belong to Caesar demand/extort the taxes from us.
.......3 "They demand/extort the taxes, those which belong to Caesar, from us."
..4 He said to them,
......5 "Give to Caesar those things which belong to Caesar;
......6 "give to God those things which belong to God;
......7 "and what is mine, give it to me."


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