llos-anoniienNAlieniee

Translated from the Spanish

byRobert R. Barr
COMMUNISM IN THE BIBLE
Communism in the Bible

JOSE PORFIRIO MIRANDA

Translated from the Spanish

by Robert R. Barr

Wipf & Stock

PUBLISHERS
Eugene, Oregon
Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 West 8th Avenue, Suite 3
Eugene, Oregon 97401

Communism in the Bible

By Miranda, Jose P.
Copyright© 1982 Orbis Books
ISBN: 1-59244-468-7
Publication date: 1/14/2004
Previously published by Orbis Books, 1982
“All whose faith had drawn them together held everything
in common: they would sell their property and possessions
and make a general distribution as the need of each re-
quired” (Acts 2:44-45).
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 CONTENTS

FOREWORD ix
ABBREVIATIONS X

CHAPTER ONE
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 1
1. Intentional Misunderstandings Z
2. Original Christianity i,
3. The Kingdom Is on Earth 12
4. A Classless Society 18

CHAPTER TWO
WHY COMMUNISM? 21
1. The Illegitimacy of Wealth Ze
2. The Spurious Origin of All Wealth 30
3. The Problem of Evil: A Social Problem 41
4. Reprobation of Profit 48

CHAPTER THREE
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE
IN JESUS OF NAZARETH 57
. You Will Always Have the Poor with You? 58
. What Is Caesar's 61
. The Kingdom Is Not of This World? 65
. Jesus Engaged in Politics 67
N . Jesus and Violence
Wd
MR 73

BIBLIOGRAPHY 79
INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES 81
 FOREWORD

This is a manifesto. But it is a biblical manifesto, which submits

to all the rigor of scientific exegesis and accepts its challenge. If
the thesis is not demonstrated by meticulous scholarship, con-
sider the thesis unposited. Precisely what this book recriminates
in official theology is the lucubration of a whole concept of
Christianity independently of the Bible and even in contradic-
tion to it. Accordingly this book claims no more validity than its
demonstrations force upon it.
The present work deepens the investigation undertaken in both
of my previous exegetical works, Marx and the Bible and Being
and the Messiah. But it does not logically presuppose them. I have
taken care to place it on its own footing. In fact, in spite of the
reduced format with a view to wider diffusion, I have sharpened
certain of the analyses I began in those two stout volumes, in
particular the Prophets, the Psalms, and the authentic logia and
historical deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. This book is concise, but it
is the fruit of many years of research.
My political conclusion has no need of words to belabor it. The
title of the book puts it in relief. I repeat, this is a manifesto. And
it seeks to make itself heard by all the poor of the earth.
 ABBREVIATIONS

A Codex Alexandrinus
ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch. G6ttingen: Vanden-
hoeck.
B Codex Vaticanus
LTK Lexikon fiir Theologie und Kirche. Freiburg: Herder,
1957-1968.
MEW Marx-Engels Werke. Berlin: Dietz, 1955-1973.
NTD Das Neue Testament Deutsch. Gottingen: Vanden-
hoeck.
PL Patrologiae cursus. . . Series latina.
PG Patrologiae cursus. . . Series graeca.
S Codex Sinaiticus
TWNT Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament.
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933-1978.
 CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTIANITY IS
COMMUNISM

For a Christian to say he or she is anti-Marxist is understand-

able. There are numerous varieties of Marxism, and it is possible
that our Christian is referring to one of the many materialistic
philosophies which style themselves Marxist without having
much at all to do with Marx.
For a Christian to claim to be not only anti-Marxist but anti-
Marx as well, it is probably owing to not having read all of Marx,
and the repugnance is a symptom of simple ignorance. But when
all is said and done I do not really care. I am under no obligation
to defend Marx.
But for a Christian to claim to be anticommunist is quite a dif-
ferent matter, and without doubt constitutes the greatest scandal
of our century. It is not a good thing to weigh a book down with
cries and shouts, but someone finally has to voice the most obvi-
ous and important truths, which no one mentions as if everyone
knew them.
The notion of communism is in the New Testament, right down
to the letter—-and so well put that in the twenty centuries since it
was written no one has come up with a better definition of com-
1
2 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

munism than Lu

ording to his capaci t é his is

inspired by, if not directly copied from, Luke’s formulation
eighteen centuries earlier. There is no clearer demonstration of the
brainwashing to which the establishment keeps us subjected than
the officially promulgated conception of Christianity as anticom-
munist.
At this moment two-thirds of Latin America writhes under the
yoke of atrocious anticommunist dictatorships. Nearly all the rest
of Latin America suffers from a most ill-concealed anticom-
munist repression. The international politics of nearly all the
countries of the world, and their consequent criminal armament
ideology, rallies to this contradictory watchword: “Defend Chris-
tian civilization from communism!” At such a moment there are
no words adequate to this other cry: But what if, in the history of
the West, it is Christianity that started communism? What if,
from the first century to the nineteenth, groups of Christians were
never lacking who, in spite of repression by the established
powers and by the church, vigorously advocated communism,
Bible in hand! What manner of insanity has swooped down on the
Western world that it combats the Christian project par excellence
as if it were its greatest enemy?

1. Intentional Misunderstandings

Ultimately the Marxists have been doing us a favor by propa-

gating the idea of communism in our absence—our culpable ab-
sence. But to identify communism with Marxism implies a crass
ignorance of history. It is far from certain that the establishment
is struggling against atheistic materialism, as the powerful tell
themselves in order to tranquillize their consciences. This repres-
sive struggle of theirs dates from much earlier. It existed for many
centuries when no communist was a materialist and no com-
munist was an atheist; it existed when materialism and atheism
did not even exist. Marxism is a mere episode in the history of the
communist project. The pope and the other powerful ones are not
fighting atheism, but us, who are Christians, who believe in God
and Jesus, and who only want to see the' gospel become reality.
 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 3

attacking an interpretation of the Bible different from their own.

This onslaught of theirs is nothing but the continuation of what
they were carrying on all through the Middle Ages and the first
three centuries of the modern era. The denunciation of material-
ism is a mere pretext for anticommunist persecution. If these
gentlemen did not have this pretext they would invent another—
as in fact they did throughout the Middle Ages, with different
pretexts in the sixteenth century, and still others in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. If materialism were the reason for the
anticommunist persecution, how do you explain the fact that they
persecuted communism long before materialism existed? No,
what they persecute and repress is communismas such. But the
communist project is explicitly defended in the Bible as proper to
and characteristic of Christianity. It was invented neither by the
Marxists nor by the medieval or modern Christian groups!
When the official doctrinal propaganda asserts that the com-
munist idea is inseparable from materialist ideologies, it isdeny-
ing facts as evident and inconcealable as da See In primitive
ponies: and for eishtecs enturie e > commun
xisted wvvithout materialism al ind. A even today, what
peital relationship can be pathteatout between “having every-
thing in common” (Acts 2:44) and denying the existence or effi-
| cacy of the spirit? The truth is precisely the reverse: communism
cannot be actualized unless we recognize the infinite respect due
God in each of our neighbors, including those who are economi-
cally unproductive by weakness or age or natural gifts. The
failure of Russian communism is the evidence. (What you now
have in the Soviet Union is state capitalism.)
Then why does official Christianity make war on an idea that is
expressly sponsored in the fonts of Christianity, and which, logi-
cally, can only be brought to realization on the basis of authentic
Christianity? The denial of the existence of the spirit is far more
inseparable from each one’s selfishly seeking his or her own
proper advantage and gain, as capitalism teaches us to do. The
thesis that communism cannot be separated from materialism is
one of those monstrous Hitler-style falsehoods that are pro-
claimed with all the greater aplomb the more false they are.
4 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

Examined objectively, it is the diametrical inversion of the real

facts.
Another deliberate misunderstanding is the allegation that we
Christian communists are only being fashionable, or adapting to
progressive currents, or zealously keeping up to date. In the name
of my Latin American brothers and sisters I hereformally decla
that we areeshamcless conservatives. We a

own to proclaim and actualize! We reject the feebleminded notion

that Christianity must be Roman in Roman imperial times, feudal
in the Middle Ages, absolutist during the monarchy, liberal for
the French Revolution, and so on. We leave such flexibility to a
church which, for many centuries now, has considered it of no
importance to verify objectively what it is that Christ wanted to
bring about in the world. It is those who repress us who are being
“fashionable” —those who are anticommunist by adaptation to
the Trilateral Commission and the Chase Manhattan Bank. We,
on the contrary, believe that Jesus Christ came to save the world,
not to adapt to the world. And they say we are the ones who run
after the current fashion? —we who accept no other criterion than
the one formulated in the first century in the fonts of Christian-
ity?
They can likewise lay aside the notion that, while not actually
denying the existence of Spirit, we care more for the material than
for the spiritual. But in the first place, the final criterion es-
tablished and left us by Jesus as the only one is, “I was hungry and
you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, was a
stranger and you took me in, was stripped naked and you clothed
me; sick and you visited me, imprisoned and you came to see me”
(Matt. 25:35-36). If this is preoccupying oneself more with the
material than with the spiritual, then the self-styled official spiri-
tualism ought to stop beating about the bush and direct its accusa-
tionsMeans Jesus himself. Here we see a er again that the

ine message of Jesus literally and without gloss.

But in the second place, is unrestricted fidelity to Jesus Christ
 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 5
to be reproached as preoccupation with the material? How are we
going to give food to all who are hungry if we leave the means of
production in private hands, which necessarily destine these
means to the augmentation of capital and not to the satisfaction
of the needs of the population? Do the official theologians really
think they can maintain that there is more spirituality in the escap-
ist selfishness of people who tranquillize themselves by saying,
“There have always been people who starved to death, we are not
divine providence,” than in the decision of the people who want
to be faithful to Jesus by undertaking all possible means to give
food to the hungry, knowing that they aree exposing themselves to
pl pion prison, and eS

ore} they can lay aside the notion that, while not ac-
tually denying the existence of God, we care more about human
beings than about God. We have dedicated our lives to Jesus.
Don’t these theologians think Jesus is God? And this is where the
antirevolutionary onslaught smites the essential point, the very
essence of biblical revelation. Let it be clearly understood: the one
thing the Christian revolutionaries advocate and defend is the
adoration of the true God, in contrast with the adoration of idols,
_which for many centuries now has been inculcated by a theology
radically ignorant of the Bible. This is not a theme that can simply
be listed as item number so-and-so in a list of objections. It is not
even just a theme. It is the one single motive of our rebellion, and
isioneee content sgh our pyle gy. V

The God of the e is not towable dinebit? The doleare.

And the mental idols are more important than the material ones.
There are those who believe that the only thing they have to do is
put the word “God” in their minds to be directed toward the true
God. But this is what the Bible fights to the death. The god of
these adorers is a concept within their minds. With this intramen-
tal act they fail to transcend their own subjectivity, their own psy-
chism, their own /. Either the true God is transcendent or the true
God does not exist. The otherness constituted by the oppressed
neighbor, who calls on our aid seeking justice, bursts our solip-
6 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

sism asunder. This is the only way we transcend ourselves. The

God of the Bible is knowable only in otherness, in the call for help
of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger. Our revolution-
ary message has this objective only: that all people may come to
know the one true God, and knowing God be saved. Those who
accuse us of preferring the human to the divine are not only com-
mitting calumny; they are above all committing ignorance—su-
pine ignorance of the Bible itself.
Last, they can abandon the notion that we care more for the
transformation of structures than for the transformation of per-
sons, that we care more for the social than for the personal. The
contrary is the truth. Our revolution is directed toward the crea-
tion of the new human being. But unlike the attackers, we seek to
posit the necessary means for the formation of this new human
being. And the indispensable means is a new social structure. Is it
not perfectly obvious that an existing social susteny has more effi-

the Christian message of brotherhood and solidarity with

- neighbor, when the social structure imposes upon it, under pain of
annihilation, the task of seeking its proper interest and letting the
chips fall where they may, without preoccupying itself with other
people. Structural change will be a mere means for personal
change—but a means so obviously necessary, that those who fail
to give it first priority demonstrate by that very fact that their
vaunted desire to transform persons is just empty rhetoric.
To return to where we began, the five establishment pretexts for
their unscrupulous crusade against communism are mere diver-
sionary maneuvers: identifying communism with materialism
and atheism, accusing us of chasing mode and fashion, imputing
to us a lack of spirituality, alleging we care more for human beings
than for God, and attributing to us a greater preoccupation with
structures than with persons. It is time to drop all these side issues
 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 7

and concentrate on the fundamental fact: the Bible teaches com-

munism.

Luke’s normative intention stands out. There is no question of a

special lifestyle that could be considered peculiar to some Chris-
tians in contrast with the general mass of Christians. His insis-
tence on the universality of communism from a literary point of
_ view is even a little affected—pdntes hoi pisteusantes (2:44), all
the believers, all who had believed in Jesus Christ, all Christians;
oudeé heis (4:32), not a single one said anything was his; hdsoi
ktétores (4:34), whoever possessed fields or houses, whoever had
anything. If they wanted to be Christians the condition was com-
munism.

other waters aevenibies the life of original (linisnitthies and hence

there is no document upon which one could base an attempt to
give Luke the lie. But let us suppose (not concede) that some other
New Testament author were to differ with Luke; how would this
justify the persecution (styling itself “Christian”) of a social pro-
ject that is explicitly and repeatedly promoted by one of the prin-
cipal authors of the New Testament?
We shall see that the hypothesis is false, for Jesus himself was a
8 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

communist. But let us place ourselves hypothetically in the worst

possible position: that only Luke teaches communism. With what
right, indeed with what elemental logic, is it thereupon asserted
that communism is incompatible with Christianity? Does not the
very fact that they make this assertion demonstrate that the anti-
communists who call themselves Christians are alienated and are
merely claiming Christianity when in reality they are being moved
by an anti-Christian motivation of which they are unaware? If at
least the Lucan part of the New Testament teaches communism,
how is it possible to maintain that communism is at odds with
Christianity?
Let us suppose (not concede) that there are parts of the New
Testament which lend footing to the projection of social systems
different from Luke’s. Well and good. That some Christians to-
day may prefer these other parts of the Bible to Luke’s is their
affair. But with what right do they deny the name Christian to
what the Lucan part of the Bible teaches emphatically and re-
peatedly? The origin of the communist idea in the history of the
West is the New Testament, not Jamblichus or Plato. The banner
the communist groups and movements marched under—from the
first century through the Middle Ages all the way to Wilhelm
Weitling (1808-1871), in whose procommunist organization Marx
and Engels were active in their youth (cf. MEW 17:485)—was the
New Testament, not The Republic or the Vita Pythagorae. The
ruthless repression of the communists in the name of Christianity
for the last seventeen centuries is a farce, and the most grotesque
falsification that can be imagined.
TY) iil

citec 1b 1e cCommunisn =.
It is flabbergasting that sermons, documents of the magisterium,
books, and bourgeois public opinion should brook the notion
that this is an argument. The Sermon on the Mount failed too, but
this does not deprive it of its normative character. In the clear
intention of the original report, communism is obligatory for
Christians. This is not modified, not in the slightest, by the fact of
a failure of the original communist intent. What should concern
us is to find out why it broke down, and bring communism to
realization without committing whatever error caused the first
Christians to break down. This would be the only logical conclu-
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 9
sion if our objectors had the flimsiest desire to be guided by the
Bible. But what our objectors have done is make an antecedent
and irreformable decision to disagree with the Bible, and to this
purpose they bring forward every pretext, evenif it tramples upon
e most elemental logic.

normative ith the factual—and they confound them deliber-

ately, in order to be able to disagree with any biblical teaching for
which they have no pale This is anti- Christianity, disguised as
ospel.

we apie said shaver the surrounding, involving Zotidl system has

far more power than exhortations have. The communism of the

But today we Christians are the majority in the West and

cipal force in the world.
There is a third charge made against the communism of the first
Christians. But the reader has already perceived that this whole
cascade of objections, one replacing another as each turns out
absurd, is only a series of emotional symptoms proceeding from
¢ ectan s’ instinctive ECPUBRERCC to aie message of a Bible.

ristians was optior n be seen from Peter’s words faa

nias, “Was it not stillyours
y if you kept it, and once you sold it was
it not yours to dispose of?” (Acts 5:4). One would love to know
what cohesion there is among these objections. First they were
saying that Luke is lying; then that he is not lying, but that the
project collapsed; and finally, not only is he not lying, but his
‘report is so reliable that they are going to use Acts 5:4 to beat
communism. It is plain to see that the so-called objections are just
irrational reactions, the spasms of an uncontrollable visceral re-
vulsion.
10 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

Still, let us examine the convulsion as if it were an objection. It

is astonishing that there was ever considered to be any validity in
this third charge. Let us take, hypothetically, the worst possible
position. Let us suppose (falsely, as we shall see) that according to
Luke, communism was optional. I answer: But you combat it as if
it were evil! According to yourselves, the Bible (merely) recom-
mends it;sO you PrOniDs it!

thing more distracted and d lente o forbid communism they

bend allstheir efforts to prove he Hinis reco it.

that he could e e into thehiner community without

renouncing the private ownership of his goods. Nor could he say
such a thing after it was explicitly emphasized that of the Chris-
tians “not a single one said anything was his” (Acts 4:32). Ana-
nias lied to the Holy Spirit by pretending to become a Christian
via a simulated renunciation.
The objection belongs to the type of reader who thinks a work
can be understood without understanding the thought of the
author. Luke would have to have been a very slow-witted writer if
he claimed to assert, in the Ananias episode (Acts 5:1-11), the
optional character of communism, when four verses earlier (4:34)
he has insisted that “whoever possessed fields or houses sold
them,” and so on, and two verses above that, “and not a single
one said anything was his” (4:32), and still earlier, “all the faithful
together had everything in common” (2:44). This is the Luke who
had placed these words on the lips of Jesus: “Every one of you
who does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke
14:33); and now the rightists would have it that according to Luke
one can be a disciple of Christ without renouncing all one has.
What they ought to be doing is rejecting Luke as a jabbering
cheat. But to assert that according to Luke one can bea Christian
without renouncing private property is an insolent rejection of the
documentation which all of us have right before our eyes.
Let it be well noted that the last verse cited is concerned with the
simple fact of being disciples of Christ, and not of some “special
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 11

vocation” or other. See the beginning of the pericope: “Many

crowds: accompanied him, and he, turning, said to them: . . .”
(Luke 14:25). He is not addressing the Twelve, but the crowd. It is
a simple matter of the conditions for being a Christian, exactly as
in the texts we cited from Acts. What is optional is to be a Chris-
tian, to be a disciple of Christ. Those who wrest the Ananias epi-
sode from its context are trying to read it as if it had no author, as
if no one had written it. As Hinkelammert has said, this episode
means: pain of death for whoever betrays communism, Chris-
tianity’s indispensable condition.
But the most curious and paradoxical thing about the objection
we have just been considering is that it supposes that our com-
munism is not optional, or that the communism of Marx is not
optional. With supreme fury it attacks a nonexistent enemy.
Never have we thought that communism can be realized except by
free decision of the workers, rural people, and unemployed, who
together form the immense majority of the population. And
Marx thought the same.
It must be taken into account that a system is a system. Let it
not be thought that we in capitalism are outside all systems, al-
though this is the absurdity which, at bottom, the objection as-
sumes. It is impossible that, within one and the same country, the
criteria for the destination of its resources be the satisfaction of
the needs of the population, and at the same time be to make
profit for capital. Either the system is capitalist or the system is
communist. Those who wish that communism be optional for the
capitalists are preventing it from being an option for the vast ma-
jority of the population. So where does that leave us? They
wanted it to be optional, did they not?
It is preposterous to suppose that the proletariat are in capital-
ism by free decision—or that capitalism is a kind of point zero,
the “natural” situation imposed on no one, and that only if you
want to move from this point does the dilemma arise of doing so
either by free option or by a constraint that violates your
freedom.

e who love freedom must choose between these

12 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM
alternatives. There is no third way. In one country there cannot be
more than one system, precisely because it is a system. The illu-
sory “mixed economy” is capitalism; the state firms have to obey
the rules of capitalism and become the pawn of the private firms.
Where would the capitalists get the human resources to run
their factories if the workers of the country were to opt for a
communist system? Let us suppose that a communist revolution
leaves the capitalists in freedom of option. To whom will they sell
their products if the population wishes to have nothing to do with
capitalist production? The theoreticians who seek freedom of op-
tion even for the insignificant minority are closing their eyes to
the fact that this freedom of option cannot exist without eliminat-
ing freedom of option for the vast majority. Here it can be seen
how much they really love freedom. They want the freedom to
deprive everyone else of freedom.
It is what the objectants suppose that is most false in all of
this—that the proletariat are in capitalism by free decision. But in
order to have PE ot,HHO must ik aa kuowieds :

3. The Kingdom Is on Earth

Now let us investigate whether the first Christians invented

their communism, or based it upon the teachings of Jesus and the
whole biblical tradition. In other words, our task is to extend our
vision beyond the book called The Acts of the Apostles. And here
we begin to specify the moral and obligatory reason for com-
munism. But as we are going to base our discussion primarily
upon three authentic logia of Jesus concerning the kingdom of
God, and inasmuch as the supposition that the kingdom is in the °
other world has prevented so many from understanding these
statements, we must prefix an explanation—of paramount im-
portance of itself, but, from the viewpoint of the logical thread of
this book, having the character of a prenote.
To begin, let us compare Matthew 13:11 (“To you has been
given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the Heavens”) on
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 13
the one hand, with Mark 4:11 (“To you has been given the mystery
of the, kingdom of God”) and Luke 8:10 (“To you has been given
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God”) on the other.
Also, compare Matthew 3:2 (“The kingdom of the Heavens has
come”) on one hand, with Mark 1:15 (“The kingdom of God has
come”) and Luke 10:9 (“The kingdom of God has come to you’)
onthe other.
This is a sample. We could lengthen the list of comparisons
between the text of Matthew and the texts of Mark and Luke.
Scholars agree that Matthew systematically substitutes “kingdom
of the heavens” for the original “kingdom of God,” and have
inquired into the reason for this systematic editorial modifica-
tion.
They also agree on the answer. This is important to emphasize.
All the exegetes who broach the subject, be they conservatives or
liberals, those of an otherworldly penchant or those of an earthly,
explain the editorial phenomenon by the late Judaic custom of
avoiding all explicit use of the name “God.” People said “the
heavens,” or even “the Name,” instead of saying “God.” It was
believed that this constituted obedience to the commandment of
the decalogue forbidding taking the name of God in vain. Today
this respect seems excessive to us, and even Christ did not observe
it. But the literary fact cannot be denied. It is superabundantly
documented in the rabbinical writings of the first century B.C. and
the first century of the Christian era. Even today in our Western
languages there are vestiges, as when we say “Heaven help us”
when what we really mean is “God help us.”
And so there is no question of Matthew’s placing the kingdom
in the other world. He simply uses the habitual circumlocution of
late Judaism to avoid as much as possible mentioning the name of
God. The editor we call Matthew (who is surely not the apostle)
either introduced this circumlocution himself or found it in the
writings he utilized in redacting his Gospel. And where there is
special motive, the motive warrants the exception.
As to where the kingdom is to be realized, Matthew has no
doubts. In the parable of the weeds (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43),
which is a parable about the kingdom, he says expressly that “the
field is the world” (v. 38), and at the end of the story he does not
say that the kingdom will be transferred to some other place but
14 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

that “the Son of Man will send his angels, who will remove from
his kingdom all scandals and all workers of iniquity” (v. 41), and
that then “the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their
Father” (v. 43).
And so for Matthew too, just as for all the other known sacred
authors, in the Old ‘Testament as in the New: thé Kingdom is on

provided them any support, for the Psalms explicitly teach,

“Salvation surrounds those who fear him, so that the glory will
dwell in our land” (Ps. 85:10).
Of course the Matthean circumlocution “of the heavens” was
only a pretext. If they had not been blinded by the scorn their
escapist theology holds for our world, they could have seen where
the kingdom is right from the Psalter. For instance, Psalm 74,
wholly dedicated to “Yahweh my king from olden time” (v. 12),
whose rule consists in saving “the poor and the needy” (v. 21),
ends by begging Yahweh to attack all oppressors (vv. 22-23), since
he must “make salvation real in the midst of the earth” (v. 12).
And Psalm 10 proclaims, looking into the future, ‘Yahweh is
king eternally and for ever, the gentiles have been swept from their
land” (v. 16). They could have found the same thing throughout
Chapter 32 of Isaiah, in Psalm 146, and in hundreds of other Old
Testament texts.
But there is no demonstration of this blindness to equal the fact
that the theologians are not even impressed by the prayer which
Christ taught us and which they pray every ss sali aay kingdom
tt. 6:10, Luke 11:2). Pees Sa ake us to yo

escapists do not read the salter parefilivitisa frequent fault of

theirs, though it ought not to be; but that they pay no attention
even to the Lord’s Prayer is really the height of blindness.
Furthermore, not just a part of the content, but the content of
the “good news” Jesus proclaimed, that is, the content of the
gospel in the strict sense, is, “the kingdom has come” (Mark 1:15
and parallels). Where can it have come if not to earth? Besides,
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 15
Jesus says “the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20,
Matt. 12:28); the only possible meaning is that it has come a the
earth on which those to whom Jesus says “has come to you” are
standing. Accordingly, to maintain that the kingdom is in the
other world is equivalent to denying the very content of the gos-
pel. And to say in escapist desperation that the kingdom is “partly
in this world and partly in the other” is to launch a thesis totally
without support in Jesus’ teaching.
Even the Book of Revelation, which talks of nothing but the
heavenly Jerusalem, finally tells us: “And I saw the holy city, the
new sip une down from heaven ie one oak

on earth that it is to be established. He had

already told us, “And he made them to be a kingdom, and priests
for our God, and they will reign over all the earth” (Rev. 5:10),
and at the end of the book he adds, “And they shall reign for ever
and ever” (Rev. 22:5). If he expressly says that the kingdom or
reign will be over the earth, it becomes idle to inquire where the
new Jerusalem descends to as it ““comes down from heaven.”
Our reference to the Book of Revelation in this context is im-
portant, since in 2:7 this book mentions the word “paradise.”
And this, erroneously, has been seen as the ace in the hole for the
escapists. First, though, let us note once more that the kingdom of
God is on earth, as is demonstrated by the texts we have cited, and
that on this point there is not the least wavering on the part of the
sacred authors. Hence what paradise might be, or being with
Christ, or Abraham’s bosom, or the heavenly treasure, is a ques-
tion we could well leave aside, because what matters to us is the
definitive kingdom, which constitutes the central content of the
message of Jesus. The escapists can have paradise. But the pas-
sages cited from Revelation give the same key as the most compe-
tent researchers (Strack-Billerweck and Joachim Jeremias) have
found in the copious Judaic documentation.

Without using the term paradise, in Revelation the garden

of God appears as a summation of the glory and of the full-
16 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

e
ness: Revelation describes the final Jerusalem as paradis
when it speaks of the trees of life and the water of life (22:1;
cf. 22:14,19), the destruction of the serpent of old (20:2; cf.
20:10), the elimination of suffering, of need, and of death
(21:4). The place of residence of the definitive paradise is,
according to 21:2,10, the Jerusalem of the renewed earth
[J. Jeremias, TWNT 5:767].

Paradise is Jerusalem, provisionally heavenly, which will at last

descend from heaven and be installed on our earth for ever and
ever. According to the Bible, situations outside our world are
transitory and temporary, whether they are known as paradise, or
the bosom of Abraham, or heavenly treasure, or being with
Christ, or third heaven. As the New Testament employs the termi-
nology of contemporary Judaism, and as the latter offers abun-
dant documentation, scholars have not entertained the least
doubt in the matter.
For example the Lucan parable of the rich man and Lazarus
(Luke 16:19-31) typically places the rich man in hades (v. 23),
which is the technical name for the place of torment after the
death of the unjust, in contrast with géenna, the definitive place
of torment after the final judgment (cf. Strack-Billerbeck, 2:228
and 4:1040—the same terminology as in Testamentum Abrahae
20 A and 4 Esd. 7:85,93). “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22), used
in conjunction and contrast with hddes, is equally provisional,
until such time as the kingdom is realized, including the resurrec-
tion of the dead.
In like fashion, Matthew 5:12 does not say, You shall receive
much recompense in the heavens, but “Your recompense is great
in heaven,” which is the place where it is provisorily kept.
Theodor Zahn comments: “After the beatitudes of Matthew
5:3-10, it is obvious that the reward (mentioned in 5:12) will be
given to the disciples only in the kingdom which is to be es-
tablished on earth” (Das Evangelium des Matthdus, p. 197). And
indeed there cannot be the shadow of a doubt in this respect, as
Matthew has just said of the generous that “they shall inherit the
earth” (5:5). The idea in Matthew 5:12 is the same as in Acts 10:4:
“Your prayers and your alms have arisen as a reminder before the
presence of God.” This same idea is found in Tobit 12:12-15.
CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 17

Likewise the conversation of the crucified Christ with the good

thief demonstrates precisely the contrary of what escapist’
theology would like it to. “When you come to your kingdom” is in
deliberate contrast with “This very day... in paradise” (Luke
23:42-43). Jesus does not deny that it is only later that he will
come into his kingdom—but he wishes to have the good thief in
his company right from today. Evidently, paradise, as in all the
literature of that time, is a provisional place, pending the arrival
of the moment in which the Messiah comes to his kingdom—
which is surely on the earth, since the good thief is on the earth
when he says “when you come.”
Well and good, but it is not to be thought that an interpretation
of the Bible is a conceptual construct, which each scholar invents
according to his or her mentality, and which is presented along-
side other interpretations for the public to choose the one it finds
most suitable. To speak of a kingdom of God in the other world is
not only to found a new religion without any relationship with the
teaching of Christ (for none of the texts wielded by escapist
theology mentions the kingdom); it is to assert exactly the ine
trary of what Christ teaches: e kingdom has come to ae
kingdom come.” hat tradition has taught for

This concludes the explanation of our third point. It was a nec-

essary pre-note for what is about to follow. But consider the im-
portance it has in itself: the conservatives’ resistance to the
elimination of private property in the kingdom of God depends
on where you situate the kingdom. This is truly prodigious incon-
sistency. If the kingdom is in heaven, they accept the texts abolish-
ing private property in the kingdom. If the kingdom is on earth,
they deny that these same texts abolish private property. Evi-
— the annot maintain that private property ia in

and the mem wt single contentae is good news, of the gospel.

We leave it to the reader to judge how they can conscientiously
switch interpretations of the very same texts, depending on
whether the texts are about heaven or earth.
18 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

4. A Classless Society

Now that we have proposed our explanation concerning the

kingdom, let us resume the thread of our argumentation in this
chapter. The teachings of Christ upon which the first Christians
were able to base their establishment of communism are, among
others, Mark 10:25, Luke 6:20, 24, Matthew 6:24 (= Luke 16:13),
and Luke 16:19-31. The first three refer to the kingdom, hence
the above digression was necessary.
Of course, the first Christians were also influenced by Jesus’
example and personal conduct. For Jesus, whether the conserva-
tives like it or not, was in fact a communist—as can be seen in
John 12:6, 13:29, and Luke 8:1-3. Judas “carried the purse,” so
they had everything in common and each received according to
his need.
The doctrinal betrayal of later centuries, as we have seen, has
sought to interpret this communism as a “way of perfection,” not
to be identified with the simple fact of being a Christian. But such
an interpretation is dashed to smithereens when it impinges on the
fact that Jesus made the renunciation of property a condition for
simply “entering into the kingdom” (cf. Mark 10:21, 25). There is
no room for a third way, when the dilemma is to enter into the
kingdom or not to enter into the kingdom.
Besides, hypothetically, if being communist is more perfect
than simply being Christian, I should like to know why they for-
bid it—why they teach that what according to Jesus is more per-
fect is evil. It is easy to see that the famous “way of perfection” is
a mere escape route invented when the church became rich and
began to constitute an essential part of the establishment. If it is
decreed that communism is more perfect, the logical conclusion
would have been to betake oneself to promote its realization in the
world. Instead the conclusion has been to devote oneself to com-
bating it, and to persecute to the death whoever promoted it. It is
difficult to imagine anything that would demonstrate more
clearly that the “way of perfection” doctrine is just an escape
route, just a doctrinal subterfuge.
It was not only Jesus’ example that taught communism to the
first Christians; it was his word as well. Scientific exegesis recog-
nizes that Mark 10:17-31, about the rich young man, is more reli-
 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM 19

able than its Matthean (Matt. 19:16-30) or Lucan (Luke 18:

18-30) transcriptions, which make obvious editorial changes. A
simple comparison shows that Matthew and Luke had the text of
Mark before them. And yet this is precisely where one can feel the
difficulties and conflicts faced by the first missionaries when they
wanted to proclaim to the world this authentic logion of Jesus: “It
is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). Since
Jesus had already said, “The kingdom of God has arrived” (Mark
1:15), the question is who can and who cannot form part of the
kingdom which Jesus Christ is founding on earth. And what Jesus
says is: The rich cannot.

rk I an act of God itiis possible foie

rien person iS enter the kingdom—by ceasing to be rich, of
course, since otherwise they would have been betraying the
authentic logion of Jesus (Mark 10:25). Any minimizing interpre-
tation of Mark 10:27 is incompatible with Mark 10:25, and in-
compatible with the declaration at the source of the pericope
“Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor” (Mark
10:21). If they come to us now and say that to enter into the
kingdom a rich person need neither go nor sell everything he has
nor give it to the poor, this is no longer interpretation but bold
out-and-out tergiversation.
Verses 21 and 25 could have been invented neither by the mis-
sionaries nor by the communities nor by the editor Mark, since
these verses raise insuperable difficulties for the proclamation of
the gospel. They are the authentic words of Jesus. Everything else
in the pericope is open to question.
Recall that the question is simply that of “entering the
kingdom,” and that, as we saw in Section 3 above, the kingdom is
onearth. Jesus goes about recruiting people for the kingdom, and
says straight out: the rich cannot be part of it. People generally
forget that “rich” and “poor” are correlative terms. We say that
someone is rich in contrast with the rest of the population, or with
a majority of the pepalation, which is i 5 not. As weeae Be
20 CHRISTIANITY IS COMMUNISM

ing of s cis trast. When he says “Happy the poor, for yours is
e kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and adds “Woe to you the rich,
because you have received your comfort” (Luke 6:24), he is say-
ing exactly the same thing as in Mark 10: 25: the rich cannot enter
the kingdom. Only the poor can. (In passing, let us observe that
this demonstr ates that, as the vast majority of exegetes maintain,
Luke 6:20 is the original version and Matthew 5:3 the later, since
Luke 6:20 says the same as Mark 10:25, whose authenticity no one
denies.) how: what this teaching is saying, in concurrence with

€ Ber aaannistitreaction 1as tomibaravaa this, of course.

But it is worth repeating that they themselves, in their eschatologi-
cal conceptions, admit that according to the Bible there are no
social differences in the kingdom. The only thing they are missing
is the place, since if the kingdom is on earth they indignantly re-
ject social equality. This is why we introduced our digression in
Section 3 above. What they admit for heaven is, according to the
gospel, on earth.
Marx did not invent the classless society. Except for the formu-
jation, the idea is unequivocally in the most authentic and least
disputed logia (Mark 10:21, 25) of Jesus Christ.*

*The Matthean version of Mark 10:21 is recognizably later: “If you wish to be
perfect, go and sell what you have,” etc. (Matt. 19:21). Here there is question of a
perfection which is indispensable for entry into the kingdom (cf. Matt. 19:24),
clearly superior to the morality of the Jews (cf. Matt. 19:18-20), but not excluding
any particular group of Christians, inasmuch as it is impossible to imagine a third
alternative between entering the kingdom and not entering the kingdom. The same
thing appears with the only other occurrence of the adjective “perfect” (Matt.
5:48). As the Catholic exegete Rudolf Schnackenburg recognizes, “perfection is
demanded of all” (LTK 3:1246— emphasis his). Catholic J. Blinzler, as well, says:
“The requirement of perfection is for all” (L7K 10:864). The alternative is not to
enter the kingdom: “If your justice were to be no greater than that of the scribes
and Pharisees, you would not enter the kingdom of the Heavens” (Matt. 5:20).
And the contrast in Matt. 5:46-48 is not with Christians of lesser perfection, but
with “publicans” (v. 46) and “pagans” (v. 47). What is not demanded of all Chris-
tians is celibacy (cf. Matt 19:10-12)—here there is a contrast between “not all have
room for this word” on the one hand, and “but those to whom it has been given”
on the other. It is the passage about eunuchs. There is no indication that one
alternative is more perfect than the other. As a ieee well says, “Jesus is
only making an observation: “There are those who. . . ” Doubtless his preaching
of the kingdom had fired up some of his followers iin ‘sch a way that they felt
called to a virginal or celibate life” (L7K 3:1245).
 CHAPTER TWO

WHY COMMUNISM?

When Jesus says, “Happy are the poor” and “Woe to you the
rich,” he is not talking about riches in the absolute sense. That is,
he is not condemning the physical fact of having great material
resources. There is not that kind of asceticism in Jesus that almost
instinctively hates well-being and abundance, the ind that al-
ways goes hand-in-hand with extreme “other-worldliness.” In
' John 12:7 Jesus not only readily permits, but actually defends the
sinful woman’s anointing him with an oil of nard worth three
hundred denarii (v. 5), which John calls very valuable (v. 3) and
Mark very costly (Mark 14:3). In the wedding feast at Cana (John
2:1-11), Jesus was pleased to contribute, in order to enhance the
merrymaking of the whole company, six twenty-gallon jars of
very fine wine (v. 10). Jesus has no horror of wealth, neither in
itself nor in its use and enjoyment. And surely he had read that
Abraham, the model of Old Testament faith, had been rich
(Gen. 13:2). The wealth of the whole people is also lauded in
Deuteronomy 28:1-14.
But as we were saying, “rich” and “poor” are correlative
terms. When Christ says, “Happy the poor” and “Woe to you the
rich,” what he is attacking iis that some areLDoorBane other

B t this he ae nendent vapla:

21
22 WHY COMMUNISM?

cably—so intransigently and unexceptionably that official West-

ern theology is too traumatized to take a really close look at the
condemnation for fear the whole meaning of the Bible may de-
pend on it. And indeed the entire history of the West has been a
falsification of Christianity simply because it has not dared to
look in the face the inexorable reprobation to which the Bible
subjects differentiating wealth. History has decided to turn its
face away and believe that the “preferential option for the poor”
is a question of tenderness and nice sentiments, when in reality it
is a moral question in the strict sense.
One of the effects of this deviation is that even Christology has
become a tissue of trivial and irrelevant theses. In order to be
objective in reading the gospel one has to stop imagining Jesus as
the sweet, conciliatory sort. He was a cutting man. Has there ever
existed, in all of history, a more intransigent person than the one
who turned to those who spontaneously wished to follow him and
stopped them dead in their tracks with: First go and sell every-
thing you have and give it to the poor and then come and follow
me? This is a statement that can have been made only in a harsh,
pugnacious tone—the tone of the man who, when he talks about
money, calls it the “money of iniquity” (Luke 16:9, 11), the tone
of the man who was capable of shouting out, “Scribes and phari-
sees, hypocrites!” seven times running (Matt. 23:13, 14, 15, 23,
25, 27, 29), the tone of the man who, speaking about the temple,
comes right out and says, “Not a stone will be left upon a stone”
(Mark 13:2). Jesus had the character of a hardened revolutionary.
‘It is time we understood that.

I. The Illegitimacy of Wealth

But let us leave the Christologies to themselves and listen to

Jesus’ own words. Jesus condemns differentiating wealth. The
parable of the rich man and the poor one (Luke 6:19-31) is per-
fectly consistent with Mark 10:25 and Luke 6:20, 24. Escapist
exegesis thinks the rich man ended up in torment because he did
not give alms to Lazarus. But the reason for his punishment is not
a matter for conjectures. The parable itself makes it explicit: “Re-
member you received good things during your lifetime, and Laz-
arus on the contrary evil things” (Luke 16:25). WI i
WHY COMMUNISM? 23
*

ulferent g wealth, in its purest expression. The parable

does not say, be ause you lived in abundance—which would have
been to condemn wealth in the absolute sense. It says, because
you lived in abundance and Lazarus in misery What is punished,
in torment, is that some are rich and others are poor.
At no turn is it insinuated that this rich man was a person of
especially depraved habits, or that in order to enrich himself he
had committed particular acts of extortion or fraud which other
rich persons do not commit. The only thing said of him is that he
was rich and lived as if he were rich: “There was a rich man, and
he clothed himself in scarlet and linen, and daily dined splen-
didly” (Luke 16:19). And since this is nothing but the story of
someone who was punished in torment, the only purpose the
parable can have is to tell us why. It would be unforgivably negli-
gent of Christ if, as the escapists would have it, he did not tell us
why. But he does tell us why: because the man was rich. This is the
very title of the parable: “There was a rich man.”
Official exegesis cannot bear this message. Its instinctive revul-
sion goes beyond its strength and lucidity. But a complementary
trauma is still in store for the official exegesis: Neither does the
parable suggest that the poor man was especially virtuous. Here
as throughout the Bible, the poor person’s interior dispositions
are of no importance. He is rewarded for the simple reason that
he is poor: “It happened that the poor man died and was carried
by the angels to the bosom of Abraham” (Luke 16:22). The total
incompatibility of this criterion with the official conception of
what Christianity is ought to have called the official conception
into question from head to foot—without the uncritical supposi-
tion that there is anything in the official conception not open to
discussion, even the conviction that Christianity is a religion. The
sole reason for the condemnation of the rich man (“You received
good things in your lifetime, and Lazarus, instead, bad things”) is
precisely the reason given in Luke 6:24: “Woe to you the rich;
because you have received your comfort.” The disjunction now is
between being able to accept Jesus, and being faithful to a “Chris-
tianity” that sets up a fundamental obstacle to the understanding
of the gospel. The theologians who question the authenticity of
the curse of the rich in the Sermon on the Mount have not taken
into account the fact that it says exactly the same thing as the
24 WHY COMMUNISM?

authentic parable on the rich man and the poor one.

Before we proceed, let us notice that at the end of the parable
Jesus says, by implication but with all clarity, that his condemna-
tion of wealth is the teaching of the Old Testament (“Moses and
the prophets”). The rich man asks that somebody go to warn his
brothers on earth, “so that they may not come to this place of
torment as well” (Luke 16:28). The answer is, “They have Moses
and the prophets” (Luke 16:29); “if they do not listen to Moses
and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises
from the dead” (Luke 16:31). This means: Anyone who reads the
Old Testament knows that (relative) wealth is immoral; if people
are so blind that they do not understand this moral reprobation
when they read it, they will not be convinced even if someone rises
from the dead. Jesus would have to say the same thing today with
regard to his own teachings in the New Testament.
Since the Old Testament condemnation of wealth is clear, it is
not a matter for wonderment that Luke 1:53 places it on the lips of
Jesus’ mother. Let us now join this text to Mark 10:25, Luke 6:20,
24, and the parable. It says, “He filled the hungry with good
things, and the rich he sent away with nothing.” It does not say
that he filled equally with good things the hungry and all the in-
habitants of the land—which is what a simple communist would
have to do after “tearing the rulers down from their thrones”
(Luke 1:52). It says he will fill the poor with good things and will
send the rich away without anything. The same principle is for-
mulated in Psalm 34:11: “The rich will be left poor and hungry.”
No one can take the Bible seriously without concluding that ac-
cording to it, the rich, for being rich, should be punished. Not to
admit them into the kingdom when the whole point is to establish
the kingdom, is clearly punishment. To commit them to torment,
as the parable teaches, is punishment. To deprive them of all their
goods and send them off with nothing is also punishment—for
the simple crime of being rich.
I can hear a cry of total indignation: “But why?” The entire
Bible is going to answer us, in its language, in the subsequent
sections of this chapter. But in this section, let us try to explain the
“why” in our modern language.
From the texts cited, it is inescapable that according to the Bible
there is no legitimate fashion of acquiring differentiating wealth.
WHY COMMUNISM? 25

Unless this moral thesis of economics is supposed, the punish-

ment of the rich in quantum rich will be altogether incomprehen-
sible. Ail these texts imply that only by illicit means is it possible to
reach a higher economic level than that of the majority of the
population. It is evident that “illicit” does not mean: by trans-
gressing the positive laws currently in force. The fact of legisla-
tion of nations authorizing means of acquiring wealth does not
make these means to be licit, does not make these means licit. If
there is anything of value in the Christian intellectual tradition it
is that the criterion of good and evil does not depend on current
laws or decrees or customs.
To be concrete, let us suppose that a big Mexican industrialist, a
bread manufacturer, wishes to explain his position to us. He leads
us to the top floor of the tallest building in his plant, and there,
through a large window, shows us the vast expanse of his
economic empire. “Look,” he tells us, “from there, what is now
Seventh Avenue, to Luis Vives Avenue (which I built), there used
to be nothing. Just meadowland. Do you understand? Before I
started all this there was nothing here. Now, after what I have
done—and because of what I have done—there is a whole plaza of
wealth here, the most prosperous firm in this city. Get it? Before I
built this there was nothing. Now there is wealth. The only con-
clusion is that I did it. And so it’s mine. Can I offer you some-
thing?”
You sure can. You can tell us what you mean by “There was
nothing.” There were at least three things in this country: raw
materials, labor, and market. If you had lacked even one of those
three things, not only would you not have been able to do any-
thing, you would not even have been able to have the idea.
The magnate interrupts us. “But I bought everything at a just
price! In other words, I acquired everything by contract, to which
both parties freely agreed!”
This is precisely the weak point of your reasoning. This is where
it falls apart. The only way you can acquire wealth is to buy cheap
and sell dear. You have no right to suppose that society accepted
your self-enrichment and that of your fellows of its own free will,
knowing that it remained subjected to the will and the constraint
of your capital. Let us take a closer look. The country folk who
sold you their wheat had no other alternative. Either they ac-
6 WHY COMMUNISM?

cepted the price you felt like offering, or their harvest would rot
and they would die of hunger. Of course they agreed to the various
contracts offered them—and congratulated themselves on having
found a buyer. But objectively you cannot speak of freedom of
contract when the only alternative is hunger and misery.
This is not an appeal to emotion. We are not being sentimental
about the suffering that goes on in the countryside. This is not
rhetoric but rational argumentation. The moralists of the estab-
lishment have completely passed over this fact: when I am threat-
ened with hunger and misery my acquiescence is not free. As far
as a valid or invalid contract is concerned they might as well be
threatening me with a pistol.
Next, the people who sell their labor, the workers, when con-
fronted with the employment offer you made them, had as their
only alternative unemployment, and the disasters of all kinds that
go hand-in-hand with unemployment. In other words either they
had to sign your contract regardless of its terms, or face hunger
and family disaster along with their wives and their children. It is
a grotesque joke to talk about a free work contract. Of course the
workers held a fiesta when they got steady work in your firm; but
in terms of strict morality it cannot be said that they freely agreed
when the alternative was hunger.
Note that I speak in the categories of the most traditional moral
philosophy. If the parties do not enter into the contract with
freedom and cognizance of cause, the contract is invalid, and all
its effects as well. Its effects are your wealth.
And as for the market, as for the consumer: no one ever asks us
whether we agree with the price of a loaf of bread. We pay for it or
abstain from it. Of course we are at liberty to eat cob-loaves or
candy bars. But we are not asked if we agree with the price of the
candy bar, either. Either we pay, or we abstain from eating it. Of
course we can always eat tortillas. But we aren’t asked if we freely
accept the price of the tortilla, either. And we do have to eat one of
the three things. This is not a matter for discussion; it is an organic
necessity. Where is the liberty?
The wealth you boast of could, and can, be acquired only by
millions of expressed or implied contracts: contracts of sale and
purchase of the raw materials, contracts of sale and purchase of
the labor, contracts of sale and purchase of the end product. The
WHY COMMUNISM? 27
only possible source of wealth is to make off with the difference.
Well, those contracts are invalid, because the consent of the
weaker party was affected either by the violent constraint of cir-
cumstances, or by radical ignorance of what he or she was doing
(an ignorance cultivated by the rants ba e

But evenpeenroint! y, it is
bein to supposethat sucicty, even
asa dled is willing to have a small group acquire, whether little
by little or all of a sudden, the power that henceforth will permit it
to impose its will on the whole of society. Or if it did give its
consent, it is evident that it did not know what it was doing, that
someone defrauded it by concealing from it the true significance
of the facts. And fraud or ignorance suffices to invalidate a con-
tract.
Perhaps our industrialist will object, “But I bought the raw
materials and the labor at market value, and I sold my bread at
market value at the price at which bread is sold in this part of the
country.”
I answer, in the first place this has absolutely nothing to do with
the moral plane which is the basis of our discussion. The contracts
were not signed by both parties freely. The price of the labor in the
labor market is imposed on the worker, just as both of the other
prices are imposed on the weaker party.
But in the second place (and here is where we touch the systemic
nerve of the question—right here is where the medieval doctrine
of the just price betrays its superficiality, and at the same time
unmasks itself as part of the establishment), as we were saying,
the market value is imposed on the weaker party. The market
value must always be the one that allows merchants and managers
to take a profit. This, according to the medieval doctrine, is the
“just price” —the one that permits “each person to live according
to his social position.” Naturally, it is supposed that there ought to
be various social positions. But the differentiating social position
of the rich can exist only to the extent that they take a profit. In
other words, when we suppose that there is a just price we are
committing the fallacy of begging the question—by presupposing
that there is a legitimate manner of acquiring differentiating
wealth. This is precisely what the Bible denies. None of the means
28 WHY COMMUNISM?

of acquisition can be legitimate, because the terms of the contract

the
are necessarily imposed on the weaker party, which invalidates
contract together with all its effects.
The establishment ideologues, like the Chicago Boys and, ear-
lier, the whole classical school of economics, have deliberately
generated confusion as to who determines prices—so that the ex-
ploited may believe the prices determine themselves all on their
own, or are determined by some kind of natural causes, some-
what as if they were determined by God and hence beyond appeal.
But in a mercantile economy, the market price is necessarily the
one which allows capital to take a profit. Otherwise capital is not
invested. Hence it is the rich, and no one else, who determine the
market price.
If there were true freedom and cognizance of cause, the
workers would refuse to work unless they were guaranteed the
same standard of living as that of their employers. And differen-
tiating wealth would be done away with automatically.
Our mogul objects again. “But if there is going to be an ex-
change of merchandise, there has to be some just price.”
I reply: Now that is just the point. What is in question is
whether a system can legitimately exist whose resources and pro-
ductive activity are intended for exchange—when it is possible to
establish a system whose resources and productive activity are
destined exclusively for the satisfaction of the needs of the popu-
lation. The former system necessarily involves the forcible impo-
sition on the weaker party to the contract of such a price as will
permit the stronger party to acquire differentiating wealth. This is
nothing but the systematic exploitation of some persons by
others. The moralists of the establishment have passed over the
fact that my contractual agreement is not free when I am threat-
ened with hunger—because they consider this threat to be a natu-
ral one, simply the necessity we are all under to work for a living.
But the necessity we are all under is to work for the satisfaction of
needs, not to work to make some rich at the poets of :
 WHY COMMUNISM? 29

uct, does not add anything to it.In no way is it legitimate to re-

move a part of the product in order thereby to remunerate an
activity which has contributed nothing to its value. But the real
question is whether a system ought to exist in which anyone has to
take risks, when we can produce exactly the same goods in a sys-
tem without individual investment and without anyone’s risk. To
defend the former system you must either be masochistically in
love of risk—or merely seeking a pretext for making differentiat-
ing wealth look honest. In actual fact it is uncritically supposed
legitimate—and gets the post-factum message of either the “risk”
sophistry or some other specious “justification.”
The deep undercurrent, running along beneath the surface
energies that are its corollary, is the fixed idea that differentiating
wealth is an indisputable given. This is the mere historical contin-
uation of the notion that some are born to be masters and others
to be slaves, that some are born for a higher standard of living and
others for a lower. This is why the Bible directly attacks differen-
tiating wealth. Where a determinate kind of work is concerned,
the first thing that has to be clarified is whether it is necessary or
unnecessary. If it is unnecessary it should be eliminated. But if it is
necessary, nothing and no one can legitimate the punishing of the
' one who performs it with a lower living standard.
Another empty pretext, like the risk pretext, is to say that the
capitalist contributes to production by doing mental work. Ac-
tually, as Frank Cunningham says well, capitalists have no work
to do at all, neither mental nor manual, if they so wish, for they
can hire others to do it.
The greater part of their “mental work” contributes nothing to
the effective production of the goods, but consists in thinking up
ways to “kite” negotiables, ways to create artificial needs for the
consumer, ways to squeeze more labor out of the work force, ways
to carry on commerce more effectively, to drive out the competi-
tion, and the like. Or, in the case where their mental work does
indeed contribute to production, this is but the contribution of
one person among the many whose contribution and toil are nec-
essary, in combination, to make a product. They should receive
30 WHY COMMUNISM?

appropriate wages in remuneration, like the others.

‘As nothing justifies penalizing certain necessary types of labor
with an inferior standard of living, it ought to be obvious that the
alleged legitimacy of differentiating wealth is a mere historical
prolongation of the slave mentality that says some are born to live
better than others. This is indubitably how the authors of the Bi-
ble, and Jesus with them, perceived the affair. Hence their impla-
cable condemnation of differentiating wealth. W1 unism?
m cons

2. The Spurious Origin of All Wealth

As we have seen, Mark 10:25, Luke 6:20, 24, 16:19-31, 1:53

necessarily imply that there can be no legitimate means of ac-
quiring differentiating wealth, since there is no other explanation
for the castigation of the rich for the sole fact of being rich. But
according to Jesus the same condemnation of wealth as such is to
be found in the Old Testament (cf. Luke 16:29, 31). We must look
into this. The material is so obvious and abundant that it will
show us the prodigies of tergiversation and voluntary blindness
that the theologians and exegetes, and even the translators of the
Bible, have had to deploy in order to muffle a book whose soli-
tary intent was to change the world and eliminate injustice.
The evangelists borrow their terminology from the Greek
translation of the Old Testament worked out in the second cen-
tury B.C. by the legendary Seventy Translators—hence the name
Septuagint (“seventy”) Translation. In Greek, wealth is called
ploittos; a rich person is a plousios; and to grow rich is ploutéo or
ploutizo. This group of words, this root, appears in the Sep-
tuagint some 180 times: seventy-six times it translates the Hebrew
root ‘ashar, fourteen times the Hebrew root hhail, seven times
hamon, six times hon; and the other occurrences are mistransla-
tions, or are found in portions of the Old Testament which were
not written in Hebrew.
Even the quantitative distribution of the occurrences of the
root plout- is noteworthy: six times in the Pentateuch, nine times
in the premonarchical historical books—very few occurrences.
The barrage comes in the historical books of the monarchy, in the
WHY COMMUNISM? 31

Prophets, in the Psalms, and in the sapiential books. Hauck and

Kasch give a pretty fair explanation: “In ancient Israel, as in
Homer’s world, there were famines (Gen. 41 ff.), but no social
question” (TWNT 6:321). To putitmore precisely: The historical
fact is that in primitive Israel there were no social contrasts, that
is, there was no differentiating wealth. This is why there is so little
talk of wealth. Indeed it is even praised, for it is the wealth of the
whole people—in Deuteronomy 28:1-14, for example. By con-
trast, the moment we set foot on the historical terrain of differen-
tiating wealth, the condemnation of the rich as such is a central
theme, without any loopholes, in the authentic Old Testament tra-
dition—that is, until the era of the Hellenistic influence in the
sapiential books.
A massive fact, which exegesis has not dared to take a close
look at, is the identity between the “rich” (‘eshir) and the “un-
just” (resha‘); the connection is so close that many times the sa-
cred authors do not even have to say “the rich” —it is enough to
say “the unjust.”
We can document this identity by examining Isaiah 53:9. The
first two stichs of this verse constitute a “synonymic parallelism”
(typical of and very frequent in the Bible), and the last two make
up another one.

They placed his tomb with the unjust,

and his sepulchre with the rich,
although he committed no oppression
and had no fraud in his mouth.

The reader readily perceives how natural the synonymity is in the

mind of the author, how extreme is the degree of mutual implica-
tion obtaining between the rich and the unjust. The plain, unen-
cumbered fact confronting Isaiah is that the servant of Yahweh
has been buried in the cemetery of the rich, and not in the squalid
potters’ field where the poor buried their dead. This seems to
Isaiah to be an indignity—because the servant had never commit-
ted either oppression or fraud, which, by definition, are charac-
teristics of the rich. The synonymic parallelism consists in ex-
pressing the same idea twice, but in different words the second
time from the first.
The escapist maneuver was initiated by the later editors of the
32 WHY COMMUNISM?

Hebrew Bible themselves. They could not modify the hard text,
for they would have been accused of falsifying. But in a footnote
they propose that the text is suspected of having been corrupted in
the course of the centuries, and they try to get us to read ‘osse ra‘
instead of ‘ashir, which is what is in the text. Thus we would have
“evil-doer” instead of “rich person,” and the identity would be
between the unjust and the evil-doers instead of between the un-
just and the rich. It seems to have slipped the editors’ minds that
there are no special cemeteries for evil-doers. What does the
reader think of the ingenuity the establishment must have had to
employ in order to go on considering the Bible to be its sacred
book without being continually set on its ear by encountering that
the rich are condemned for the fact of being rich?
Claus Westermann’s translation, in the influential ATD collec-
tion, also translates “evil-doers,” and is rid of the problems. The
Zurich Bible, which is the most popular German translation, also
gives “evil-doers”—and does not even give an explanation. The
New English Bible, which is the best English translation (Oxford
and Cambridge), substitutes “a burial-place among the refuse of
mankind” for ‘“‘and his sepulchre with the rich” —and thus like-
wise effects the disappearance of the synonymity between rich
and unjust. The Spanish translation of Nacar-Colunga, likewise,
puts “evil-doers” where the text of Isaiah says “rich.” Alonso and
Mateos do the same. Bover-Cantera says “the corrupt” in place of
“the rich.” Cosmetic surgery at every turn. May I be permitted to
take advantage of this opportunity to ask the reader not to trust
published translations. In this book all biblical citations are trans-
lated directly from the original.
Many Old Testament commentators have dedicated hundreds
of pages to the problem that exists for the sacred authors in the
fact that the unjust (resha ‘im) are happy and enjoy prosperity and
God does not intervene to punish them. But these theologians
have focused the whole problem badly and have misunderstood it
from the beginning, as we shall see in the early part of the follow-
ing section. The sacred authors know that all differentiating
wealth is ill-gotten, that it has necessarily been obtained by de-
spoiling and oppressing the rest of the population, and that there-
fore to be rich is to be unjust. They sigh for Yahweh to intervene
and reestablish justice by despoiling the despoilers. For the sacred
authors, the problem of evil is a social problem.
WHY COMMUNISM? 33

But now we come to the central theme of the Old Testament.

Let it not be thought that when Amos attacks “those who accu-
mulate rapine and spoil in their mansions” (Amos 3:10) he is re-
ferring to certain rich persons in’particular, determinate individ-
uals who in order to enrich themselves have committed some
special act of extortion or fraud which other rich persons do not
commit. These fantasies have been theology’s dishonest resort.
The plain reality confronting Amos is the mansions and palaces
of the rich of the city. That simple fact, and nothing else, is the
target of Amos’ invective. Neither does Isaiah 53:9 refer to the
tombs of certain rich persons in particular. When Amos says “ra-
pine and spoil,” he is speaking of a// differentiating wealth. He is
defining wealth. There is not a single datum in the texts to justify
the supposition that he is alluding to certain rich persons in parti-
cular, or to certain ways of acquiring wealth as contrasted with
others. It is ludicrous for theology to attempt to reduce all these
prophetic diatribes to the anecdotic—to “special circumstances.”
If there were any such special circumstances is it not perfectly
obvious that the text would have clearly delineated them in order
to justify the prophet’s rage and fury? Here escapist theology’s
method pushes the limits of the unscientific. As if an author could
appeal to special circumstances without being obliged to say what
they were!
The same occurs with Jeremiah 6:6-7, where Jerusalem is
described as follows.

All is oppression in her midst.

As a spring gushes with its waters,
so does she gush with her evil.
“Rapine, spoil!” is the cry within her,
ceaselessly sorrow and hurt before me.

Neither in text nor context is there a single datum to permit us to

conjecture that at the moment of this vehement denunciation
there are any special violent acts of extortion being committed in
the city, of a crueler quality than the ordinary. If there were, the
Book of Jeremiah would have listed them—as in fact it always
does when concerned with some particular incident, in order
plausibly to introduce the crashing jeremiad of indignation. What
the prophet sees in Jerusalem is merely the “normal” life of a city,
34 WHY COMMUNISM?
in which the rich become richer and the poor continue in their
misery. Jeremiah calls this oppression rapine and spoil.
The case is just the same with Habakkuk 1:3-4, where the
prophet complains to God:

Why do you make me look at iniquity,

and I have to witness harrassment,
and violent oppression and spoliation, before my eyes?
Quarreling and wrangling spring up;
for law is disappearing,
and right never appears.
The unjust man corners, traps the just one:
plainly, this is a twisted rightness!

Once again, neither text nor context provides any basis for the
attribution of this fusillade to any “special situation.” What Ha-
bakkuk sees before him is the ordinary life of a city like Jerusa-
lem. This ordinary functioning of the city the prophet calls
“violent oppression and spoliation.” What is really right, he says,
never appears: the unjust person has the just person in a corner,
and what appears is “twisted rightness,” or distorted legality.
Plainly, this “twisted rightness” is the official legality of ex-
ploitation, the “free” contractual agreement the weak and impo-
tent enter into because they have no other remedy. No one has
managed plausibly to interpret the “cornering” to mean anything
else. Hence, to declare that what is happening is that the unjust
man is surrounding the just one with false witnesses and other
lackeys (Karl Elliger) is to miss the whole broad point of the
prophet’s denunciation, and to leave verse 4 disconnected from
the “spoliation” of verse 3. The “cornering” and false legality
(the “twisted rightness”) produce the spoliation as their effect.
The efforts of the commentators are directed toward the discov-
ery of some rare and special situation, while the broad intent of
the text is evident from the words “and right never appears.” It
seeks to describe a situation that is constant.
What we have seen in the preceding texts is equally verified in
Ezekiel 45:9 and Isaiah 59:7, 60:18: the rapine and spoliation de-
nounced here likewise cannot, except by unbridled whim, be at-
tributed to any peculiar situations or to some great and anony-
WHY COMMUNISM? 35
mous oppressors. When there are questions of particular inci-
dents or persons, the prophetic books point these out. The
Prophets have been read without the wish to understand them—
with the desire instead that what is read not apply to the reader.
This is why it comes to mind to guess at some very particular
crime against which the prophet’s volley is being discharged—
without saying what it is.
Equally condemnatory of the ordinary life of a city, that is, of
the ordinary enrichment of the rich, is Amos 5:7, 11, which refers
to the same travesty of right and law which we have just seen in
Habakkuk:

. Who convert right into bitterness,

and drag justice in the dust. .
Therefore, because you trample down the poor man,
and extort portions of his wheat—
you build houses of ashlar
but you shall not dwell in them,
you have planted select vineyards
but you shall not drink their wine.

Ashlar houses mean rich people’s houses. The reason the rich can
construct magnificent dwellings is that they trample the poor
and gradually take the bread out of their mouths. Besides, if
we observe what is said in Genesis 43:34, the noun masse’et
should be translated in the dictionaries as “small portion,” and
not simply “portion.” Amos analyzes, with perfect perspicacity,
the source of differentiating wealth: it is accumulated by continu-
ously depriving the poor of a small portion of their income. The
rich have been able to erect their mansions precisely and solely by
permanently sucking away at the quality of life of the poor. Natu-
rally everything is done in perfect legality—hence Amos says they
convert right, or law, into bitterness. In the section just above we
saw that prices are imposed on the population in such a way as to
insure that capital can obtain continuous profit—whether it is a
question of the price of the raw material, or of the labor, or of the
product sold to the consumer. We anticipated this analysis in the
foregoing section for a reason: the prophets make the same anal-
ysis in different words. The diminutions of the wheat of the poor
36 WHY COMMUNISM?

(“portions,” v. 11) cannot be separated, however much routine

exegesis may wish to do so, from the “right converted into bitter-
ness” (v. 7): the spoliation operation is the legal, habitual one—
the one carried out on a daily basis with the approval of law and
custom.
It is signally impossible to anecdotize this verse of Amos. No
one can think that the rich had armed servants making continual
incursions upon the houses of the poor and divesting each person
of only little portions of wheat—entirely apart from the fact that
this would not be in conformity with, but in transgression of the
law of the land. Hans Walter Wolff, the most prestigious of the
commentators of Amos and Hosea, when he comes to the prob-
lem of “situating” Amos 5:1-17, simply admits defeat: “Of none
of the statements of Amos in this section can it be said with preci-
sion where it was uttered” (Biblischer Kommentar, X1V/2:275).
What is curious is that exegesis thinks it has to go in search of the
particular, when it is the manifest intent of the prophet to describe
and condemn a state of affairs that is general and constant.
There is not the least likelihood of truth in the exegesis which
translates masse’et as “tribute” in this text, with the insidious
intent of interpreting Amos’ diatribe to be directed exclusively
against rulers. The only two texts which the dictionaries can cite in
favor of this translation (which would get the rich off the hook)
are Ezekiel 20:40 and 2 Chronicles 24:6, 9; but both of these texts
are concerned with portions brought to Yahweh in a sacred of-
fering. This noun never denotes a civil tax. Accordingly, it is un-
scientific (and escapist) to translate it as “tribute.”
The “little portions of his wheat” of Amos 5:11 can only con-
sist in the underpayment of the workers, the short measure to the
consumer through high prices, and the take of the big business-
man, who buys the dey oesharvest which aaa farmers are

5 rong F ) th act aang Rive te avec Al

tio ot ene 5:I 11 WiBuitd nae to invent, for its own sake and
without textual basis, a whole novel about armed attacks of the
rich on the homes of the poor—incursions which would have the
unprecedented characteristic of not sacking the reserves of wheat,
but of delicately removing just a little portion.
WHY COMMUNISM? 37
And lest there occur to anyone the subterfuge of imagining that
the rich of Jerusalem deserved Amos’ barrage because they were
particularly perverse in their methods of acquiring wealth, it is
worth noting that Amos 5:7, 11 is pronounced against Sichem, or
Samaria.
Micah 2:1-2, as well, is concerned with explaining the general
origin of wealth. For this purpose it employs the verb ‘ashaq,
which signifies, with complete precision, violently to seize what is
another’s, to oppress, to harass a weak person by snatching away
what should be his or hers. (See this verb in Mal. 3:5; Ezek. 18: 18,
22:29; Lev. 6:2-4, 19:13; 1 Sam. 12:3-4; Ps. 105:14; Jer. 7:6; Hos.
5:11, 12:8; Amos 4:1; Jer. 21:12; Ps. 72:4; and so on.) The verb
strictly denotes exploitation. Micah 2:1-2 says,

Woe to those who contrive iniquity,

who scheme evil on their beds
and carry it out at the crack of dawn
because it is in the power of their hands.
Fields they covet they snatch away,
houses, they sweep away;
they exploit the man and his house,
the human being and his inheritance.

Unless we invent romances to detour the message to the anec-

dotic, the bare fact confronting Micah is the ordinary acquistion
of wealth by some and the consequent impoverishment of the
others. Consider this other condemnation, formulated in Isaiah
Si8:

Woe to those who hoard up house on house,

and link field to field
till they occupy the whole place,
and there they are alone in the middle of the land!

The actual, plain fact to which this reprobation refers is exactly

the same as Micah was focusing on: the rich keep acquiring prop-
erty. According to the prophets this fact can only be explained by
the exploitation and violence perpetrated by the rich upon the rest
of the population. Note that both of these texts immediately con-
tinue with the annihilating punishment sent by Yahweh (Mic.
38 WHY COMMUNISM?

2:3-4; Isa. 5:9-10). This means that both of these texts consider
the simple acquision of wealth by the rich to be criminal. In both it
is obvious that there is no question of methods of growing rich
that are especially perverse, like the falsification of documents or
the murder of legitimate proprietors. What is criminal is simply
the accumulation of one house after another, the collection of one
piece of land after another—that is, the acquisition of wealth (dif-
ferentiating wealth, it must be remembered). Christ knew very
well what he was saying in the answer the rich man received in the
parable. The condemnation of the rich is clear in the prophets,
and in the Old Testament in general. And notice the synonymic
parallelism of Psalm 62:10:

Confide not in exploitation,

and make no illusions about spoliation;
place not your heart in the wealth that grows great.

The wealth that grows great, or the acquisition of wealth, is syn-

onymous with the spoliation and the exploitation. It is perfectly
well known to the authors of the Old Testament that no one can
acquire wealth without quietly despoiling and exploiting the rest
of the population. It can only be owing to an immense toil of
ideology and falsification that in the West a conviction which is so
central and so evident for the Bible can have been buried and
forgotten.
Jeremiah 5:27-28, too, tells us how the wealth of the rich origi-
nates.

Like cages filled with birds,

so are their houses full of what they have taken by fraud:
this is how they have become great and rich.
Fat and sleek they have grown;
they went beyond words of evil:
they did no justice, they trod upon the rights of orphans,
they respected not the justice of the poor.

One cannot ask for anything more explicit. Wealth is acquired by

defrauding the rest of the population, by trampling justice and
the rights of the poor under foot. The only reality, the naked fact
WHY COMMUNISM? 39

which Jeremiah has before him as he launches this invective, is the

houses of the rich, the wealth of the rich. It is altogether clear that
no other objective datum forms the occasion of these invectives.
And we could quote a dozen moré. It is perverse of the exegetes to
prefer to “explain” them by the “innate rusticity” of these indi-
viduals called prophets, who could not bear the sight of abun-
dance and luxury without exploding in insults. To refute this “‘ex-
planation” all we need is to point out that the prophets specify the
spoliation of the poor, fraud, and injustice as the only possible
source of the wealth; hence their indignation is moral—pure in-
dignation at injustice. It is strange that these exegetes call them-
selves Christians, when it is an established fact (see Section 1,
above) that Christ made this prophetic condemnation of wealth
his own.
The reason why these conscience-tranquillizing theologians
have not felt themselves annihilated by these unequivocal pro-
phetic condemnations is that they have invented the notion that
they refer to some special group of rich persons, who have com-
mitted, in a determined moment and place, acts of fraud and out-
rage which are not the ordinary manner of acquiring wealth. The
subterfuge is scientifically insupportable. It is as if the biblical
condemnations of lechery and adultery could be nullified by pos-
tulating that they refer to certain particular individuals who have
committed lecheries and adulteries that were especially perverse.
‘It is as if the condemnation of murder alluded to certain historical
homicides which were invested with special malice. If the resort of
anecdotization is legitimate, if one can appeal to special circum-
stances without indicating what they are, then the Bible can teach
us absolutely nothing. It turns into a strange book of vague anec-
dotes (since no one is willing to specify the concrete circum-
stances) in an unusual collection of historical curiosities—whose
insertion into real history, moreover, has yet to be effectuated.
No, what Jeremiah had before his eyes when he pronounced the
words we have cited was the “normal” spectacle of the wealth of
the minority of the population in contrast with the situation of the
majority. Of this wealth, as such, he asserts that it is acquired on
the basis of systematic injustice and spoliation.
Why communism? Let us see whether anticommunists under-
stand the reasons. Because any other system is strictly immoral.
40 WHY COMMUNISM?

s
Because any other system consists in the forcible and ceaseles
spoliation of the majority by those who live on a superior level,
convinced that the rest were born as inferior beings. Why are the
rich punished for no other crime than that of being rich? Because
the very fact that they do not perceive that they live on spoil is due
to the contempt that prevents them from understanding that the
work and toil of everyone else confers upon them too exactly the
same right to live well. Because the rich are the historical heirs of
the masters of a slave society, though the juridical formalities
have changed. Why is Lazarus rewarded without any merits ex-
cept being poor? Because creation, as it has historically devel-
oped, has penalized him without any particular guilt of his own.
He did not ask to come into the world. It is the fault of the rich
that his right to live well has been pitilessly ground into the dust by
the wheel of creation which God set in motion. Theology has been
a deceit—for not having dared to read the Prophets and Jesus
Christ.
The numerous prophetical descriptions of wealth are, all of
them, condemnatory. Not all of them explicitly assert (as the ones
mentioned do, along with Mic. 3:9-11, Amos 2:6-8, etc.) that
wealth is acquired by spoliation and fraud and injustice, but all of
them condemn wealth. And this implies that they consider it ill
gained, without exception and on principle. They have no need to
investigate the rich person’s biography in every case. They have
no need to examine the history of the concrete fortune in ques-
tion. They know that no differentiating wealth can be acquired
without spoliation and fraud.
Certain establishment scripture scholars give the perverse insin-
uation of rusticity a twist that at first sight is more acceptable.
They say that the prophets are simply longing for the simplicity of
Israel’s life in the desert when Yahweh delivered them from Egypt.
At best this is an atrocious superficiality. The motive of the
prophets is their clear understanding of the injustice committed
by the rich. Their moral analysis is so explicit that to attempt to
distract us with the notion of nostalgia is simply comical—espe-
cially since we know that the sojourn in the desert had taken place
five Or six centuries before and that none of the prophets, or
grandfathers of the prophets, was there. The reason the prophets
refer to the desert generations is that in those times there was no
WHY COMMUNISM? 41

differentiating wealth among the people of Israel. What certain

prophets are evoking is this: a society without social contrasts,
without social classes. f
In spite of their participation in this baseless intimation of nos-
talgia, Hauck and Kasch make the following objective observa-
tion on the prophets’ critique of the class society. Their comment
is valid in itself, and can serve to conclude our treatment of the
prophets.

But these repeated attacks of the Prophets on the upper

class (Jer. 5:26-31; Ezek. 22:6-13; Amos 3:10, 5:7-12) are
stereotyped, that is, they are not directed against individuals
but against the class as such. This is also demonstrated by
the predictions of calamity which they likewise direct, not
against the individuals, but against the group (cf. Isa.
3:1ff., 3:16-4:1; Jer. 5:26-31; Ezek. 22:24-31; Amos
§:7-12; Mic. 2:1-11), and expressly include the rich. These
will be cast into hell together with all the opulence and splen-
dor of Jerusalem (Isa. 5:14); the wealth of the rich will van-
ish like dust (Isa. 29:5); the rich city will lie devastated and
deserted (Isa. 32:12ff.); the women of the upper classes will
be stripped of their social position (Isa. 32:9-12) [TWNT
6:322 (emphasis added)].

To have to call the prophetical reprobations stereotyped because

they impugn the social class and not the individuals is a prejudice
of Hauck and Kasch; and in the texts they cite there is nothing
stereotypical. But the very fact that the condemnation of wealth
in the Old Testament occasionally does become stereotyped indis-
putably demonstrates the Old Testament’s conviction that dif-
ferentiating wealth cannot be acquired by legitimate means.

3. The Problem of Evil: A Social Problem

The poor did not ask to come into the world. Their sufferings,
deprivations, and humiliations are completely unmerited. Since it
was God who set in motion the machinery of creation, God ought
to feel a certain responsibility, even though it is the rich who are at
fault for the injustice committed against the poor. “Never forget
42 WHY COMMUNISM?
the life of your poor,” the Psalmist tells Yahweh (74: 19). It is this
theology of responsibility for creation that the commentators
forget when they devote so many pages to the problem of evil. The
poor person has a right before Yahweh by the mere fact of being
poor: “Hear me, Yahweh, and answer me because I am poor and
needy” (Ps. 86:1).
Psalm 37, which these commentators consider perhaps the
most typical of those concerned with the problem of evil, by no
means treats only of the fact that the unjust (i.e., the rich) prosper.
This is only half the problem. Just as much if not more emphasis
is placed on the necessity that the poor take possession of the
earth: “And the lowly shall become the lords of the earth” (v. 11),
“the just shall inherit the earth” (v. 29), “he shall lift you up to
take possession of the earth” (v. 34). It is astonishing that the
commentators do not take into account that it is the poor who are
speaking in the passages they cite. With their mentality, light years
removed from an identification with the poor, naturally they have
missed the whole thing. The problem is that the rich have seized
the earth and are not permitting the rest of the population to live.
But since, to these commentators, the mere mention of class
struggle appears as an abomination, they have unscientifically de-
cided to isolate the question as if it were chemically pure: the
wicked prosper.
They forget that “wicked,” or “unjust” (resha‘im), is simply
another designation for the rich, as is demonstrated in Isaiah
53:9, which we studied at the beginning of Section 2, above.
Otherwise it would be quite a coincidence that it is precisely the
unjust who prosper. Psalm 49, viewed by these commentators as
another of the most typical psalms concerned with the problem of
evil, does not say, “Fear not when the unjust grow rich,” but it
says:

Fear not when man grows rich,

when the opulence of his house waxes [Ps. 49:16].

The problem is not the one that exegesis has thought—that pre-
cisely the wicked or unjust grow rich (what a coincidence! )—but
that any particular persons at all grow rich. These are called
wicked or unjust precisely because they do grow rich, because, as
everybody knows, all differentiating wealth is the fruit of injus-
 WHY COMMUNISM? 43
tice and spoliation. This is why the psalm says “Fear not when
man grows rich,”
Chapter 20 of Job, which according to these commentators
competes with Psalm 37 in point of being typical, leaves no room
for doubt as to what the wickedness of the wicked consists in:

Because he oppressed the poor, and left them in the lurch,

[therefore] he stole houses instead of building them.
[Job 20:19]

It is the same description the prophets make of the wealth of the

rich. Accordingly it is not that the wickedness of the wicked con-
sists first in something else and afterwards that they grow rich into
the bargain, but that their wickedness consists in their growing
rich, since the acquisition of wealth is possible only by oppressing
and exploiting the poor. And so the same chapter says

Their children will have to make restitution to the poor,

their hands will have to return their riches... .
He returns his profit unswallowed,
he enjoys not the fruit of his commerce [Job 20:10, 18].

If they must make restitution it is because they have robbed the

poor. The problem is not simply that they acquire wealth, as if the
' wealth came out of nowhere. To the letter, verse 19 says what we
have just transcribed: the rich did not build their houses; they
stole them—by the method of oppressing and exploiting the poor
and then abandoning them. Let us look again at Psalm 37, the one
that is the most characteristic. Just as Psalm 49 does not say,
“When the wicked grow rich,” but “When man grows rich,” so
Psalm 37 does not say, “Do not be indignant when the unjust
prosper,” but “Do not be indignant against the one who pros-
pers” (v. 7). And just as Job 20 explains the opulence of the rich
by the oppression of the poor, so Psalm 37 relates the prosperity
of some to the fact that they draw the sword “to cut down the
poor and needy” (v. 14). No one who has read the prophets can
doubt that these passages are simply descriptions of the rich—not
of some wicked persons or other whose malice consists in some
other thing.
Keep in mind that I am citing precisely those parts of the Bible
44 WHY COMMUNISM?
that the commentators recognize as documents concerned with
the problem of evil. Another is Chapter 24 of Job. And here we
are astounded all over again. It is an implacable description of the
exploitation suffered by the poor at the hands of the rich, and it
even specifies the laborers who with their feet “press the wine, but
themselves suffer thirst” (v. 11); “‘in the field they cut the master’s
fodder and harvest the vineyard of the unjust one”’ (v. 6); “they go
naked, without clothing, and bear the sheaves while they starve”
(v. 10). The complaint of this chapter is against those who “lead
off the orphans’ donkey and take the widow’s ox in security” (v.
3), so that “all the poor of the earth go hide” (v. 4). The fact that
exegesis has not seen that it is the rich who are being accused in
this chapter is the last straw indeed. The description of the situa-
tion of the workmen includes no features that could arouse the
suspicion that their employers are peculiarly wicked in any special
sense of this word. What the poor are suffering is ordinary ex-
ploitation. And if this chapter, by the consensus of the exegetes, is
characteristic of the problem of evil, then the problem of evil is
simply the social problem in its purest expression. Otherwise it
would be too much of a coincidence that none of these documents
is able to speak of the “wicked” without mentioning the poor by
contrast. Evidently the wicked are the rich.
Now let us broaden our crucial search for the identity of the
resha‘im by extending it throughout the Psalter, beyond the parts
usually recognized as documents of the problem of evil. Inas-
much as the word sadiqim (“just [ones]”) or its singular occurs
fifty-two times in the Psalter, as against eighty-two occurrences of
resha‘im or its singular, in Marx and the Bible | proposed translat-
ing the latter by “the unjust,” although in the present book I have
used “unjust” and “wicked” indifferently. It can surely be said
that the Psalter presents a struggle of the just against the unjust.
But a good number of commentators (Weiser and Kraus, to name
just two) and translations (e.g., the German of Zurich and the
Dutch of Amsterdam) have found the trick of translating
resha‘im as “atheists” —an ingenious expedient for converting
the struggle into a war against irreligion when it is actually a war
against the rich. I am not saying that resha‘im means “rich.” It
means “unjust.” What I am saying is that the Bible calls the rich
unjust.
WHY COMMUNISM? 45
The commentators and translators just mentioned base their
choice, precariously, upon two passages. Psalm 10:4 places these
words on the lips of the unjust: “By no means will he come to
investigate; there is no God.” And Psalm 14 (:53): v. 1, asserts:
“The nabal [foolish person] says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ ”
The first thing we have to ask is why they do not translate nabal
as “atheist” every time the word appears, while they do say
“atheist” here when the word resha‘im appears. But very well,
these are peccadillos. In the second place, if lechers or murderers
say there is no God, this is not sufficient grounds for asserting
that the meaning of the word “lecher” is “atheist,” or that the
meaning of the word “murderer” is “atheist.”” This demonstrates
that the translation mentioned is unfounded and tendentious.
But in the third place, if we are meticulous about it, the
resha‘im and nabal are not even atheists. In Psalm 10, which men-
tions the resha ‘im in verses 2, 3, 13, and 15, we read in verse 11:
“He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has his face covered,
he can never see anything.’ ” In Psalm 73, which refers to the
resha‘im in verses 3 and 11, we find: ‘“‘They say, ‘How is God to
know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ ” And in Zepha-
niah 1:12, “. . . Who say in their heart, ‘Yahweh works neither
good nor evil.’ ” In Psalm 94:7: “And they say, ‘Yahweh does not
see it, the God of Jacob does not realize.’ ” In Job 21:14: “They
say to God, then: ‘Go away from us, we have no wish to know
your ways.’ ” As the reader sees, not only is there no documentary
basis for translating resha‘im by the word “atheists,” but the doc-
umentary basis obliges one to assert that they are not atheists.
They deny that God can see and punish their crimes, and they
even address God. Psalm 14 (-53) refers to the nabal (foolish one).
And as for Psalm 10, since the resha‘im say in the same breath
that there is no way he will come to investigate, one cannot read
too much into the statement that there is no God. At most, one
will have to assert that at times they are, or some of them are,
atheists. But taking everything into account, the question is su-
perfluous, since even if all the unjust were atheists this would not
be the same as the word “unjust” meaning “atheist.” There are no
limits to the arbitrary methods utilized by the establishment in its
escape from the Bible.
Let us proceed. Against two or three Psalmic texts thematizing
46 WHY COMMUNISM?

the vertical relationship of the resha ‘im with God, any reader can
cite two hundred describing these persons in their horizontal rela-
tionship with their neighbor. When the question arises how to
translate the actual term, this is the fact which is decisive. There-
fore to translate it too as “sinners” is totally unfounded and es-
capist. Of course they are sinners. But the fact that, for example,
all torturers are sinners does not authorize us to say that the mean-
ing of the word “torturer” is “sinner.” There is a very precise
word for “sinner” in the Bible: hhote, from the root Ahata, “to
sin.”
The horizontal relationship just mentioned brings us back to
our thesis that it is precisely the rich whom the Bible calls “un-
just.” When Psalm 14:4 says that the unjust “devour the people,”
and Proverbs 30:14 that they “gobble up the needy from the
earth, and the poor from among humanity,” since no one can
think there is any question of cannibalism, who can it be who eat
up the poor but the rich? See Micah 3:3 and Habakkuk 1:13.
Unless we manage to imagine, without any foundation, some
“special circumstances” or other, what the Psalmist has before
him is the ordinary life of a city, or of a society, in which some are
rich and others are poor. The “devouring” metaphor refers to the
habitual exploitation of the poor by the rich. Thus it becomes
clear whom the Psalter has in mind when it speaks of the unjust.
Likewise, when Psalm 35:10 says to Yahweh, ‘“‘You who deliver
the poor from the one stronger than he, the poor and the needy
from the one who despoils them,” who must be the one stronger
than the poor? By definition, one who is not poor. Clearly, the
Psalter divides society into two classes—the poor, and those who
are stronger than the poor. This verse asserts that the latter class
“despoils” the former. The identification of the unjust with the
rich could not have been made more evident.
Attention should be paid to the fact that it is the same idea that
is expressed in Psalm 82:4 as in Psalm 35:10, but in these words:
“Deliver the poor and the needy, save them from the hand of the
resha‘im,” and that this formulation recurs innumerable times in
the Psalter. Society is divided into two classes: on one side are the
poor, and on the other those who are stronger than the poor and
are called resha‘im. To fantasize special incidents is capricious
and invalid. If the Psalter is focusing on the ordinary life of a
 WHY COMMUNISM? 47

society, the resha ‘im can be no one but the rich. I repeat, by defi-
nition: those stronger than the poor are those who are not poor.
Psalm 10:14-15 tells Yahweh, “The poor man abandons him-
self to you, you succor the orphan; break the arm of the unjust
and wicked man.” Since no one can think that the unjust are phys-
ically attacking the poor man and the orphan, as this would be to
fall into the anecdotic, the passage must be begging Yahweh for
protection from an aggression which is habitual against the poor.
And this can only be the customary exploitation carried out by the
rich.
The whole Psalter is concerned with aggression against the
orphan (Ps. 10:14-15, 82:3-4, 94:3, 6, 146:9), and against the
widow (94:3, 6, 146:9). If it is chimerical to romanticize per-
sonages and physical attacks, the Psalter must be speaking of the
commercial speculator, or of the usurer, who after the death of a
debtor who was the head of a family, exacts by the force of law
(Habakkuk’s “twisted rightness”) payment of the debts which the
deceased has not managed to discharge, and to this end seizes the
goods which the widow and the orphan have inherited. Job 24:3
has already told us, “They lead off the orphan’s donkey and take
the widow’s ox in security.” No one has been able to explain in any
other way the aggression that the Bible says widows and orphans
suffer. Now, the speculator and the usurer are typically the rich of
the locality. As it is the resha ‘im whom the Psalter accuses of this
_ aggression, their identity becomes evident. Their injustice or
wickedness does not consist in any special delict, but in the or-
dinary, “legitimate” exploitation by which the wealthy acquire
wealth.
Still further, fraud and fakery are characteristics of the
resha‘im that are incessantly denounced in the Psalter, for exam-
ple 5:7, 10:7, 24:4, 28:3, 35:20, 36:3-4, 40:4, 43:1, 50:19, 52:6-7,
55:23, 58:4, 62:4, 109:2. One is forced to infer that the oppression
and spoliation which are also mentioned, with identical fre-
quency, are not carried out by means of assault or armed incur-
sion, but by means of cleverness and cunning—in other words, by
a spoliation which is ordinary and legal. For example Psalm 55,
referring expressly to the resha‘im (v. 3), makes this denuncia-
tion: “Never are oppression and fraud missing from their market-
place” (v. 11)—evidently alluding to the manner in which the
48 WHY COMMUNISM?

traders grow wealthy. This is called oppression for the reason set
forth in Section 1 of the present chapter: the consumer population
have no remedy but to respect the prices imposed by the rich. The
identity of the resha ‘im is again abundantly verified.
All things considered, the Psalter is a combination of short lit-
erary compositions devoted to speaking against the resha ‘im; but
there occur fifty-seven designations of the poor: twenty-three
times ’ebion (“needy”), five times dal (“indigent”), twenty-nine
times ‘ani (“poor”). Is it not sufficiently eloquent that in order to
talk about the “unjust” one has to refer to the poor fifty-seven
times? Whom can the Psalms be talking about but the rich?
The ruin and final punishment of the resha‘im is desired and
announced time and time again by the Psalter. But notice how it is
formulated in Psalm 52:5, 7-9: utter ruin will befall the one who
“relied on his own great wealth and drew his strength from
crime.” The identity of the unjust becomes explicit. Here we have
to repeat, with respect to the entire Psalter: the Psalmist’s anguish
does not well up when the wicked person becomes rich, but ‘Fear
not when man waxes rich” (Ps. 49:17), ““Do not become inflamed
against him who prospers” (Ps. 37:7). The subject is the rich as
such. The Psalter’s other name for the rich is “the unjust.”

4. Reprobation of Profit

From the viewpoint of the logical thread of this chapter, Section

3 has been an excursion, motivated by the fact that the so-called
problem of evil has served exegesis as a pretext for distracting
itself from the true message of the Bible, which is a tightly packed
condemnation of wealth. Let us now resume the thread.
We saw that in the Old Testament, not only is differentiating
wealth reproved but the reason for the reprobation is given. No
differentiating wealth can be acquired without spoliation, fraud,
and systematic violence. Now, from the viewpoint of economic
theory this can be tacked down in more systematic fashion if we
focus on the very concept of profit, since, as we set forth in Sec-
tion 1, differentiating wealth can be gathered only by accumulat-

-orroboration, we might run the following

WHY COMMUNISM? 49

test. Let the reader forget all we have said in this chapter. Let us
begin afresh. The reproval of all profit suffices to condemn un-
equivocally all differentiating wealth, since the latter can be pro-
cured only by piling up profits. When communism is rejected to-
day, it is done by cynically concealing and smothering the fact that
the Bible condemns all profit without any exceptions, and that
profit is the essence and mainstay of capitalism—that if profit
were ever eliminated capitalism would disappear at the same mo-
ment. The reason why in capitalism goods are not produced for
the satisfaction of necessities but for exchange is that they are
produced for profit. As an answer to the question posed in the
title of the present chapter, this fourth section would suffice.
The Hebrew word for profit is besa‘. If we except one ironical
use (Judg. 5:19), and four metaphorical uses (What do we “gain”
by doing this or that?—Gen. 37:26, Mal. 3:14, Job 22:3, Ps.
30:9), every time the Bible speaks of profit it is in order to reprove
it. There are nineteen passages, and the reader can verify them:
Exod18:21)forSami's:37 ES 756219 S72 17; Ter: 22°17,
{sav 33°
SESS ZEKMZ 2518822727 932315 Ser’ 6510/1389 Mies 4:13sHab.
2:9; Ps. 10:3, 119:36; Prov. 1:19, 15:27, 28:16. Here, however, I
shall translate two of them because standard translations tend to
cause confusion and render them unrecognizable. Proverbs 1:19:
“‘This is the path of all who make profit: It will deprive oftheir life
all who have committed it.” And Ns es 15:27! Theone a

condemdddion aves’not fall onnth wea of profiveas eshehh AS the

translators are convinced that profit is licit (“God could not have
permitted his church to fail to condemn it,” as if God cannot
permit evil, which is the same as to suppose that evil does not
exist), they instinctively adulterate the text and put some other
word where the text says “profit,” since it is the transparent inten-
tion of the sacred author to condemn it.
The etymology of besa‘ (“‘profit, gain”’) is incision, extraction
by cutting with a knife. But the conspiracy of the ideologues of
the establishment has reached the degree that it manages to keep
the truth even from readers who have taken the trouble to study
50 WHY COMMUNISM?

Hebrew. The dictionaries of biblical Hebrew translate besa‘ as

“unjust profit”—and then forget to add that the Bible has no
word for “just profit”! That is because for the Bible there is no
such thing as just profit. It is as if when we came to the word na’af
(“adultery”) we were told it means “illicit adultery.” Establish-
ment botching knows no bounds.
The biblical condemnation of all profit is a round one and
without loopholes. And as we were saying, the whole puzzle falls
together in a dazzling concurrence of elements. The Bible not only
reproves the result, which is wealth, but concentrates as well upon
the process by means of which the result is attained—and re-
proves the process in the same way.
The condemnation of differentiating wealth is the most solid
and inescapable documentary datum in the Bible. This is why
Jesus of Nazareth calls money the “money of iniquity” (Luke
16:9,11), adopting the expression of the Jewish Book of Henoch
63:10, which is a faithful continuation of the Old Testament tradi-
tion. Saint Jerome comments, ‘And wisely he said ‘with unjust
money,’ for all riches derive from injustice, and unless one loses
the other cannot gain. Therefore it is clear to me that the familiar
proverb is eminently true: “The rich is either unjust, or heir of one
unjust’ ” (PL 22:984). It should not be thought that we are invent-
ing a new interpretation of the Bible here. Before the church asso-
ciated itself for all future centuries with the exploiters, all the
fathers of the church understood the Bible as we have.
To confirm this, very briefly and in passing, we might take note
of aliterary fact which theology is at pains to pass over, and which
confirms what we have just said. As can be seen from Tobit 4:7
(“Turn not your gaze from anyone poor”), Tobit 4:10 (“Alms
indeed preserve one from death”) and Tobit 12:9, “Alms indeed
preserve one from death,” late Judaism arrived at the notion that
giving money to the poor preserves a person from death. But the
brutal fact that theology refuses to look at is that the original
Hebrew Bible calls that act of giving money to the poor not
“almsgiving,” but “justice” (sedaqah).
Proverbs 10:2: “Justice delivers from death.” Psalm 112:9:
“With generosity he gives to the poor, his justice abides for ever.”
Tobit 14:11: “Behold what almsgiving does, and what it is that
justice preserves from.” This is a fundamental datum, and is
WHY COMMUNISM? 51

taken up in Matthew 6:1-4: “Be careful not to practice your jus-

tice before men, in order to be seen by them. . . . Therefore when
you give alms do not send the trumpeters before you. . . . Instead,
when you give alms. . . .” Clearly, the act which we think of as an
act of almsgiving is, according to the Bible, an act of justice—
restitution of what has been stolen. This is why Jesus calls money
the money of injustice or iniquity.
And hence it is that Augustine says, “To succor the needy is
justice” (PL 52:1046). And Ambrose, “You are not giving the
poor person the gift of a part of what is yours; you are returning
to him something of what is his” (PL 14:747). Chrysostom: “Do
not say, ‘I am spending what is mine, I am enjoying what is mine.’
It is not actually yours, it is someone else’s” (PG 61:86). Basil: “It
is the hungry one’s bread you keep, the naked one’s covering you
have locked in your closet, the barefoot one’s footwear putrifying
in your power, the needy one’s money that you have buried” (PG
31:277).
That the holy fathers are serious about this may be seen from
Jerome’s phrase quoted above: “All riches derive from injustice.”
The fathers understood very well the reiterated analysis made by
the Bible and studied in our present chapter: All differentiating
wealth is acquired by exploiting and despoiling the rest of the
population. Hence they see almsgiving as restitution in strict jus-
ice:
This biblical analysis, as we were saying, is conclusively corrob-
orated by the condemnation of profit, since the process which
issues in wealth is the ongoing accumulation of profit. But there is
more. The Bible itself examines separately the various ways by
which profit can be obtained and reprobates them all. But before
sketching this condemnation it may be well for us to answer an
objection about profit-taking in general, which is really just fool-
ishness but which the establishment is unable to refrain from rais-
ing. We will be told that Jesus does not adopt the Old Testament
condemnation of profit, for in the parable of the talents (Matt.
25:14-30, Luke 19:11-27) the Lord says to the bad servant, “You
ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and so at my
return I would have recovered my own with interest” (Matt.
25:27) and charges his servants with the task of doing business
with the money he places in the hands of each.
52 WHY COMMUNISM?

The objection ignores the most elementary thing: that this isa
parable, acomparison. Any modern commentator, even the most
conservative, points out that the elements of the real life situation
that are the terms of comparison are no more than a literary vehi-
cle for the real lesson the parable seeks to teach. Here the lesson is
that we are obliged to contribute the talents of our human capaci-
ties for the realization of the kingdom. And that is all. The fact
that.a parable compares something with an element of real life in
no way means that it approves this element.
Or consider this parable: “If the lord of the house knew at what
hour of night the thief was going to come, he would be on watch
and would not permit his house to be broken into. Therefore you
also be prepared, for at the moment you least think, the Son of
Man will come” (Matt. 24:43-44). Jesus compares himself to a
housebreaker. Why do our objectors not draw the conclusion that
it is licit to devote oneself to the profession of a thief, a house-
breaker?
And in the parable of the steward expressly called unjust (Luke
16:1-8), who swindled and committed embezzlement in full con-
sciousness and deliberation (vv. 6, 7), why do they not conclude
that the career of a swindler is legitimate and commendable?
But the last straw is, that in the same parable on which they
think they can base their objection, if they were logical they would
have to draw the conclusion that he was a fine person who, with
unbridled covetousness, “withdraws what he did not deposit and
reaps what he did not sow” (Luke 19:21, 22), or who like the
oriental despot Archelaus, takes vengeance on his adversaries and
amuses himself by watching them have their throats cut (Luke
19:27).
Only a desperate theology could have taken the fact that Jesus,
in composing a literary comparison with profit-taking, does not
expressly caution that the elements of his comparison constitute
illicit conduct—and manufactured out of it an approval of profit!
Andas he also fails to do so in the matter of the housebreaker and
the on-stage throat-slitting. The parable as a literary device would
lie in total havoc if these cautions had to be issued at every turn. It
is not worth the trouble to delay any longer on an objection which
is a pure case of ignoratio elenchi, or arguing beside the point.
When I exclaim, “This delay is torture!” no normal person will
WHY COMMUNISM? 53
take it into his or her head that I am pronouncing upon the moral-
ity Or immorality of torture. If someone says “This news is an
atom bomb,” no one in his or her right mind will conclude that the
speaker is in favor of manufacturing atom bombs.
We have noted that the Bible does not rest content with simply
reproving profit-taking in general. It itemizes its reproof. Profit
can be made through any of these three channels: commerce,
loans at interest, and productive activity itself (the process of pro-
duction). And the Bible condemns the profit made through each
of the three. Let us examine them in order.

For the sake of profit, many have sinned;

the one who tries to grow rich, turns away his gaze.
Stuck tight between two stones,
between sale and purchase, sin is. wedged [Ecclus. 27:1-2].

It could not be more clearly expressed that it is illegitimate to

obtain profit through the process that constitutes commerce: re-
taining the difference between the purchase price and the selling
price. To boot, the same passage states explicitly that this profit-
taking is the process which issues in the acquisition of wealth.
Profit, then, is considered to be the source of (differentiating)
wealth. We must add the present passage to the nineteen we listed
at the beginning of this section which use the word “profit” (al-
ways to condemn it). Not all of the original Hebrew of the Book
of Ecclesiasticus has survived, but there is no doubt that here the
original word was besa‘. The only thing that is special is that this
passage, while using the general term “profit,” narrows its re-
proof to the gain that emerges between the buying price and the
selling price. The text is in Greek.
Let us note in passing that in the verse immediately preceding
(26:29) the Septuagint stylistically uses the adverb molis (“hardly,
with difficulty”), which cannot be an exact translation of the ori-
ginal because there exists no word corresponding to it in Hebrew.
If we turn to Proverbs 11:31, where mdlis is also used, we see that
it translates the original hen, which means “lo and behold.” Based
on the synonymic parallelism with the second hemistich, it is cer-
tain that Ecclesiasticus 26:29a means, “The trader does not de-
liver himself from sin”—which is surely what the Septuagint
54 WHY COMMUNISM?
means, although it makes use of a more polished expression.
Now let us look at the second channel of profit—interest on
loans. The Hebrew word for “interest” is neshek. Its root means
“to bite.’ Without a solitary exception, each time the Bible uses
neshek it is to condemn it. There are twelve occurrences: Exodus
22:24; Leviticus 25:36, 37; Deuteronomy 23:19 (thrice); Ezekiel
18:8, 13, 17, 22:12; Psalms 15:5; Proverbs 28:8. But note that a
loan can mean not only a money loan, but the loan of a thing as
well. Accordingly, the absolute biblical prohibition of interest-
taking embraces also what we today call collecting rent, or hire.
See Deuteronomy 23:19: “You shall not lend to your brother at
interest, neither at interest on money, nor at interest on aliments,
nor at interest on any other thing which produces interest.” Leviti-
cus has the same thing. Perhaps we ought to have said that profit
is taken through four channels; but as it is the same texts that
forbid interest and rent, our catalogue has been under three ru-
brics.
As we see, the Bible condemns every kind of interest, high or
low. Translating the word neshek as “usury” suited an escapist
intent—as if only very high interest were forbidden. Besides, the
word “usury” does not fit where the interest collected is on things
and not money. Surely what the Bible forbids is usury—but al-
ways remember that there is no such thing as nonusurious in-
terest. There is another word—tarbit (etymologically, ‘“‘in-
crease’), which occurs as a synonym with neshek in the texts cited
(except in the ones from Deuteronomy and Psalms)—but it is
equally condemned. We would have to translate it “revenue.”
The third channel is the profit obtained in the very process of
production. It must be kept in account that until very recent cen-
turies the main productive activity was agriculture. In our Section
3 we have already seen the description given of the field hands in
Job 24. But James 5:1-6 is more explicit in condemning the ac-
quisition of wealth by the agricultural entrepreneurs. In order to
understand the latter pericope we must note that James, as exege-
sis generally recognizes, impugns all the rich, not only those who
are such by having defrauded workers.
The invective starts right in the beginning of the letter (1:
10-11) and is directed against the rich as such. See also 2:6, “Is it
not the rich who oppress you and who hail you before the tri-
 WHY COMMUNISM? 55

bunals?” In our pericope itself we read, “You have lived on the

earth iin pleasures and luxuries, you have fattened your heart for
the day of slaughter” (5:5). It is the simple crime of being rich—
exactly as in the prophets and the Sermon on the Mount (Luke
6:24, “Because you have received your comfort”), and the para-
ble of the rich man and the poor one (Luke 16:19). Consequently,
the writer has no concern to characterize those he vituperates by
something which other rich persons have not done when he tells
them, “See, what you have whittled away from the pay of the
workers who reap your fields cries out, and the anguish of the
harvesters has come to the ears of the Lord of Armies” (James
5:4). What this verse is doing is explaining the origin of wealth. Its
intention is not to refer to some particularly perverse rich people
who have committed knaveries which other rich people do not
commit. The letter’s attack is against a// the rich. The verse cited
reinforces this attack by exposing the nature of the origin of
wealth. The “whittling away” referred to is by system, not by
special transgression committed by certain of the rich. To be sure,
it is the rich who hail the poor before the tribunals (2:6). The law is
on their side. It is not as if they whittled away the laborers’ income
illegally. The exploitation is systematic—“legal,” as we observed
in Section 2 of this chapter. For James, differentiating wealth can
be acquired only by means of expropriation of the produce of the
workers’ labor. Therefore, following Jesus Christ and the Old
' Testament, James condemns differentiating wealth without vacil-
lation or compromise. Profit made in the very process of produc-
tion is thus specifically imprecated.
The biblical reprobation of differentiating wealth is cohesive
and without loopholes. The attack is not only against wealth al-
ready acquired and established, but also on the sole means by
which this wealth came to be, which is the taking of profit; and it
is not only against profit in general, but also on the various kinds
of profit—each and every one of the methods that can exist for
acquiring profit in an economic system. With what conscience
before God the theologians have been able to evade this abso-
lutely central message of the Bible is beyond my comprehension.
If we want to know “Why communism?” the response is un-
equivocal: because any other system consists in the exploitation
of some persons by others. Just because of that.
56 WHY COMMUNISM?

Against this monolithic coherence of the genuine biblical tradi-

tion (including Jesus), the four or five texts of merely human pru-
dence (which not for nothing are all found in the sapiential books)
emerge as irrelevant. No sincere Christian can dissimulate the fact
that the sapiential writings are the unreflected juxtaposition
of biblical thought and extrabiblical, principally Hellenistic,
thought. For instance consider this text of Wisdom 8:19-20: “I
was a lad of good nature, and endowed with a good soul; or
rather, as I was good I entered an unsullied body.” Here, quite
Platonically, the pre-existence of the soul is asserted—a doctrine
irreconcilable with God’s creation of the whole person as taught
by the genuine biblical tradition (cf. Gen. 1:27, 2:7). The reader
of the sapiential books must always be careful to discern what
comes from the genuine biblical tradition and what comes from
outside.
 CHAPTER THREE

POLITICS AND
VIOLENCE
IN JESUS OF
NAZARETH

The endorsement of communism—and above all of its reason

for being, which is the intrinsic immorality of relative wealth and
profit—is right in the Bible. And it is in the Bible in a fashion so
unconcealable and cutting that the only logical thing for the es-
tablishment to do would be to shelve the Bible among the books
of antiquities and cease to consider it a sacred book of normative
character.
The establishment has not done so. Every self-respecting civili-
zation needs its sacred book. What the ideologues of the estab-
lishment have done for centuries and centuries is to latch on to
three verses which (if they are not examined) seem to map out an
avenue of escape and cling to them as if the rest of the gospel and
the whole Bible did not exist. They are (in the official reading):
“yl
58 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

you will always have the poor with you; give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s; my kingdom is not of this world.
If these texts had not been available the theologians would have
found another—any other, since the end is determined before-
hand, namely, to avoid the message of Jesus, and to this end
any means is good. There is no effort at all to place these texts
in their proper context, nor to understand them according to the
mind of the one who pronounced them, nor even, heaven help us,
to determine the grammar of the texts themselves. It is terror—
fear that we revolutionaries are right—that makes them snatch at
three verses, disconnect them from everything else, and erect
them into the sole criterion of good and evil. In their twisted un-
derstanding of these three texts, they conjure up the preposterous
thesis that Christianity should not engage in politics—which does
not prevent their engaging in politics, and on a grand scale, but
independently of and contrary to the gospel—although they
imagine that it cannot be contrary to it because they have already
posited that the gospel has no political dimension.
It is obvious that if the present chapter seeks to ascertain the
political dimension of the gospel it will have to occupy itself with
these three texts one by one. In a fourth section we shall address
the problem positively. And in a fifth we shall touch on the theme
of violence.

1. You Will Always Have the Poor With You?

In his description of the communism of the first Christians,

Luke notes expressly:

There was no poor person among them, for whoever pos-

sessed fields or houses sold them, bore the proceeds of the
sale and placed them at the feet of the apostles, and a distri-
bution was made to each one according to his necessity
[Acts 4:34-35].

This is “why communism”: so that there may be no poor person

among us. Recall that “rich” and “poor” are correlative terms.
Luke is very conscious of the teaching of Jesus and of the
prophets: that a society in which there are rich and poor is intrinsi-
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 59

cally immoral, since it implies perforce the latter’s exploitation by

the former. Unlike Jamblichus and Plato, Luke has an obligatory
moral reason for communism. The fact that original communism
failed does not mitigate the fact that its intention was to replace a
society in which there are rich and poor. Establishment exegesis,
along with its translations, ought to have noticed that at least the
first Christians believed we would not always have poor people
with us.
In the first place, the text to which so much allusion is made
does not actually say “always,” nor “you will have,” as the most
exact modern exegetes have already noticed. Eduard Schweizer
does not say immer (“always”) but allezeit (“all the time’’).
Walter Grundmann says jederzeit (“‘at each moment’). Vincent
Taylor expressly notes, “The statement is not intended to assert
that poverty is a permanent social factor (cf. Deut. 15:11) but is
the background to emé dé ou pdntote échete.’ And as for the
verb, it must have required an extreme case of blindness ever to
have translated it in the future tense, for the original says “you
have,” and indeed twice in the same verse. This is how it should be
translated:

and you do notr

None of the manuscripts or variant readings ever dared to put

“you will have” (éxefe) instead of “you have” (échefe). But what
the copyists never managed to say even by mistake, Western
translations have long dared, radically adulterating the text. The
reader can still verify this falsification today in the Bible of Jeru-
salem, in French as well as in Spanish (not, however, in English).
The rightist conviction that we are never going to change the
world, and that there will always be poor and rich, cause the
translations to ride roughshod over even the grammar.
And inthe second place, the adverb péntote, which has custom-
arily been translated “always,” but which means “at all moments,
continuously, habitually, at each moment, ceaselessly,” is never
used in the gospels with a verb in the future tense. It occurs thir-
teen times: Luke 15:31, 18:1; John 6:34, 7:6, 8:29, 11:42, 12:8
60 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

(twice), 18:20; Matt. 26:11 (twice), and Mark 14:7 (twice). In

every instance it modifies a verb in the present or past tense. The
idea is clear: for example, “to pray without ceasing” (Luke 18:1;
the same in Rom. 1:10 and many times in Paul) does not mean
that prayer continues for all future time, but that we do not cease
to pray in the present time. When the gospels wish to say that an
action or a situation lasts into the future without ever stopping,
the expression they use is eis ton aidna (or else eis tous ai6nas).
There are seventeen occurrences: Matt. 21:19; Mark 3:29, 11:14;
Luke 1:33, 55; John 4:14; 6:51, 58, 8:35 (twice), 8:51, 52, 10:28,
11:26, 12:34, 13:8, 14:16.
As a result, to translate pantote as “always” in Mark 14:7
favored misunderstanding in the first place, since the idea is that
the disciples will no longer be with Jesus continuously, as they
were accustomed, because he is going to his death, but they could
continuously bestow charity on the poor. A certain lapse of time is
implied, but it is of present time. Still, the observation I want to
make is that the rightists understood the “always” as “forever”
simply because they were pleased to do so, since the adverb “al-
ways” does not necessarily mean that—neither in English nor in
German nor in Italian nor in French nor in Spanish nor in Portu-
guese nor in Dutch. Hence to translate pdntote in Mark 14:7 as
“always” was not in itself incorrect. What was incorrect was the
anxiety of the rightists to understand it to mean that class society
would never be eliminated.
Let us examine a few parallel cases. I recall an Italian film,
Sedotta e Abbandonata. In the courtroom scene, while the judge
(the Pretore) is questioning the defendant and the witnesses, he
addresses the clerk from time to time, “Lei scriva sempre, Signor
Cancelliere”—literally, “Always write, Mr. Recorder,” in the
sense of “Keep writing, Mr. Recorder.” Can anyone in his or her
right mind understand that directive as if the recorder now had to
sit there and write for ever and ever? It is the same in French: |
may telephone a friend who I fear is no longer there and ask, “Tu
es toujours la?””—meaning literally, “You are always there?” in
the sense of “Are you still there?” No one could think that this
“always” refers to the future. In all the languages mentioned
above we find the same usage. “Durante toda la semana Elena ha
siempre estado haciendo chistes,” or “Helen has always been jok-
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 61

ing this week.” There is not the faintest suggestion of the future—
still less of all future time.
Now let us look at the gospel itself: “Son, you are always [pdn-
tote] with me and everything mine is yours, but we had to feast
and celebrate because this brother of yours was dead and has re-
turned to life, was lost and we have found him” (Luke 15:31 -32).
The “always” means: you are with me habitually. Not the most
foolish reader understands this as: you and I shall be together for
ever and ever. Then why did people take it into their heads to
understand Mark 14:7 to mean: you will have the poor for ever
and ever? See also John 18:20: “I always taught in the synagogue
and in the temple, where all the Jews gather. Why do you ask
me?” One ought to ask the rightists why they do not understand
that Christ will keep teaching in the synagogue till judgment day.
Let us not tarry longer on this Gibraltar of an establishment
objection—which goes up in smoke on the slightest contact with
grammar. It would have sufficed to translate the verb as present
tense (“you have”), as it actually is in the text, to watch the whole
rightist war machine collapse in slapstick.

2. What Is Caesar’s

The reader need not find it strange that these renowned objec- -
tions turn out so flimsy and insubstantial. Their prestige over so
many centuries never had a thing to do with the content of the
texts. It came exclusively out of the preconceived attitudes of
those who brandished them. That is why, when they are exam-
ined, nothing is left of them. In other discussions it sometimes
happens that the outcome is indecisive, that some data are pro
and some contra and it is a complex affair to strike a balance. But
not with these glorious objections. They are false and the case is
closed. Their reputation came not from the texts, but from the
prejudice with which the texts were read.
The second objection is the one about “what is Caesar’s”:

He says to them, “Whose effigy is this, and inscription?”

They told him, “‘Caesar’s.”
And Jesus told them, “What is Caesar’s, give back to
Caesar, and what is God’s to God” [Mark 12:16-17].
62 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

Let us note in passing that “deliver” or “give” are not precise

translations of the verb apddote. In the Gospels, where it occurs
twenty-seven times, apodidomi always contains the notion of giv-
ing back, returning, restoring. There is mischief afoot here. Just
by translating literally, scholars could long since have put them-
selves on the alert.
As to this second rightist war-horse | have to say that scholars
clarified the matter many years ago. I only want to call attention
to what has been known for some time.
For what I am about to say, we should note beforehand that
Albert Schweitzer, the only exegete to have been awarded the No-
bel Prize, and Martin Dibelius, founder of the exegetical method
called Formgeschichte, are generally recognized as two of the
greatest New Testament exegetes of all times. And Guenther
Bornkamm, for his part, figures among the most notable New
Testament exegetes of this century; his book Jesus von Nazareth,
a meticulous monograph of no easy reading, was printed in
75,000 copies between 1956 and 1965. Now each of these three
authors is above suspicion not only of being socialist, but of being
any kind of revolutionary at all.
Having made this introduction in order to qualify the objectiv-
ity of their thesis, I transcribe this paragraph from Bornkamm
concerning Mark 12:17:

From the point of view of form this logion is certainly con-

structed according to the so-called parallelism of members.
But no one can seriously doubt that it is an “ironic parallel-
ism” (A. Schweitzer, M. Dibelius). That is, the question
about the imperial tax, which his adversaries thought such
a dramatic one and posed so captiously, Jesus sidesteps [Je-
sus von Nazareth, p. 112}.

To put it in other terms: According to the most detached and

the least suspect scripture scholars of our century, the marvelous
statement about giving to Caesar is ironic. Bornkamm also cites,
in note 31, biblical scholars Eltester, Cairns, Sayers, Claudius,
Wehrung, Luetgert, and Repgow. Be it carefully noted that we are
not inventing an ad hoc interpretation that the statement is ironic
in order to justify our revolutionary intentions. We are taking this
interpretation from the hands of the most serious scientif ic exege-
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 63

sis, authorized by, and itself belonging to, the establishment. And
we are taking it with the emphasis which that exegesis itself gives
it: no one can seriously doubt that the phrase is ironic.
Here I could leave off my treatment of this second conservative
war-horse. But I want to add how astonished I am that the irony in
Mark 12:17 has not long since been seen. The setting is Jerusalem.
It is a matter of historical record that the people of Jerusalem
were strongly sympathetic to the Zealots—so much so that a few
days later they demanded the freedom of Barabbas (Matt. 27:21,
Luke 23:18, John 18:40). So the people definitely rejected the idea
of recognizing Roman authority. The evangelists expressly call
our attention to the fact that the question Jesus must answer has
been posed for the purpose of “‘snaring him in his words” (Mark
12:13, Luke 20:20, Matt. 22:15). It was atrap. If Jesus denied the
tax should be paid, he would be accused before the governor
(Luke 20:20). If he admitted the tax should be paid, he would be
recognizing Roman authority and thus fall from the good graces
of the people. But rightist exegesis blunders into the interpreta-
tion of Jesus’ reply as a recognition of Roman authority. So Jesus
fell into the second alternative which had been set to trap him!
Luke explicitly informs us that “they could not trap him in any
statement before the people” (Luke 20:26), but rightist exegesis
says he recognized the Roman authority, which was precisely the
way to alienate the people.
Let us look again. The evangelists (Mark 12:17, Matt. 22:22,
Luke 20:20) formally establish that Jesus’ reply caused general
admiration. It was brilliant, adroit. Will the conservative theolo-
gians kindly tell us what was remarkable about the reply if it was a
recognition of Roman authority? The only intelligent way to han-
dle the reply was to elude both snares at once, and routine exegesis
has Jesus step right into one of them. How could his response
have been any worse, since it was logically impossible to fall into
both parts of the trap at the same time? If I may be pardoned the
expression, at this point routine exegesis exhibits an obtuseness
rarely seen.
The only escape was an ironical phrase which would neither
recognize authority nor be accused of denying the obligation to
pay the tax. Instead, we find attributed to Jesus’ reply the only
stupid option open to him.
However, let us go deeper, for this glorious objection actually
64 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

turns back, boomerang fashion, on its authors. But note that logi-
cally speaking, the foregoing argument is independent of the fol-
lowing. The foregoing argument did no more than annihilate the
objection: Jesus’ reply cannot be interpreted as recognition of
authority. The observations which follow demonstrate that his
reply was actually an attack against authority.
Before the incident in question, Jesus had already proclaimed:
“No one can serve two lords, for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or he will cling to the one and scorn the other. You
cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24; cf. Luke 16:13). A
person who has taught this in such categorical fashion cannot get
out of it afterwards by saying you have to recognize and fulfill
your obligation to the emperor and God at the same time. When
he says “You cannot serve God and money” the whole force is in
the “and.” Pro-government theology all affirms that “and.” The
teaching of Jesus militantly denies that “and.”
The most important datum for the interpretation of the state-
ment about Caesar is that the civil authority, at this moment, is
incarnated in a coin which Jesus asks to be shown. This,
Bornkamm and his colleagues have not well considered. The
statement “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24) used
the Aramaic verb ‘abad, which means “serve” as well as “adore”;
and this is the origin of our usage of “divine service” or “liturgical
service” to designate acts of worship in Western languages. In the
Old Testament, this is the verb (it is equivalent in Hebrew) re-
peatedly used to oppose the service and adoration of Yahweh to
the service and adoration of the false gods (see for example Deut.
6:13, 7:16, 10:20). But whereas in the rest of the Bible and the
Judaic literature the false gods are identified as demons (e.g.,
Deut. 32:17; Ps. 106:37, 96:5; Bar. 4:7; 1 Cor. 10:20, 21) or as
“nothings” (e.g., Lev. 19:4; 1 Chron. 16:26; Hab. 2:18; Jer.
14:22, 16:19)—here, for the first time in history, on the lips of
Jesus, the false god and rival of Yahweh which dominates society
is something perfectly real and tangible: money. Western theology
has failed to grasp that this (Matt. 6:24) is one of Jesus’ most
original teachings—perhaps the most original. Surely the most
virulent. The real rival of Yahweh is money.
A gentleman who says we cannot serve God and money is
shown a coin. And he exclaims, “Return to Caesar what. is
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 65
Caesar’s!” Exegesis has not grasped the fact that at that moment
the coin is the incarnation of all civil authority. The irony is not
only patent, but terribly sarcastic. It is as if a Giovanni Papini,
after having said that money is devil crap, had added: Give the
money back to the government—and give God what is God’s.
When Bornkamm cautions against a revolutionary interpreta-
tion, it is because he has not understood Jesus’ statement to the
hilt. Jesus’ ploy is to deny all governmental authority, but in such
terms that no one can accuse him before the governor.

3. The Kingdom Is Not of This World?

Perhaps the most celebrated objection, the one which has

marched in the most parades of triumph, is the third: my kingdom
is not of this world. And yet it is the frailest and most chimerical
of all. All you need to watch it float away forever is a Greek
dictionary. The only problem is that our Western languages, with
the exception of English, do not have the exact resources to trans-
late John 18:36 faithfully word for word. It can be translated
correctly only by adding to the number of words, or by substitut-
ing, for the original verb, another verb which makes it possible to
retain the precise meaning of the preposition which follows the
verb in the original. The original reads, he basileia he emé ouk
éstin ek toti kédsmou totitou. The whole meaning depends upon
the preposition ek. And any Greek dictionary can tell you that ek
signifies origin, place from which something comes, provenance,
point of departure of something moving. Therefore in English it
can be translated rigorously, thus: my kingdom is not from this
world. In Spanish, as we have no unambiguous equivalent for the
Greek preposition ek, we have to substitute provenir, “come
forth,” for the verb ser, “to be.” Mi Reino no proviene de este
mundo: my kingdom does not come forth from this world.
And that is all there is. Jesus never said his kingdom is not of
this world. It is so simple, that it is unthinkable that this text can
have been appealed to in good faith for centuries in order to place
the kingdom in another world when the exact opposite is explicitly
taught by all the other texts of Old and New Testament (see our
Chapter 1, Section 3), including the Lord’s Prayer, which these
theologians and hierarchs pray every day.
66 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

Having the Latin preposition ex available, which faithfully ren-

ders the Greek preposition ek, the Vulgate did not do well to trans-
late “Regnum meum non est de hoc mundo,” since this laid the
basis for confusion: de can indeed signify origin, but it can also
signify pertinence, belonging. And yet the Vulgate itself sufficed
to scatter its own confusion, since it goes on: ‘Si ex hoc mundo
esset regnum meum.. . .” What happened was that the establish-
ment had a vested interest in the matter, and snatched up the first
phrase, dislocating it from even its most immediate context and
brandishing it as proof that the kingdom of God does not call into
question the kingdoms and social systems of this world. Let us not
believe that these theologians were pining and sighing for that
other world. No, they were afraid that the poor (“of such is the
kingdom of God,” Luke 6:20) would fight them for this world.
The precipitancy and desperation with which the theologians of
the establishment have snatched up the first phrase has kept them
from even reading the rest of the verse—in which Jesus repeats his
thesis in other words: he basileia he emé ouk éstin enteuthen. In
English this translates quite literally: “My kingdom is not from
here.” In Latin, the Vulgate translates perfectly: “Regnum meum
non est hinc.” In Spanish we have to use a circumlocution: “Mi
reino no es oriundo de aqui, no se origina aqui” —my kingdom
does not arise hence, does not originate here.
The Greek adverb enteuthen (equivalent to the Latin hinc) is
altogether unambiguous. It designates the “here,” but as locus of
origin, as place whence something goes out, the point of depar-
ture whence something begins its movement. In the whole Bible,
including the Septuagint Old Testament, this Greek adverb is used
thirty-eight times. Only once does it have a figurative sense (the
logical “hence it was that. . .” in 1 Esd. 4:22). Nine times it is
found in idiomatic repetition, enteuthen kaientevithen, meaning
“from hence some and from hence others,” that is, some on one
side and others on the other: Exod. 17:12; Num. 11:31, 22:24;
Josh. 8:22; 2Sam. 2:13; Ezek. 40:49; Dan. 12:5; John 19:18; Rev.
22:2. The other twenty-eight times it is the pure “from hence” (or
“coming out of here”): Gen. 37:17, 42:15, 50:25; Exod. 11:1,
13:3, 19, 32:7, 33:1, 5; Deut. 9:12; Josh. (A) 4:3; Judg. 6:18, 7:9
(A); Ruth 2:8; 1 Kings 17:3; Neh. (B) 1:1; Tob. (S) 7:11, 8:20,
10:10; Jer. 2:37, 45(38):10; 2 Macc. 2:32; Luke 4:9, 13:31; John
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 67

2:16, 7:3, 14:31, 18:36. The reader can verify this, keeping in
mind.that dictionary authors have no more data at their disposal
than we have. Not one single time does entezithen signify belong-
ing-here. It always signifies origin, place from which something
departs and comes forth. The fact that Jesus repeats his thesis
employing this adverb instead of the substantive “world” is dou-
ble confirmation that the idea is that of origin, of procession. The
indubitable meaning of the preposition ek in the first clause of
John 18:36 would have amply sufficed; but as if this were not
enough, the adverb enteuthen at the end of the verse makes it
airtight. What has happened is that the establishment has not had
the remotest intention of verifying what it is that Christ said.
Saint Augustine understood the text perfectly: “Non ait: nunc
autem regnum meum non est hic, sed non est hinc” (“He does not
say, ‘Now my kingdom is not here,’ but ‘is not from here’ ”)—Jn
Johannem Tractatus, 115, 2.
The reader can see how the three big aces of the reaction turn
out to be just three stacked decks. And the reader can see that in
order to understand the real meaning of these three verses it was
not necessary to wait for modern exegesis to get around to clarify-
ing them, but there were evident and compelling elements in the
text itself that should have been enough to make the escapists
discard their interpretation without a trace. The false “interpreta-
tion” has been intentional. In the first and third texts the distor-
tion was not even on the interpretative level, but on the perfectly
obvious grammatical one. The falsification perpetrated by the of-
ficial conception of Christianity has been deliberate. In particu-
lar, to teach authoritatively that there will always be poor people,
and this as if it had been a logion of Jesus, implies a refined and
unpardonable cruelty.

4. Jesus Engaged in Politics

Let us return for a moment to the end of our first chapter. A

kingdom of God in which social classes are eliminated (Mark
10:25; Luke 6:20, 24), a kingdom of God which seeks to “tear
down the rulers from their thrones and lift up the lowly, to fill the
hungering with good things and send the rich off with nothing”
(Luke 1:52-53), not only implies, but is, a political transforma-
68 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

tion of the broadest reach. Where by all that is holy do they get the
thesis that Christianity should not engage in politics? To uphold
an apoliticism of the gospel is to uphold the nonrealization of the
gospel.
It is evident that it was the persecutions of the first three centu-
ries, unleashed by the lords of this world, which constrained
Christians to present a version of Christianity which would no
longer provoke repression. But afterwards there was more than
adequate time to lay aside this understandably opportunist and
false version which interposes itself between our eyes and the
texts, for the texts can be objectively analyzed. In the fourth cen-
tury the church dispatched the kingdom to the other world, as-
suring the lords of this one that they could rest easily as far as the
gospel was concerned. When the persecution was over, when the
official church had acquired not only status, but dominant status
in aclass society, fear of repression ceased to be the motive for this
documentarily indefensible falsification of the gospel. Now it was
upheld for the personal convenience of the hierarchies, and for
fear of a gospel which would unequivocally criticize the recently
invented hierarchical structure of the church (“And call no one of
you on the earth ‘Father,’ for your father is one only: the heavenly
one”—Matt. 23:9). What is certain is that, first out of a fear of
repression, and afterwards out of a fear of revolution, a concep-
tion of Christianity continued to be taught and dogmatized
which, from every viewpoint, is irreconcilable with the texts.
The texts fairly shout their message. One had to go to real ex-
tremes to invent the notion that the Bible is not the only font of
revelation, but that there is another font, which we were invited to
call “Tradition.” But the tradition of the holy fathers turned out
to be as subversive as the Bible (see our Chapter 2, Section 4). And
so it came about that this wonderful second font came to consist,
for all practical effects, in the will of the reigning pope.
The whole theological process is sociologically understandable,
but it has two sensational weak points.
In the first place, it is a logical blind alley. The authority of the
church can only be demonstrated from the Bible; but then the
Bible must have authority of itself, and have no need of the re-
nowned second font in order to have this authority. Otherwise the
demonstration of the authority of the church would be a rudimen-
tary vicious circle.
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS
69
And in the second place, the second font, if it is the font of one
and the same divine revelation as the first, is useless if the texts of
the first font are left intact. The inventors ofthe above theological
synthesis have not changed the texts. The resulting doctrinal con-
struct is unstable and explosive, because the biblical texts remain
intact. And today we have the situation in which the official
teaching is the precise contrary of what the texts demonstrate.
The explosion is inevitable.
As we have stated, the thesis that the message of Jesus does not
get involved in politics is simply outrageous. This thesis implies a
complete misunderstanding of the prophets and a complete mis-
understanding of Christ’s intransigeant condemnation of therich.
The struggle for a society in which there will be no rich or poor is
not a “preferential option for the poor,” as Medellin and Puebla
so inadequately put it. It is not an option, it is an obligation.
Medellin and Puebla give the impression that it was some arbi-
trary decision of God or the Bible, which could be omitted
without imputation of culpability. To the extent that one does not
participate in this revolutionary struggle, one participates in the
benefits of a society which lives essentially by exploiting and op-
pressing the poor. Merely abstaining from the struggle constitutes
aiding and abetting the criminal act, and therefore constitutes
complicity. The situation of the poor is injustice in the most strict,
and commutative, sense of the word (see Chapter 2), in the sense
that obliges to restitution. Even God is under obligation in this
matter, for it is God who set in motion the machinery of creation
which has resulted in tearing to bits the strict rights of the poor,
who did not ask to come into the world in the first place.
The thesis that Christ did not engage in politics is a denial of
precisely those historical facts which we know with the greatest
certitude. I refer not only to the testimony of Suetonius, who, in
his Vita Claudii (25:4) describes the Christians as “impulsore
Chresto assidue tumultuantes” (‘“‘ever in frantic tumult at the in-
stigation of someone called Chrest”), although this document
would suffice. No, the most incontrovertible of all scientifically
certain historical facts is that Jesus died by crucifixion and that
crucifixion was the death reserved for political transgressors. No
serious researcher omits this, but we shall cite only two. Johannes
Schneider, in the article on the word staurods in Theologisches
Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament (8:573), says:
70 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

In the Roman provinces the punishment of crucifixion was

one of the most powerful means for the conservation of
order and security. The governors inflicted the death of the
cross, proper to slaves, especially upon the freedom fighters
who strove to gain their peoples’ independence from the Ro-
man authority.

As for a Catholic scholar, let us consult Heinrich Schlier: “The

death of Jesus on the cross .. . is the death which the Roman
authority inflicted on ‘rebels and bandits’ ” (Die Zeit der Kirche,
p. 59).
For more confirmation: the sign that Pilate ordered attached to
the head of the cross of Jesus (INRJ) specifies political delict as
the motive of the punishment of this particular crucified criminal.
Raymond E. Brown, a Catholic, comments: “All the Gospels
agree that the charge of being a royal pretender was inscribed
against Jesus” (The Gospel According to John, 2:919). Further,
as Schlier observes, “from the words of Jesus about his kingdom
Pilate could only infer that he was a king, and that accordingly his
action concerned the political sphere. And what is remarkable is
that Jesus admits it: ‘You have said it’ ” (Die Zeit der Kirche, p
63). Jesus was executed for political sedition. This is a fact that no
serious person, Catholic, Protestant, or agnostic, can call into
question.
Moreover, Matthew and Mark inform us that Jesus was cruci-
fied between two “robbers” (Matt. 27:38, Mark 15:27). Now, this
was the depreciatory denomination applied by the authorities to
rebels and insurgents, as can be seen by comparing “Barabbas
was a robber” (John 18:40) with “who had been incarcerated for
an uprising and homicide occurring in the city” (Luke 23:19).
Consequently, Jesus was crucified side by side with two other
rebels—only, he was more deserving than they, so he was put in
between them, with a placard stating his crime: that of being a
royal pretender.
No single historical fact about Jesus of Nazareth is more de-
monstrable than this one: that he engaged in revolutionary politi-
cal activity. In his study on the parables (The Jesus of the Para-
bles, p. 17), C.W.F. Smith comments very aptly, “No one would
crucify a teacher who told pleasant stories to entores a prudential
morality.”
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 71
Luke recounts an incident by which we can clearly see that Je-
sus had difficulties not only with the governor of Judea, but also,
and ezerlier, with the ruler of Galilee, who was Herod Antipas.

Certain Pharisees appeared on that occasion telling him,

“Go out and leave this place, for Herod seeks to kill you.”
And he told them, “You go and tell that fox, ‘See, I cast out
demons and work cures today, and tomorrow, and I go on
the next day’—for it is unfitting for a prophet to die outside
Jerusalem” [Luke 13:31-33].

Three things are evident in this little pericope. First, the absolute
lack of respect with which Jesus speaks of the ruler. This is the
language of arebel, not of an obedient subject. Second, that Jesus
himself realized that his activity and teaching were of a kind that
would bring upon him the death penalty. And third, that not only
the government of Judea sought to kill Jesus, but that of Galilee
as well—which is understandable only if both saw in him a politi-
cal danger. Herod’s reaction is confirmation in advance that Pi-
late would be making no mistake. The popular movement that
Jesus was stirring up had an evidently revolutionary character.
The evangelists pass over certain things in silence, of course.
And this is understandable. Their editorial plan is to present Jesus
as a martyr, murdered against all reason and justice. But in spite
of the selective method that guides them, data filter through to
the effect that, in the only two regions in which Christ carried out
his activity, the government tried to kill him (successfully, in the
second). This can only be because the revolutionary character of
Jesus’ proclamations constitutes a historical fact too massive to
hide.
And let it be noted that the other Jewish leaders realized this
fact as well. Once a certain moment had arrived in the develop-
ment of Jesus’ activity, they made this analysis: “If we let him
continue this way everyone will believe in him, and the Romans
will come and destroy our place and our nation” (John 11:48).
There was no reason to fear that Jesus’ movement would appear
evil to the Romans unless it involved a threat to the government in
power. I repeat the observation of C.W.F. Smith: No one would
crucify a teacher who told pleasant stories to enforce prudential
morality. I do not see how subtleties can overcome the data we
1p POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

have cited. The assertion that the gospel does not engage in poli-
tics is one of the most unreal and unrealistic theses ever formula-
ted.
But we must examine the subversive character of Jesus’ mes-
sage more deeply. How could his message be apolitical if “the
kingdom of God” means that God reigns and not human beings?
Granted, Pilate was a Roman. But it must be carefully kept in
account that the ruler of Galilee was not a Roman but a Jew.
What disturbed the Zealots was that the Romans ruled Israel.
Jesus went far beyond the Zealots. Jesus left all nationalism com-
pletely out of his plans. (Hence the Jewish people finally aban-
doned him and went to the Zealots.) When Luke sums up the
kingdom with “he tore the rulers from their thrones” (Luke 1:52),
it is not just a question of Roman rulers, it is a question of every
class of rulers. Jesus was incomparably more faithful to genuine
biblical tradition than all the other Jewish revolutionaries of his
time. God and human beings cannot reign at the same time.
This is what the oldest biblical tradition teaches. See Judges
8:22-23:

And the Israelites said to Gideon, “You rule over us, you
and your son and your grandson, for you have freed us from
the hand of Midian.” But Gideon told them, “I shall not rule
over you, and my son will not rule over you, but Yahweh
will rule over you.”

The Bible expressly notes that when the monarchy was founded in
Israel it was done against the will of God:

Samuel was displeased by the word which they had spoken,

“Give us a king so that he may judge us.” And Samuel
prayed to Yahweh. And Yahweh told Samuel, “Pay atten-
tion to the people in all that they tell you, for they have not
rejected you, they have rejected me, that I may not reign
over them” [1 Sam. 8:6-7].

New Testament exegesis cannot legitimately suppose that Jesus

would lack the intelligence to discern in the Bible the most authen-
tic and oldest teaching of God concerning government. It is
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 73

enough to read the books of the Old Testament in the order of

compilation to know that these two paragraphs (the one from
Judges and the other from Samuel) are the first thing the Bible
teaches about government. But we have the explicit words of
Jesus besides: “No one can serve two lords, because either he will
hate the one and love the other, or he will cling to the one and
scorn the other” (Matt. 6:24). What is so strange, then, if when
Christ proclaims that “the kingdom of God has come” (Mark
1:15), we recognize his message as the most subversive ever pro-
claimed in politics? Luke, in the text from the Magnificat just
cited, interprets with perfect fidelity the revolutionary meaning
of the gospel of Christ.
From the systematic viewpoint, it is to be noted that this radical
anarchism (not anarchy) is quite coherent with what we have seen
in the preceding chapters. Where there is no differentiating
wealth, where economic activity is directly for the purpose of the
satisfaction of needs and not for trade or the operations of buying
and selling for profit, government becomes unnecessary. By no
means is this the invention of Marx and Engels, as can be seen
from the biblical texts we have cited.

5. Jesus and Violence

Finally, let us take up the matter of violence—for it is surpris-

ing, to say the least, that in spite of the fact that the more tradi-
tional moral tractates and the current chairs of moral theology
teach the right of legitimate defense by the use of violence, the
official versions of Christianity deny this right solely to the prole-
tariat attacked on the scale of genocide.
And I refer not only to aggression committed by the police and
the army, the aggression already being perpetrated in Latin
America, which satisfies the doctrinal condition that aggression
must precede a legitimate defense (a condition which itself is un-
just); I refer principally to the aggression committed by the capi-
talistic system itself, which is far more evil. Millions of children
die in the world each year from simple malnutrition. And many
more are mentally deficient all their lives from the same cause.
And many millions of human beings have their lifetimes cut in
half from the same cause.
74 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

Now, it is not as if the resources presently existing in the world

were inadequate to produce sufficient nutrition for all. Techno-
logically it is possible. What is happening is that capitalism as a
system does not permit existing resources to be directed to the
satisfaction of needs, because the purpose it imposes upon them is
the augmentation of capital. Unless a demand of buying power is
foreseen which makes a profit likely there is no production; but
the world’s most tragic and urgent needs are without buying
power and consequently cannot translate into demand. Capital-
ism has seized the resources of humanity, and physically kills mil-
lions of human beings day by day with hunger, or leaves them
lifelong mental defectives. Would it be more violent to shoot them
than to prevent them from eating? Where did this definition of
violence come from? The aggression is right here, right now, in
the form of genocide, and it is constant. By what prodigies of
doctrinal immorality are its victims denied the right of legitimate
defense? How can anyone think that it is less aggressive systemati-
cally to reduce the life and vitality of a human being than to cut it
off suddenly?
The Bible teaches,

Who spills man’s blood,

by man will his blood be spilled,
for God made man to his image [Gen. 9:6].

It does not say that his blood will be spilled precisely by the hand
of authority. It says: by another man. And in the series of in-
stances in which the Mosaic legislation prescribes the death
penalty (e.g., Exod. 21:12, 15, 16, 17), it is by a stoning to be
carried out by the whole people (Lev. 24:14, 23, 20:2, 27; Exod.
17:4; and so on). This is violence; and it is not only permitted, it is
commanded, by the one true God. The human community has to
defend itself from its attackers. Now, the crime of killing millions
of human beings by hunger, which is being committed at the mo-
ment at which you are reading these lines, is immensely more seri-
ous than those listed in the Mosaic law. Exodus 21:17, cited
above, reads, “He who curses his father or his mother shall die
without quarter.”
Perversions of the gospel maintain that Jesus, by his divine
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 715
authority, abrogated the Old Testament. With that the perverters
feel authorized to write off Yahweh of Hosts himself , who so
many times describes himself on the attack, “with hand aloft and
flexed arm” against the oppressors (Deut. 4:34, 5245; 7219; 26:8:
Exod. 6:6; cf. Ps. 136:12). And they pretend that all this violence
is attributable to an imperfection, which according to them “still
plagued Old Testament religion.”
But in the first place, Yahweh, after all, is still the one true God,
is this not certain? In the second place, the fact is that Jesus never
disapproved his Father’s conduct. And in the third place—and
this is the coup de grace, since theological discussions have alto-
gether overlooked this datum—according to Mark 7:9-13 and
Matthew 15:3-6 Jesus quoted the above-cited Exodus 21:17 right
down to the letter, and not only approved it but defended it
against the lax and sugar-coated interpretations of the scribes and
Pharisees. In this verse is all the violence of the Old Testament, in
all its splendor.

It is nice how you can set aside God’s command so you can
hold on to your tradition. For Moses said, “Honor your
father and your mother,” and “Who curses his father or his
mother shall die without quarter.” Instead, you say...
[Mark 7:9-11].

Jesus explicitly approves the use of violence. Note that in order

to defend honor paid to one’s parents against the compromising
interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus could have sim-
ply cited “Honor your father and your mother” from Exodus
20:12. But no, he draws on a different chapter of Exodus, and
adds: “And who curses his father or his mother shall die without
mercy.” We have already pointed out that these executions were
carried out by the entire people. Here we have sure documentary
evidence, which no pedantry will manage to escape. Jesus explic-
itly approves and defends the use of violence.
It is dogmatic theology, not Jesus, which has decreed, by and of
itself, that the characteristic of Christianity is nonviolence and
nonvindictive justice. All the vindictive justice of the Old Testa-
ment is approved and defended by Jesus in this passage, citing
Exodus 21:17. The characteristic of the gospel is the realization of
716 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

the kingdom, in contrast with the perpetual procrastination of the

kingdom. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) was
already in Leviticus 19:18, and neither in the Old Testament nor in
the gospel was this commandment understood to be at variance
with vindictive justice and with the obligation violently to repel
the aggressor of the human community.
The fact that Jesus maintains and defends Exodus 21:17 would
be enough to demonstrate that the honey-sweet, saccharine gos-
pel forged by establishment theology is counterfeit. Since the
words we have cited are authentic logia of Jesus, it is evident that
in his mind love of enemy (Matt. 5:44) is not at variance with
repulsion of the oppressor, even by violence. Of course, as Com-
blin has said, the best demonstration of love for the rich is to
divest them of what prevents their entry into the kingdom (cf.
Mark 10:21, 25). But apart from this, what has happened is that a
candy theology has grabbed “love your enemies” and tornit away
from the whole gospel—and refuses to take the trouble to verify
in what sense Jesus understood it. Evidently he does not under-
stand it in a sense that would be incompatible with the obligation
to repulse the aggressor of the human community by use of
violence. The sense in which he understands it can be clarified
later. But the sense in which he does not understand it is clear from
the start. The sense in which he does not understand it is the one
single sense which the ideologues read in “love your enemies.”
The procedure is dumbfounding. There is no least desire to verify
what Jesus thinks. The only goal is to defend the status quo and
prevent the revolution. So they think it is possible to “tear down
the rulers from their thrones” by peaceful means?
The reaction adduces Matthew 26:52, “All who take up the
sword, by the sword will die,” a well-known adage (“who kills by
steel dies by steel”). But they deliberately forget Luke 22:36,
“Whoever has no sword, let him sell his tunic and buy one.” They
also purposely forget Matthew 10:34: “I came not to bring peace,
but the sword.” They pass over the fact that Matthew 23 is a page
full of verbal violence unique in all literature of all time. And
most of all they pass over the fact that according to John 2: 14-22,
Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, and Luke 19:45-46, Jesus
used physical violence to drive the traders from the temple.
Let us suppose that, as the representatives of the establishment
POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS 77
are accustomed tacitly to assume, there is a contradiction between
Matthew 26:52 and the other two texts about the sword and the
physical expulsion of the merchants. With what right do they sim-
ply abide by Matthew 26:52 and decree the other texts out of exist-
ence? With what apriorism do they decide that Matthew 26:52 is
Jesus’ authentic doctrine and the others are doctrinal or practical
errors? Numerically the texts about the sword are two against
one. With what right do they impose the obligation of preferring
that one against the other two? Really it is Jesus’ conduct itself
which ought to be the norm of our understanding of his verbal
pronouncements, and Jesus actually used physical violence.
“Who takes up steel dies by steel” is what is known as an “occa-
sional” statement: Jesus considered it useless—and it was use-
less—to offer resistance in those particular circumstances, and in
order to deter Peter he quoted a well-known aphorism. Luke
22:36, as well as Matthew 10:34 (which is surely an expression
originating with Jesus) are much more intentionally doctrinal,
and much less circumstantial, than that aphorism.
It is criminal to defend repression by the procedure of quoting
to the oppressed the verse about “turning the other cheek” (Matt.
5:39). The supporters of official theology will have to be punished
for discouraging the struggle against injustice with this verse. By
the grace of God I will practice the heroism of presenting the other
cheek when J myself have been struck on the first. But this is a
personal and individual matter. What Jesus never said is: If they
strike your neighbor on one cheek, turn your neighbor’s other
cheek. And the proletariat are defending the bread of their wives
and children, and the lives of all their comrades. Furthermore,
according to John 18:22-23 Jesus did not present the other cheek
when they struck him on the first. He protested with all his might.
And who knows what he might have done if his hands had not
been bound (cf. John 18:12). With what right does the church
demand precisely of the proletariat a conduct more perfect (?)
than that of Jesus? Where is it written that the words of Jesus
have a more normative character than his deeds?
That Jesus used physical violence is a fact that cannot be de-
nied. “And having made a scourge out of cords he drove them all
out of the temple” (John 2:15). The aorist participle signifies here
the instrumentality or mode by which the action of the main verb
718 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN JESUS

is carried out. What John really says here is, he whipped them all
out of the temple. Or does flabby theology think he exhorted
them out of the temple?
And it is historically certain that he could not have driven them
out by himself, so at this juncture the evangelists must be omitting
something. In the first place, the traders were many. And in the
second place they had guards. Without a doubt Jesus had placed
himself at the head of a burly group of his followers in an action
which can only be characterized as an assault on the temple. By
what authority do you deny, precisely to the proletariat, in the
name of Christianity, the legitimacy of a type of action performed
by Jesus Christ himself?
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Binzler, Johannes. In Lexikon fiir Theologie und Kirche. Frieburg im

Breisgau: Herder, 1957-1968, s. v. ““Vollkammenheit,” 10: 865-66.
Bornkamm, Gunther. Jesus von Nazaret. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Kohlham-
mer, 1965. [Eng., Jesus of Nazareth. New York: Harper & Row,
1960].
Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel according to John. Anchor Bible 29 and
29A. New York: Doubleday, 1966, 1970.
Elliger, Karl. Das Buch der zwolf kleinen Propheten. Das Alte Testament
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Grundmann, Walter. Das Evangelium nach Markus. 4th ed. Berlin:
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Hauck Friedrich. In Theologische Worterbuch zum neuen Testament
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Kohlhammer, 1933-1978, s. v. “ploutos,” etc., 6:316-30 [Eng., Theo-
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1964-1970, 6:318-32].
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1:146-49].
. In TWNYT, s. v. “paradeisos,” 5:765-73 [Eng., TDNT, 5:
763-71].
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chener Verlag, 1966.
Miranda, José Porfirio. Cambio de estructuras: immoralidad de la
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moral gegenwartiger Structuran: Dargestellt am Beispiel Mexiko.
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79
80 BIBLIOGRAPHY

. Marx y la biblia: Critica a la filosofia de la opresién. Salamanca:

Sigueme, 1971 [Eng., Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philoso-
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Books, 1974].
. El ser y el mesias. Salamanca: Sigueme, 1973 [Revised for Eng.,
Being and the Messiah: The Message of St. John. Trans. John Eagle-
son. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1977].
Schlier, Heinrich. Die Zeit der Kirche. 3rd ed. Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1962.
Schnackenburg, Rudolf. “Evangelische Rate I: In der Shrift.” In Lex-
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7:572-80].
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according to Mark. Trans. Donald Madrig. Richmond: John Knox
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Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin’s, 1966.
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Deutsch 19. G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1966 [Eng., Isaiah 40-66: A
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 INDEX OF
SCRIPTURAL
REFERENCES

OLD TESTAMENT

Genesis 18:21 49 24:23 74

20:12 75 25:36 54
2112 74 25:37 54
PENS) 74
21:16 74 Numbers
21:17 74, 75, 76 11:31
22:24 54 22:24
BO) 66
S35) 66 Deuteronomy
33:5 66 4:34
Sal5
Leviticus 6:13
Exodus 6:2-4 37 7:16
75 19:4 64 7:19
66 19:13 37 9:12
66 19:18 76 10:20
ia) 66 20:2 74 (S333!
74 20:27 74 23:19
17:12 66 24:14 74 26:8

81
82 INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES
28:1-14 21,31 Psalms 74:21
32:17 64 74:22-23
82:3-4
Joshua 82:4
4:3 66 45, 85:10
8:22 66 86:1
94:3
Judges 94:6
5:19 49 94:7
6:18 66 96:5
7:9 66 105:14
8:22-23 72,93 106:37
109:2
Ruth 112:9
2:8 66 119:36
136:12
1 Samuel 146
8:3 49 146:9
8:6-7 72, 73
12:3-4 37 Proverbs
1:19
2 Samuel
2:13 66
42,
1 Kings 43,
7315 66

1 Chronicles
16:26 64

2 Chronicles
24:6 36 42,
24:9 36 42,

Nehemiah
1:1 66

Job
20 43
20:10 43 31,
20:18 43
20:19 43
21:14 45
22:3 49
24 44, 54
24:3 44 Jeremiah
24:4 44 2:37 66
24:6 44 5:26-31 41
24:10 44 5:27-28 38
24:11 44 6:6-7 33
INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES
6:10 49 33331 49 2:3-4
6:13 49 40:49 66 3:3
7:6 . 37 45:9 34 3:9-11
14:22 64 4:13
16:19 64 Daniel
2te2 37 12:5 66 Habakkuk
22:17 49
34
38:10 66 Hosea 46
45:10 66 S72 49
$1:13 49 37 64

Ezekiel Amos Zephaniah

18:8 54 40 45
18:13 54 33, 41
18:17 54 ST Malachi
18:18 37 36 37
20:40 36 25 30457 49
22:6-13 4] 4]
22:12 54 35393059317 2 Maccabees
22°13 49 66
22:24-31 4] Micah
227 49 Si
22:29 S77. 4]

THE APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA

Tobit Wisdom 1 Esdras

4:7 50 8:19-20 56 4:22 66
4:10 50
7:11 66 Ecclesiasticus 4 Esdras
8:20 66 26:29 53 7:85 16
10:10 66 27:1-2 53 7:93 16
12:9 50
12:12-15 16 Baruch Henoch
14:11 50 4:7 64 63:10 50
84 INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES

NEW TESTAMENT

Matthew Mark » 16:19

Se) 13 1215 13, 14, 19, 72 16:19-31
523 20 3:29 60 16:22
§:3-10 16 4:11 13 16:23
5:5 16 7:9-11 75 16:25
S312 16 7:9-13 i) 16:28
5:20 20 10:17-31 18 16:29
5:39 WU 10:21 18, 19, 20, 76 16:31
5:44 76 10:25 18, 19, 20, 22, 18:1
5:46 20 24, 30, 67, 76 18:18-30
5:46-48 20 10:27 19 19:11-27
5:47 20 11:14 60 19:21
5:48 20 11:15-17 76 19:22
6:1-4 Syl 1213 63 19:27
6:10 14 12:16-17 61 19:45-46
6:24 18, 64, 73 DENT 62, 63 20:20
10:34 VOM 1231 76 20:26
12:28 15 1332 22 22:36
1321) 12 14:3 21 23:18
13:24-30 s(si 14:7 59, 60, 61 23:19
13:36-43 13 ESe2 7) 70 23:42-43
13:38 13
13:41 14 Luke John
13:43 14 1:33 60 2:1-11
15:3-6 75 152) 24, 72, 73
19:10-12 20 1:52-53 67 2:14-22
19:16-30 19 1:53 24, 30 2:16
19:18-20 20 155 60 4:14
19:21 20 4:9 66
19:24 20 6:19-31 22 6:51
21:12-13 76 6:20 18, 20, 22, 24, 6:58
21:19 60 30, 66, 67 7:3
22:15 63 6:24 18, 20, 22, 24, 7:6
22:22 63 30, 55, 67 8:29
23 76 8:1-3 18 8:35
23:9 68 8:10 13 8:51
2313 22 10:9 13 8:52
23:14 22 11:2 14 10:28
23:15 22 11:20 15 11:26
2323 22 13:31 66 11:42
23225 22 13:31-33 71 11:48
23227 22 14:25 Il 12:3
23:29 22 14:33 10 12:5
24:43-44 52 15231 59 12:6
25:14-30 Syl 15:31-32 61 h237,
2a :27 5] 16:1-8 52 12:8
25:35-36 4 16:6 52 12:34
26:11 60 16:7 ‘52 13:8
26:52 76, 77 16:9 22, 50 13:29
PED) 63 16:11 22, 50 14:16
27:38 70 16:13 18, 64 14:31
INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES
18:12 TF 5:4 9 Revelation
18:20 60, 61 10:4 16 2:7.
18:22-23 Us 5:10
18:36 65, 66-67 Romans 20:2
18:40 63, 70 1:10 60 20:10
19:18 66 22
1 Corinthians 21:4
10:20 64 21:10
2:44 37.10 10:21 64 22:1
2:44-45 ae 220
4:32 7, 10 James 22:5
4:32-35 75 1:10-11 54 22:14
4:34 7, 10 2:6 54, 55 22:19
4:34-35 7, 58 5:1-6 54
§:1-11 10 5:4 DS)
5:5, 55:
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"Miranda will not be pigeonholed by the academy. It is to be strongly hoped that
he is taken seriously, for there is in his writing the kind of discernment which may
reform and renew Scripture study.”
—Wallter Brueggemann,
Professor of Old Testament,
Eden Theological Seminary
“This book, like the liberation theologies generally (Latin American, Black, feminist),
challenges traditional ‘intentional misunderstandings’ of the Scripture by
established powers. It allows familiar biblical passages, such as the parable of the
rich man and Lazarus, to speak out with their original force and clarity—and the
message sounds astonishingly new! An excellent translation by Robert Barr.”
—Madeleine Boucher,
Associate Professor of New Testament,
Fordham University
“José Miranda’s book is an extremely valuable statement, which advances the
discussion of biblical economics to a new stage. Miranda minces no words in
exposing the exegetical sleight-ofhand attempted by ‘conscience-tranquillizing
theologians.’ His passionate and informed defense of ‘Christian communism’ will
have to be reckoned with by all who have professed a willingness to be obedient
to the Gospel.”
—Richard J. Mouw,
Professor of Philosophy,
Calvin College
“A scholarly study in biblical teaching-brief, direct, powerful-which puts the
burden of proof on those who would deny that original and authentic Christianity
is communistic (not, to say, Marxist}. This is vintage Miranda-erudite, passionate,
persuasive, and above alll, disturbing.”
—Robert T. Osborn,
Chairman, Department of Religion,
Duke University

José Porfirio Miranda studied economics at the Universities of Munich and

Munster and received his licentiate in Biblical Sciences from the Biblical Institute in
Rome in 1967. He served as Professor of Mathematics at the Instituto de Ciencias and
Professor of Economic Theory at the Instituto Tecnolégico in Guadalajara, Professor of
Philosophy at the Instituto Regional (Chihuahua), Professor of the Philosophy of Law at
the National University and Professor of Exegesis at the Instituto Libre de Filosofia,
both in Mexico City.

B
ISBN 1-59244-4b8-7

va Stock Publishers
Avenue * Eugene OR 97401
9781592444687
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