SOURCE: “Origins of Christianity,” in Soviet Studies in Philosophy, Vol. X, No. 1, Summer, 1971, pp. 81-102.

In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Kazhdan references several writings by Engels on the origins of Christianity in order to explore the parallel Engels saw between the nineteenth-century development of the socialist movement and the founding of Christianity.

Engels is the author of three articles devoted to the origins of Christianity. In 1882 the magazine Der Sozialdemokrat carried his “Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity,” conceived of as an evaluation of Bauer's contribution to the treatment of this complex problem. The following year, in the English journal Progress, Engels published an article titled “The Book of Revelation,” a characterization of Christianity as it appears according to the Apocalypse of St. John. Finally, in 1894-1895, shortly before his death, Engels published in Die Neue Zeit a studied titled “A Contribution to the History of Early...