Hello again, and thanks for your most recent post. I’m sure I’ll try and formulate a more direct response to it, but I wanted to get this stuff on Marxist historical theory out there first:¹Disclaimer: I do not in any way fancy myself an expert on the views of Karl Marx, Marxism, or Marxist historical theory or methodology. What I write here is largely from memory and based off of my limited familiarity with Marxism mostly as it pertains to religious studies. I would strongly encourage those readers interested in learning more about this to do so by using some of the many resources available. You could do much worse than starting with the writings of Marx and Engels themselves. The Marxists Internet Archive is one of the best online tools I’ve come across for this, and it’s totally free!

Marx and Engels boldly declare in the Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”²There are a great many versions of this available. Here is a citation from the version available on Marxists Internet Archive: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” in Marx/Engels Selected Works vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), Chapter I: Bourgeois and Proletarians, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007. There is arguably no better encapsulation of the starting point and basis for all of what may be called Marxist historical theory and methodology than this simple statement. Taken as an absolute or exhaustive description of the past it is no doubt false. But, as a prescriptive statement, about what should be the focus and interpretation of past human history, the lens through which to view history, it can be quite useful — even, I would suggest, indispensable to a balanced view of history. It can also, like all historical theories and methodologies, be taken too far and overwhelm our perspective, creating a skewed or reductive understanding of past events. This is one reason I would hesitate to say that I hold to a strictly Marxist theory of history but prefer to say my view is “colored by significant Marxist leanings.”³“3 Points of Departure,” Section 3: “On History.”

So, what difference does it make? Well, for one thing, viewing history always with class antagonisms in mind makes us look for these antagonisms as underlying causes in events that might otherwise seem to be about something else. So, the Marxist historian looks for the socioeconomic factors underlying religious, technological, scientific, and political developments. 

A prime example, and I think a well-known one, involves the rise of Islam. Apart from Marxist theory or insight, we might understand Islam to have developed and spread due possibly to the truth of its message, the charisma of Muhammad, the emotional or psychological appeal of its ethics, the military prowess of the early Muslim community, or some combination of all these. A more Marxist interpretation would add to this list the class differences and antagonisms between the ruling tribes of Mecca and the other tribes in the region. To simplify, under this interpretation Muhammad and the early Muslim community were basically responsible for inciting a proletarian revolution against the Meccans (the Bourgeoisie). Additionally — so the theory goes — the message of Islam, which emphasizes egalitarianism, charity, and unity under Allah, appealed to the longings of the proletariat for access to the means of production and the establishment of a classless society. (In this case, apparently, people happened to stumble in the right direction even under the influence of “opium.”)

A similar interpretation is made of the rise of Christianity. The idea again is that this new religious tradition appealed to underlying proletarian longings and served as a catalyst for a revolution against those with access to wealth and power — in this case, the Roman (and Jewish) authorities. 
Whether or not one buys completely either of those theories, I think the basic insight that there are class antagonisms at play in society through all its changes is valuable. But, that is just the start. Another major part of a Marxist historical perspective follows from this and moves from theory to methodology. 

It goes like this:

Part of what defines the proletariat is that they lack control over the means of production. As I understand it, this includes production of all sorts — material goods and intellectual goods. What this means is that there is a significant sector of society that tends to be unable to produce or proliferate its ideas effectively and widely. This is for all sorts of reasons depending on the time period (lack of time and energy, illiteracy, lack of material resources or technology, censorship), but the end result is that these voices have been more or less quieted, if not silenced, throughout history. One doesn’t need to be a Marxist to recognize this; it seems fairly obvious to me that not all groups have had equal access or opportunity to communicate their ideas freely and widely, not to mention to communicate them in a way that they would last and become a part of the historical record — that is, for those that even wanted to do so. I don’t think it’s at all controversial to say that most of History (i.e. past events concerning humans) is not part of the historical record (i.e. the events that were actually written down). 

As I said, one doesn’t need to be a Marxist to recognize the gaps in the historical record, but it takes something like a Marxist theoretical approach to history to recognize the importance of what must have been in those gaps, to seek to glean some understanding of the little-known but certainly real and valuable perspectives of marginalized groups, and to interpret historical events accordingly. Historians of religion have long recognized the importance of these gaps, and often make a distinction — I think usually rightly so — between institutional, higher class, or elite religion (of which there is the most recorded evidence) and popular, lower class, or traditional religion (of which there is significantly less). Feminist history too owes a lot to Marxist historical theory and methodology, since women have often been among those groups whose voices were most ignored, silenced, or otherwise marginalized. 

As mentioned above, there is a danger of taking this approach too far and reading back into history all sorts of speculative theories about the motivations of various groups based on little or no evidence. But, it seems to me the alternative of ignoring completely the perspectives of huge sectors of society due to lack of clear and abundant evidence is just as problematic. Surely some balance between these two extremes can be struck, and that’s where I hope I land. 

So, what does this have to do with the history of early Christianity? What does it mean to take a Marxist view of the early Christian community? For me, it basically means I recognize the importance of marginalized groups and voices that have been wholly or partly silenced within and surrounding the rise of Christianity. This includes all those groups of Christians who happened to fall outside of what came to be regarded as orthodoxy — Gnostics, Marcionites, Ebionites, and, later, Arians, Nestorians and all the other heretics whose names I have forgotten for the moment — not to mention pagans, Jews, Middle and NeoPlatonists, followers of other philosophical schools, and really anybody and everybody else. In short, I recognize the importance of everyone’s perspectives. 

This doesn’t mean I believe any of these groups is just as likely to be correct about everything as the next. It doesn’t mean I should devote equal time and energy to studying them each individually, were such a thing even possible. It doesn’t even mean that I necessarily think any of them was very close to the truth, whether about Jesus in particular or the world in general. What it does mean is that I take them all seriously enough to consider their perspectives on their own terms and to weigh these perspectives and arguments against the available evidence. Perhaps the key thing it means for our purposes is that I don’t view the limitations in the quantity of evidence from these sources — the silence of their voices —  to count as a mark against them. I don’t think it is wise to assume that since we don’t have much extant testimony from some of these perspectives, they shouldn’t be taken seriously, or they were probably fringe radicals and therefore wrong. They may have ended up on the fringe, and they may have been radical, but these things don’t make them wrong. Rather, if we want to consider them wrong, I think the burden of the historian should be to demonstrate some reason they were wrong other than simply that we know comparably little about them, or that there apparently weren’t a lot of them, or  — certainly — that they ended up on the losing side of history. 

So, that’s at least part of what Marxism means for me when it comes to early Christianity. There is more that could be said. It is difficult to overstate the influence Marx has had on historical research and writing in the modern period (as it is, his influence on me personally).⁴Since first writing this, I came across this statement by John H. Arnold in an introduction to history that I think helps illustrate and expand a bit on this point: “Practically all historians writing today are marxists (with a small ‘m’). This does not mean that they are all ‘left-wing’ (far from it) or that they necessarily recognize or remember the debt. But one key element of Marx’s thought has become so ingrained in historians’ ideas that it is now practically taken for granted: the insight that social and economic circumstances affect the ways in which people think about themselves, their lives, the world around them, and thus move to action,” John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 85. But, for our purposes here, I think those are the main points that influence my position. 

I think you can see implied here a lot of my biases. It starts with taking all sorts of crazy ideas and perspectives seriously. Do I tend to always root for the underdog? Yes. Do I tend to play devil’s advocate? Yes. Do I assume there’s more to the story than we can find evidence for in the historical record? Always. 

Conversely, just as I am biased in favor of the marginalized perspectives, I am biased against the mainstream. Do I tend to stand outside the establishment and throw stones? Yes. Do I tend to define myself by what I am against rather than what I am for? Probably. Do I tend to doubt the legitimacy, veracity, or substance of things that are popular because they are popular? Almost certainly (Harry Potter never stood much of a chance with me for this reason). I freely admit to all of this. As far as biases go, I think I could do worse, and I believe I’m in good company. 

I hope that all makes some sense. 

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