The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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_What follows from this?_ That one does well to put on one’s gloves when reading the New Testament The proximity of so much pitch almost defiles one. We should feel just as little inclined to hobnob with “the first Christians” as with Polish Jews: not that we need explain our objections.... They simply smell bad.—In vain have I sought for a single sympathetic feature in the New Testament; there is not a trace of freedom, kindliness, open-heartedness and honesty to be found in it. Humaneness has not even made a start in this book, while _cleanly_ instincts are entirely absent from it.... Only evil instincts are to be found in the New Testament, it shows no sign of courage, these people lack even the courage of their evil instincts. All is cowardice, all is a closing of one’s eyes and self-deception. Every book becomes clean, after one has just read the New Testament: for instance, immediately after laying down St Paul, I read with particular delight that most charming and most wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom someone might say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma about Cæsar Borgia: “_è tutto festo_”—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and well-constituted. ... These petty bigots err in their calculations and in the most important thing of all.
They certainly attack; but everything they assail is, by that very fact alone, _distinguished._ He whom a “primitive Christian” attacks, is _not_ thereby sullied.... Conversely it is an honour to be opposed by “primitive Christians.” One cannot read the New Testament without feeling a preference for everything in it which is the subject of abuse—not to speak of the “wisdom of this world,” which an impudent windbag tries in vain to confound “by the foolishness of preaching.” Even the Pharisees and the Scribes derive advantage from such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something in order to have been hated in such a disreputable way. Hypocrisy—as if this were a reproach which the “first Christians” _were at liberty_ to make!—After all the Scribes and Pharisees were the _privileged ones;_ this was quite enough, the hatred of the Chandala requires no other reasons. I very much fear that the “first Christian”—as also the “_last Christian” whom I may yet be able to meet,—_ is in his deepest instincts a rebel against everything privileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for “equal rights”!... Regarded more closely, he has no alternative....
If one’s desire be personally to represent “one of the chosen of God”—or a “temple of God,” or “a judge of angels,”—then every _other_ principle of selection, for instance that based upon a standard of honesty, intellect, manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of heart, becomes the “world,”—_evil in itself._ Moral: every word on the lips of a “first Christian” is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive falsehood,—all his values, all his aims are pernicious; but the man he, hates, _the thing_ he hates, _has value._ ... The Christian, more particularly the Christian priest, is a _criterion of values_—Do I require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself to do. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman, in whose presence the word “truth” had been shamelessly abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is of value,_—and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the shattering of that Testament: “What is truth!”...
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.