Digression from the previous post & re Jesus

The great Protestant Reinold Niebuhr affirmed in one of his books that Communists were misguided Children of Light--that was before he fell into a Cold War mentality--but I think his point is indisputable (that is, if you're into logic, evidence & stuff like that). One thing which almost all non-fundamentalist biblical scholars* agree upon is this: Jesus was a radical egalitarian & that may have been the most scandalous aspect of his teachings as far as his Jewish contemporaries were concerned. Jesus initially probably had only his fellow Jews in mind for this doctrine of radical inclusiveness. Indeed, judging from the tone of his remarks to the Samaritan lady at the well, he rather seems to have disliked non-Jews. Later, toward the end of his life, there are signs he was mellowing toward Gentiles. (I refer everybody to Bruce Chilton's books Rabbi Jesus and Rabbi Paul for support of the foregoing theses about Christian inclusiveness.)

It would be an anachronism to affirm that Jesus was a socialist, but some form of socialism would seem to be a natural consequence of Jesus's ethics as applied to political economy. More on this later.

*if a fundamentalist biblical scholar is not a contradiction in terms.