This volume attempts to bring order to Nietzsche's scattered reflections on Jesus, St Paul and the birth of Christianity by tracing the development of his ideas and examining the intellectual reality behind his deliberately confrontational remarks concerning early Christianity's key players.

Although Nietzsche completed both Ecce Homo and The Antichrist by the end of 1888, they were considered so inflammatory that they were published only years later, in 1895 and 1908, respectively. Both are products of Nietzsche's last creative year. Yet Ecce Homo is relatively calm and tranquil, while The Antichrist is a jeremiad full of venom and vitriol. In Ecce Homo ("Behold the man") -- the words used by Pilate when he presented Jesus to the Jews -- Nietzsche presents us with an autobiographical tour de force, containing not only some of the finest, most incisive and instructive commentary on his own works, but also his singular comments on the "little things," which are, to him, "the fundamental affairs of life itself:" nutrition, climate, locality and recreation. His inclination to self-aggrandizement is offset by his comment, "I desire no 'believers, ' I think I am too malicious even to believe in myself. I have no wish to be a saint, I would rather be a buffoon. Perhaps I am a buffoon." The Antichrist is in fact one of the most devastating condemnations of Christianity ever; Nietzsche calls it "the one immortal blemish on mankind," the greatest sin possible against reality, against the spirit of the earth." Ever shocking, Nietzsche sets out to delegitimize the entire ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited. His analysis of Jesus and Paul as superlative Jewish types and his portrait of Pontius Pilate as a superior Roman type are thought-provoking, to say the least.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Foreword by Alice von Hildebrand When The Eternal Woman was first published in Germany, Europe was a battlefield of modern ideologies that would sweep away millions of lives in war and genocide. Denying the Creator, who made male and female, Nazism and Communism could only fail to appreciate the true meaning of the feminine and reduce woman to a mere instrument of the state. In the name of liberating her from the so-called tyranny of Christianity, atheism, in any form, leads to woman's enslavement. With penetrating insight Gertrud von le Fort understood the war on womanhood, and consequently on motherhood, that always coincides with an attack on the faith of the Catholic Church, which she embraced at the age of 50 in 1926. In The Eternal Woman, she counters the modern assault on the feminine not with polemical argument but with perhaps the most beautiful meditation on womanhood ever written. Taking Mary, Virgin and Mother, as her model, von le Fort reflects on the significance of woman's spiritual and physical receptivity that constitutes her very essence, as well as her role in both the creation and redemption of human beings. Mary's fiat to God is the pathway to our salvation, as it is inextricably linked with the obedience unto death of Jesus her son. Like the Son's acceptance of the Cross, Mary's acceptance of her maternity symbolizes for all mankind the self-surrender to the Creator required of every human soul. Since any woman's acceptance of motherhood is likewise a yes to God, when womanhood and motherhood are properly understood and appreciated, the nature of the soul's relationship to God is revealed.

This book examines religious beliefs expressed through ritualized behavior and festivals.

From Voltaire to Marx and Engels, this anthology explores history from the viewpoint of historians. The text includes influential works such as “The New Philosophical History” by Voltaire, “History as Biography” by Thomas Carlyle, and “A New Economic History” by R. W. Fogel. "I cannot imagine a more engaging and instructive introduction to the fascinations of historical writing than Fritz Stern's classic The Varieties of History."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., City University of New York "This book contains not only an excellent selection of passages which characterize the ideas and the work of leading historians from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, but the book in its entirety provides a stimulating survey of the entire development of modern historiography."—Felix Gilbert, The Institute for Advanced Study "It is by all odds the best kind of introduction to the study and, what is more, to the enjoyment, of history."—Crane Brinton