Abstract

This article examines Nietzsche’s The Antichrist. Nietzsche constructed his own history of Christianity with its roots in Judaism. It is framed not so much by the historical Jesus as by the distortions of him imposed by the early Christians, Paul in particular. Motivated by resentment over his death, the early disciples interpreted the ‘kingdom of God’, by which Jesus meant an inner peace, into a realm after death in which sinners would be punished and the good rewarded.