1. Christianity arose as a consequence of the despair of the slaves and oppressed, who were unable to free themselves by struggle and rebellion from the yoke of the enslavers and poverty, and therefore turned their gaze to religious fantasy in the form of Christianity.

2. Christianity did not arise immediately (so to speak, revolutionarily), but was gradually formed from separate Jewish and pagan beliefs, ideas, and myths. Therefore, it is syncretic in nature from the very beginning.

The substantiation of these theses, as well as a number of other, less significant statements, has been given one of the central places in atheistic literature for about two hundred years.

Without touching upon their analysis by the defenders of Christianity, we will try to elucidate these questions on the basis of those who are significant authorities for modern Russian atheism.

1. The article "F. Engels on the Origin of Christianity" in the journal "Questions of Philosophy" for 1970 No 2 speaks of the hypothesis of the origin of Christianity, based on the so-called defeat of the slave revolution: "The theory that was fashionable at one time in our literature, linking the formation of Christianity with the so-called slave revolution" has no serious grounds, especially since the "slave revolution itself turned out to be a historiographical fiction."

Let us point out, for example, some of the uprisings of this era: 24-19 AD – the uprisings in Spain; 6-9 AD – in Pannonia; 9 AD – In Germany, three legions of the Romans were destroyed in the Teutoturg Forest. In 14 AD (the death of Augustus), the Pannonian and Rhine legions proclaimed Germanicus emperor, but were defeated. 17-25 AD – in Africa; 21 AD – in Thrace, Gaul, Numidia; 24 AD – in the south of Italy (like the Spartacus uprising); 50 to 61 – In Britain, where 20 thousand Romans were killed; 66 – 70 AD – Jewish revolt.

The assertion that the cause of the emergence of Christianity was the deterioration of the material situation of the oppressed masses of the people and new forms of exploitation that arose in connection with the Roman conquest and the defeat of slave revolts is also untenable. In the same article we read: "But, apparently, the change in the forms of exploitation did not have a direct impact on the emergence of Christianity... ». "Now we know better than in the last century the economic history of the Roman Empire and can emphasize a surprising paradox: a social vacuum and moral deterioration... were established in conditions of relative material progress.

The Romans in the first centuries A.D. lived generally better than before: they built better houses, ate better, and maybe even received a better secondary education. The improvement in everyday life apparently affected even slaves, not to mention freedmen. It is important to emphasize this because the criticism of the "hypertrophy of the material", the criticism of the pursuit of the benefits of "this world" constituted one of the most important moments of the social program of early Christianity.

2. The attempt to declare primitive Christianity to be a syncretic product also turns out to be completely unfounded. The first thing that speaks most strongly against the "evolutionary" appearance of Christianity and the syncretic nature of its formation is the suddenness of the appearance of Christianity, followed by its completely incomprehensible in the natural plane its wide spread "throughout the universe." F. Engels, for example, in his Book of Revelation directly calls Christianity "a major revolutionary movement." Of course, speaking of the "revolutionary" nature of Christianity, Engels did not mean an armed uprising of Christians against the existing social order or a political struggle, for there was none, he pointed to the very nature of the emergence of Christianity – explosive, unexpected. This correct view necessarily requires the recognition of its natural consequence. Revolutionism excludes syncretism, which can be the result of consistent molding, gradual creation, and speaks of the originality of this phenomenon, its fundamental difference from the existing old, speaks precisely of birth, and not of education.

In view of this, there is no special need to show the impossibility of such a birth of a new world religion from such mutually exclusive components as Judaism and Roman polytheism, which are always extremely antagonistic to each other. If Christianity had really been the product of a mixture of heterogeneous elements of Judaism and paganism, then, on the one hand, it would not have been so hostile to Rome, which knew no heresies and opened its doors wide to all religions and philosophical concepts; On the other hand, Christianity itself would not have rejected with such principled principle both paganism in all its varieties and legalistic Pharisaic and rationalistic Sadducean Judaism. The Apostle Paul very precisely defined the essence of the relationship between paganism and Judaism and Christianity: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks" (1 Corinthians 1:23).

We will try to give a feasible answer to these questions.

1.2. The Method of the Mythological School and Its Main Shortcomings

First of all, let us turn to the method used by the representatives of the mythological explanation of the origin of Christianity, and here we are forced to state that this method sins with a number of shortcomings.

The method of mythologists is a vivid example of what in logic is called circulus vitiosus, the "vicious circle" in proof. Mythologists proceed, as their ultimate foundation, from propositions which they have yet to prove, but which they accept as already proved and indubitable. They declare in advance not only the entire New Testament, but also the Biblical writing in general, to be a collection of myths and legends, and to deprive the testimonies of this writing concerning the events of the Gospel and Biblical history of all historical significance. With this attitude to the sources of biblical history, the facts of the latter can, of course, be explained in the most diverse ways and brought closer to anything. But is this attitude fair? Has the legendary nature of biblical sources been scientifically proven?