ABSTRACT
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels can be seen to lean on the church even as they seek to mark out a critical distance from it. Given his belated return to Revelation in his most mature work, and in a far less satirical mode, the established view of Engels' celebrated 'advance to atheism' appears less compelling. Engels' essay offers a compelling instance of what Jacques Derrida calls in Specters of Marx a messianism without a Messiah, as well as an intriguing case of an attempt to put an end to the end. Since Engels is trying to get to the radicalism at the root of John Schad's Apocalypse by reading it as a political allegory of revolution. 'On the History of Early Christianity' sees Engels take Revelation very seriously indeed. Engels begins at the beginning: The history of Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement.
