As [Gershom] Scholem explains, this [Shabbetaian] doctrine is connected to the idea that 'the elect are fundamentally different from the crowd and not to be judged by its standards. Standing under a new spiritual law and representing as it were a new kind of reality, they are beyond good and evil'. Strauss's philosopher-prophet is a secularized version of the same conceit.

As [Gershom] Scholem explains, this [Shabbetaian] doctrine is connected to the idea that 'the elect are fundamentally different from the crowd and not to be judged by its standards. Standing under a new spiritual law and representing as it were a new kind of reality, they are beyond good and evil'. Strauss's philosopher-prophet is a secularized version of the same conceit.

I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny.

Far from being an aberration that is not representative of Christianity, the persecution of heretics follows logically from the connection of faith and salvation as presented by Jesus in the Gospels.