the innocuous Christ

I was looking up Hannah Arendt on the inimitable Wikipedia. IT was most amusing to note the side-bar indicating the major influences on her work:

Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Paul, Duns Scotus, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, Kant, Tocqueville, Marx, Heidegger, Russell, Jaspers, Benjamin

Not a few of these figures, I think, would be amused to see Jesus inserted in their ranks as just one more influence. The great and heartbreaking joke: the hidden God.

But with all respect, Arendt's Human Condition is one book you ought not to miss.