Meissner proposes that Christianity arose as a cult within the context of Middle Eastern, largely Jewish, religious and political movements. He discusses the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Zealots, and the Essenes as groups which may have played an important role in the development of Christianity. He uses his description of the politics of these groups to argue for Christianity as a cult. His emphasis here is on the messianic-chiliastic millenarian aspects of the movement. The charismatic prophet of this movement was Jesus. Meissner then applies his notions of the paranoid process to the early development of the Christian group. Victimization and narcissistic assaults on the Jewish people led to restitutive mechanisms. Projection of aggression onto the enemy creates a paranoid object. A shared idealization, a narcissistic restitution, takes the form of a revolutionary ideal or utopian vision of