them sick. Buddhism objectively claims "I suffer," while Christianity interprets suffering in relation to sin. Buddhism is too positivistic and truthful to have advocated the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Nietzsche refers to such virtues as the three Christian shrewdnesses: faith and belief are opposed to reason, knowledge, and inquiry. To Nietzsche, hope in the Beyond sustains the unhappy multitudes. Origin of Christianity Jewish priesthood Jewish, and subsequently—to a greater degree—Christian, priests survived and attained power by siding with decadents, Nietzsche claims. They turned against the natural world. Their "instincts of ressentiment" against those who were well–constituted led them to "invent an other world in which the acceptance of life appeared as the most evil and abominable thing imaginable." To survive, the Jewish priests made use of the decadents and their large population. The Jews were not decadents, themselves—they are the "very opposite." Rather, according to Nietzsche, they have "the most powerful national will to live, that has ever appeared on earth." However, "they have simply been forced into appearing" as decadents, to "put themselves at the head of all décadent movements (—for example, the Christianity of Paul—), and so make of them something stronger than any party frankly saying Yes to life." Five stages of denaturalizing values Israel's Yahweh/Jahveh "was an expression of its consciousness of power, its joy in itself, its hopes for itself." Because he is their God, they considered him to be the God of justice. The Jews affirmed themselves, realized their own power, and had a good conscience. Even after internal anarchy and Assyrian invasions weakened Israel, it retained its worship of God as a king who is both soldier and judge. Concept of God is falsified: Yahweh became a demanding god. "Jahveh, the god of "justice"—he is in accord with Israel no more, he no longer vizualizes the national egoism." Concept of morality is falsified: morality is no longer an expression of life and growth. Rather, it opposes life by presenting wellbeing as a dangerous temptation. The public notion of this God becomes weaponized by clerical agitators, who "interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for 'sin'" History of Israel is falsified: The great epoch becomes an epoch of decay. "the Exile, with its long series of misfortunes, was transformed into a punishment for that great age—during which priests had not