"[I]n the words of Friedrich Engels, "Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed peoples: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome" After all, the Bible often directly addresses the poor and downhearted and promises that they will be compensated in heaven, where the "first shall be last, and the last, first." Despite this 'evidence', a consensus has formed among historians of the early church that regardless of biblical assurances to the lower classes, the early Christians were drawn mainly from the ranks of the privileged. E.A. Judge identified the early Christians as recruited mainly from among "a socially pretentious section of the population of big cities." and Abraham Malherbe concluded that the language used by early Christian writers clearly reflects a literate, educated audience. In his detailed study of the church in Corinth in the first century, Gerd Theissen identified wealthy Christians, including members of the "upper classes." Many other historians of the early church have expressed similar views."