This will be of great use in the debate I am currently involved with in the Apology forum.
The story according to Nietzsche's account in the Genealogy is that the Palestinian Jewish rabbis constituted a noble class who believed that they had a special position as mediators between God and His chosen people. This station in life conferred on them a spiritual superiority to other Palestinians and to all non-Jews. The Romans who conquered them had a different set of values. They too saw themselves as noble, but their superiority consisted primarily in their physical might, their vital strength which enabled them to conquer and enslave others and occupy their lands. The Jewish priests resented the imposition of this Roman control over their lives, but they felt impotent to do anything about it. The brute power of the Romans particularly galled them, because they believed themselves to be their superiors intellectually and spiritually. The Roman warrior conquerors did not feel particularly resentful about the claims of spiritual superiority of the Jews, because these claims even if true in no way interfered with their own aspirations. The members of the noble Roman class were able to pursue and satisfy their desires and enjoy the kind of life they valued. The members of the noble Jewish class, meanwhile, felt their powerful positions unjustly usurped by their conquerors, but were unable to openly retaliate. The Jewish priests did not simply resign themselves in humility to their inferior social position. They had a deep sense of self-esteem and pride, and this fueled a simmering rage at their situation and hatred toward their conquerors. All of this, so far, according to Nietzsche is perfectly natural and understandable. The perversion and corruption enters in not with the ruthlessness and bloody violence of the conquerors nor with the frustration , rage, hatred, and desire for revenge of the conquered, but with the mendacity and self-deception to which the conquered ultimately resort. In order to maintain pride and a sense of superiority over their conquerors, the Palestinians both reaffirmed the value of the spiritual, and denied the values of vital might, political prestige and power, and worldly riches.
Christianity with other-worldly orientation and its ascetic practices represents for Nietzsche the crown of Jewish ressentiment, its most elaborate and perfect achievement. Nietzsche traces the birth of the Christian ideal to the following mechanism of ressentiment...
Scheler is not concerned with the historical genealogy of ressentiment; instead, he describes the sociological conditions which foster it. Scheler considers ressentiment to arise as a function of the inequality in social conditions. While he would not consider the inequality of social positions to be unnatural—in fact, he considers it to be inevitable—one's response to this inequality can be more or less healthy, more or less corrupt. Drawing on the work of Simmel, he distinguishes two basic attitudes to perceived inequality—that of the noble man and that of the common man. It should be noted that while the categories, noble and common, are basically sociological, Scheler considers an individual of any socio-economic stratum, even of either gender, to be capable of nobility. But he does not believe that members of lower classes and women in general are typically blessed with nobility of spirit.
Both types compare themselves to others: "Each of us—noble or common, good or evil—continually compares his own value with that of others." (6) The common man derives his awareness of his relative worth through comparison with others, but the noble man enjoys an original sense of his own self-worth. The noble man's original self-confidence pre-conditions his apprehension of the values borne by others. Scheler distinguishes this non-reflective self-confidence from pride, which he views as a derivative, deliberate grasping at self-worth. Scheler here contributes a fine distinction not found in Nietzsche, for whom to be noble simply meant to be naturally proud. The immediate sense of self-worth is not experienced by the common man nor does he apprehend values independently of their being possessed by others. Scheler writes, "The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison." (7) The common man's valuation is derivative. He watches the noble man and since he identifies the noble man with all that is good and desirable, he attaches value to whatever the noble man possesses...
Ressentiment: A marked feeling of inferiority leading to a desire to take revenge, but an
inability to do so physically due to the causes of one's own feelings. This typically sublimates itself into 'self-serving servility', in which one attempts not to confront one's enemy head-on, but instead to subtly undermine their own sense of worth as a means of leveling the proverbial playing field. Hence Christian morality, a direct antipode to the worldly values of the Roman masters of Palestine. This effect is created by setting a standard outside of one's self to which one might compare one's own actions, thus implicitly forcing one's opponent to do the same.
