The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (or Christianity Before Christ) is an 1875 book written by Kersey Graves. It asserts that Jesus was not an actual person, but was a creation largely based on earlier stories of deities or god-men saviours who had been crucified, and descended to and ascended from the underworld.
It has been noted that Graves derived "many of the most important facts collated in this work" from the comprehensive 1833 work, the Anacalypsis, by Sir Godfrey Higgins. These works thus present an early variant of what would come to be known as the Jesus myth hypothesis.
The book is often used as a source for many Jesus myth hypothesis writers, including Acharya S, Tom Harpur and John G. Jackson.
Atheist activist Madelyn Murray O'Hair was a fan of the book.
The book's accuracy has been questioned by both Christian[1] and atheist scholars,[2] with the consensus being that the book is unscholarly and unreliable.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Who was Kersey Graves?, article citing various rebuttal from Christian contemporaries to Graves.
- ^ infidels.org, review of The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by atheist historian Richard Carrier.
[edit] External links
- The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, complete text at sacred-texts.com.
- The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, online edition at infidels.org.
- Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Richard Carrier (2003).
