Kersey Graves
Encyclopedia
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
, atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
, spiritualist, Nontheist Friend
Nontheist Friend
A nontheist Friend or an atheist Quaker is someone who affiliates with, identifies with, engages in and/or affirms Quaker practices and processes, but who does not necessarily accept a belief in a theistic understanding of God, a Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural...
, reformist and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
.
Life
Kersey Graves was born in Brownsville, PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
on 21 November 1813.. His parents were Quakers
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, and then later moved to the Hicksite
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks was an itinerant Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. He promoted doctrines that embroiled him in controversy that led to the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends...
wing of Quakerism. According to one source, Graves did not attend school for more than three or four months in his life, but another source says that he received an "academical education", and at the age of 19 was teaching in a school at Richmond, a career he was to follow for more than twenty years.
He was an advocate of Abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
was also interested in language reform, and became involved with a number of radical freethinkers within Quakerism. In August 1844, he joined a group of about fifty utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n settlers in Wayne County, Indiana
Wayne County, Indiana
Wayne County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 68,917. The county seat is Richmond.-History:...
. In the same month, he was disowned by his Quaker meeting group due to his neglect of attendance, and also setting up a rival group. The groups he was associated with later dabbled in mesmerism and spiritualism.
In July 1845, Graves married the Quaker, Lydia Michiner, at Goschen Meeting House, in Zanesfield, Logan County, Ohio
Zanesfield, Ohio
Zanesfield is a village in Logan County, Ohio, United States of America. The population was 220 at the 2000 census. It is the smallest incorporated village in Logan County.-History:...
, and they later had five children at their home in Harveysburg, Ohio
Harveysburg, Ohio
Harveysburg is a village in Massie Township, Warren County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 563, up from 437 in 1990...
. They later moved back to Richmond and bought a farm.
The Goschen Meeting House was a centre of the Congregational Friends and were involved with Temperance and Peace, health reform, anti-slavery, women's rights and socialistic utopianism.
Graves' Quaker background conditioned him to the philosophy of the Inner light
Inner light
Inner Light is a concept which many Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, use to express their conscience, faith and beliefs. Each Quaker has a different idea of what they mean by "inner light", and this also varies internationally between Yearly Meetings, but the idea is often...
, whereby all clergy, creeds, and set liturgy in worship were irrelevant, and a hindrance to God's work. This was intensified by Hicks's
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks was an itinerant Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. He promoted doctrines that embroiled him in controversy that led to the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends...
brand of Quakerism - Quietism
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection...
- where an individual's spiritual life was most important and all outward manifestations were invalid. The Congregational Friends were to the left of the Hicksites
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks was an itinerant Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. He promoted doctrines that embroiled him in controversy that led to the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends...
, and withdrew further from even Christianity and eventually a belief in God.
Graves died at his home just north of Richmond, Indiana
Richmond, Indiana
Richmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, United States, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport, which is in Boston Township and separated from the rest of the city...
on 4 September, 1883.
Graves held the belief that religion corrupted truth, and he evolved into a writer claiming religious belief false. He wrote The Biography of Satan (1865), The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors 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...
(1875), and Bible of Bibles (1881).
Criticism
Graves' scholarshipScholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
was quickly criticized by Reverend John Taylor Perry of Cincinnati. Perry contended that all sources Graves used were Freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
texts, which in turn had synthesised random, misunderstood and half-digested pieces of mis-information. Graves constructed from this a theory that religion was concocted by priests and made up of superstition and myth. This belief was consistent with the movement in Royal Arch Freemasonry then to revive Gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
as a challenge to church teaching.
Graves made leaps of logic similar to those of Alexander Hislop
Alexander Hislop
Alexander Hislop was a Free Church of Scotland minister infamous for his outspoken criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the son of Stephen Hislop , a mason by occupation and an elder of the Relief Church...
. Graves's central thesis that Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
is a mere retelling of Pagan myths, mirrors the opposite claim of Alexander Hislop, author of The Two Babylons
The Two Babylons
The Two Babylons is an anti-Catholic religious pamphlet produced initially by the Scottish theologian and Presbyterian Alexander Hislop in 1853. It was later expanded in 1858 and finally published as a book in 1919...
, that Catholicism, a mixture of Pagan myths with Christian belief, is a Satanic counterfeit of the true Christianity found in Protestantism. As with Hislop, modern scholarship has cast serious doubt on the veracity of such claims, and demonstrated that Graves' scholarship is deficient. Graves massaged his data to fit his thesis, and where he had no data he falsified it.
He often failed to cite proper sources for verification; although, "many of the most important facts collated in this work were derived from Sir Godfrey Higgins
Godfrey Higgins
Godfrey Higgins , was an archaeologist, Freemason and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, humanist, social reformer, and author of various now-esoteric and rare books...
' Anacalypsis"
Historian Richard Carrier
Richard Carrier
Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American historian. He is best known for his writings on Internet Infidels, otherwise known as the Secular Web, where he served as Editor-in-Chief for several years....
, a proponent of the Jesus myth hypothesis, has heavily criticized Graves' work, particularly his book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors 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...
, as being unreliable and unscholarly.
Brian Flemming
Brian Flemming
Brian Flemming is an American film director and playwright.- Early career :Flemming was born and raised in California's San Fernando Valley, and studied English at the University of California, Irvine, graduating in 1998...
, director of Christ myth theory documentary The God Who Wasn't There
The God Who Wasn't There
The God Who Wasn't There is a 2005 independent documentary written and directed by Brian Flemming. The documentary questions the existence of Jesus, examining evidence that supports the Christ myth theory against the existence of a historical Jesus, as well as other aspects of Christianity.- Jesus...
, has cautioned against using Graves as a source due to his lack of scholarship and unreliability of his claims.
Present-day readers
Graves' writings today are read mainly by people involved in the Jesus myth hypothesis, although many scholars in that field have denounced Graves as unfactual and unreliable (see criticism section). He is discussed in The Christ Conspiracy and Suns of God by Acharya S. His writings even make a brief showing in The Da Vinci CodeThe Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
.
Tom Harpur
Tom Harpur
Thomas William Harpur is a Canadian author, broadcaster, columnist and theologian. An ordained priest, he is a proponent of the Christ myth theory, the idea that Jesus did not exist but is a fictional or mythological figure...
has used Graves as a source for his books on Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
The study of Jesus from a mythographical perspective is the examination of the narrative of Jesus, the Christ of the gospels, Christian theology and folk Christianity as a central part of Christian mythology....
. Atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American atheist activist and founder of the organization American Atheists and its president from 1963 to 1986. One of her sons, Jon Garth Murray, was the president of the organization from 1986 to 1995, while she remained de facto president during these nine years....
was also an admirer of Graves' work.
See also
- Jesus myth hypothesis
- Jesus Christ in comparative mythologyJesus Christ in comparative mythologyThe study of Jesus from a mythographical perspective is the examination of the narrative of Jesus, the Christ of the gospels, Christian theology and folk Christianity as a central part of Christian mythology....
- Godfrey HigginsGodfrey HigginsGodfrey Higgins , was an archaeologist, Freemason and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, humanist, social reformer, and author of various now-esoteric and rare books...
- Alvin Boyd KuhnAlvin Boyd KuhnAlvin Boyd Kuhn was a scholar of comparative religion, mythology, linguistics and language.Born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kuhn studied the Ancient Greek language at university. He started his career working as a language teacher in high schools. He later enrolled at Columbia University to...
- Gerald MasseyGerald MasseyGerald Massey was an English poet and self-educated Egyptologist. He was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England.-Biography:...
- American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers
External links
- Who was Kersey Graves? (John Benedict Buescher)
- A well-researched and documented modern study on which this article has been based.
- The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (Kersey Graves, full text)
- Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (Richard CarrierRichard CarrierRichard Cevantis Carrier is an American historian. He is best known for his writings on Internet Infidels, otherwise known as the Secular Web, where he served as Editor-in-Chief for several years....
)- A modern commentary by Richard Carrier on Graves and his accuracy.
- Beddru is Beddou is Buddha