The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors or, Christianity Before Christ

Graves, Kersey, 1813-1883Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
726K words
Chapters
73

Tags

English Originals World HistoryReligion Historical ReappraisalBold ArgumentCritique of ReligionIntellectual EnlightenmentAcademic StudyIntellectual CommentaryMythology StudiesAncient MythologyComparative ReligionReligious Origins

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by GravesAuthor: Graves, Kersey, 1813-1883,Language: English, Class: BL: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Religion: General, Miscellaneous and Atheism, Release Date: Jan 17, 2012

Editor's review

This book is the representative work of the nineteenth-century American freethinker Kersey Graves and an important early text in comparative religion. Using sixteen ancient mythological figures as its thread, the author attempts to argue for structural similarities between the Christian narrative and earlier Near Eastern and Mediterranean religious traditions, thereby proposing the thesis of "Christianity before Christ." The book's real value lies not in whether its conclusions hold but in the way it exemplifies a typical nineteenth-century rationalist inquiry into the origins of religion, and how scholars of the time collected and compared cross-cultural materials. Reading it reveals the rough texture of comparative method before it became an academic discipline: dense accumulation of materials and conspicuous leaps in argument, which nonetheless preserve a wealth of traceable leads. For today's readers, it is better read as a primary document in the history of religious studies and intellectual history than as a scholarly monograph with reliable conclusions. Its horizontal comparisons of mythological motifs help readers understand why "parallel narratives" have long attracted researchers, and also train vigilance toward analogical argument. The public-domain electronic edition facilitates searching and citation, and is suitable for chapter-by-chapter verification with a critical eye.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introductory chapters first to clarify the author's core thesis and argumentative framework before moving to specific figure comparisons.
  2. For each chapter, list the sources the author uses, marking which are mythological texts and which are later retellings.
  3. Read alongside contemporary introductions to comparative religion to distinguish nineteenth-century analogical method from modern historical-critical method.
  4. At densely comparative passages, make table excerpts to examine whether the author equates similarity with causal connection.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introductory text in religious studies? Not really. Its argumentative mode belongs to the nineteenth-century freethought tradition, with dense comparison of materials and a lack of modern academic norms; its conclusions are not contemporary consensus. Beginning readers may mistake the book's analogies for established conclusions. If you already have a foundation in religious history, it is better read as a primary document in the history of the discipline.
Which figures are the "sixteen crucified saviors" in the book? The available information only indicates that the book develops comparisons around sixteen ancient figures, without listing the names and details one by one. Readers should rely on the actual chapters of the book, checking chapter by chapter the figures the author selects, the textual sources, and the argumentative steps, rather than substituting secondary summaries for reading the original.
What is the reading experience of the public-domain electronic edition like? This is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, convenient for full-text search, excerpting, and citation, and suitable for textual comparison and keyword tracking. However, public-domain editions are usually plain in layout and lack modern introductions and annotations, so readers need to supplement background material themselves and watch for spelling and punctuation conventions of early typesetting.
What prior knowledge is needed to read this book? It is advisable to first understand the basic outline of Christian origins and common motifs in Near Eastern and Greco-Roman mythology. With basic concepts of comparative religion, one can distinguish whether the author is doing textual comparison, motif generalization, or directly inferring historical causation, thereby avoiding being led along by dense analogies.

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About the author

Graves, Kersey, 1813-1883 Author · American · 1813–1883

Kersey Graves (1813–1883) was an American rationalist writer who lived through a period of intense religious and intellectual ferment in nineteenth-century America. Public information about his life is limited, and he is known today mainly through his writings, which reveal his intellectual stance. The only work of his held in this collection is The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ. Adopting a comparative-religion perspective, the book sets side by side motifs of suffering, death, and resurrection found in various cultures predating Christianity, arguing that such narratives are cross-cultural rather than unique to any single faith. His writing is marked by a pronounced rationalist and critical tone, direct in style and dense in argument, and it exerted some influence on nineteenth-century American freethought; it is still cited by readers interested in the origins of religion and comparative mythology.