Martin A. Larson

Last updated
Martin A. Larson
BornMarch 2, 1897
Whitehall, Michigan
DiedJanuary 15, 1994
Phoenix, Arizona
Occupation(s)Historian, writer

Martin Alfred Larson (March 2, 1897 in Whitehall, Michigan - January 15, 1994 in Phoenix, Arizona) [1] was an American historical revisionist and freethinker. He specialized in the history of Christianity and wrote on its origins and early theological history, best known for his assertion that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist were Essenes. Larson was a long-term member of the Institute for Historical Review.

Contents

Biography

Larson was originally from a fundamentalist Christian Evangelical background but "rejected its dogmas and practices" when he was about twenty years old. Following service in the United States Navy, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan, after which he earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Michigan in 1927 with a thesis on the unorthodoxies of Milton, whom he found to have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He retired from a career in business at the age of 50 to devote himself to private study, lecturing and writing.

A long-time friend of historian Harry Elmer Barnes, Larson was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Institute for Historical Review's Journal of Historical Review from its first issue in 1980 to his death. [2]

Larson was also a tax critic and tax expert who was popular with the Tax protester movement for his books on the tax immunity of organized religion, the Federal Reserve, and how to fight the IRS. His articles have appeared in Parade Magazine , Fortune Magazine , Reader's Digest and other publications, and he had a regular column in The Spotlight entitled "Our World In Conflict".

He spent the final years of his life with his wife Emma in Phoenix, Arizona.

Theories

Larson's lifelong body of work constructs a complete historical theory of the origins of Christianity and the genesis of its theological controversies, detailing its evolution from the pagan cults of Osiris and Dionysus to modern times. This includes a synthesis of ideas, deities, and personalities that show how they combined to favor the rise and dominance of Christianity over religious competitors such as Mithraism, which lacked a human founder and excluded the general public, and Manichaeism, which invited the general public but lacked a deified founder. The thrust of his work is to show that Christianity evolved from pagan religions and Judaism rather than arose full-blown from the mind of a single religious prophet. Although he had no advanced degree in the subject, his works were popular with freethinkers, and he defended his theories to his death.

Larson stated that he spent more than four years studying ancient Egyptian, Persian, Brahman, Jain, Buddhistic, Judaistic and Essene cultures which all influenced the Essene Order from which the Christian Gospels originated. [3] According to Larson, the Essenes absorbed the eschatology and metaphysics of the Zoroastrians and later the Pythagoreans and ancient mystery cults of Greece and the Asia Minor. Larson studied the Dead Sea Scrolls literature and commented that the Essenes "engrafted a Christology which combined a Persian with a Messianic Judaic concept, which, in a period of crisis, they personalized in a martyred Teacher of Righteousness whom they expected to return upon clouds about 35-50 B.C. accompanied by a myriad of angels to conduct the Last Judgement." [3] Larson concluded that Jesus was an Essene who convinced himself he was the incarnate of Christ destined to redeem mankind so left the Order to create a mass movement. [3]

Reception

Leander E. Keck a Professor of Biblical Theology noted that Larson reconstructed "post-Maccabean Judaism, pre-Constantinian church history, the literary and historical developments of Essenism and Qumran and the historical Jesus, in order to build a pan-Essene view of Christian origins." [4]

Millar Burrows positively reviewed Larson's The Essene Heritage commenting that "of all the efforts thus far to demonstrate an Essene origin of Christianity surely this is the most ingenious, elaborate and determined... Dr. Larson does not lack imagination. If his conclusions prove less convincing to others than they are to him, his book at least deserves fair consideration as a serious, conscientious piece of work, evincing both originality and industry." [5] However, Siegfried Horn negatively reviewed the book as trying "to prove that Christianity is nothing but a warmed-up Essene religion" and criticized Larson for "reconstruct[ing] an artificial history of Essenism according to his own interpretation of the scanty historical evidence extant in the Qumran scrolls and in other ancient records." [6]

Larson's The Essene Heritage was also negatively reviewed in the Indian Journal of Theology as an "offering from the lunatic fringe. He argues, with a conspicuous lack of scholarship and a depressing mishmash of phoney exegesis, that Jesus was a frustrated Essene who (probably) survived his attempted crucifixion, and whose simple Essene-type gospel was rapidly distorted by the machinations of the crypto-Catholics." [7]

Published books

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References

  1. ↑ "www.REVISIONISTS.com -- Martin A. Larson". www.revisionists.com. Retrieved 2023-01-06.
  2. ↑ "Martin Larson: 1897-1994". Institute for Historical Review . Retrieved 26 June 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 Politella, Joseph (1959). "The Religion of the Occident by Martin A. Larson". Journal of the American Academy of Religion . 29 (1): 86–87.
  4. ↑ Keck, Leander E. (1968). "The Essene Heritage by Martin A. Larson". Journal of the American Academy of Religion . 36 (1): 92–93.
  5. ↑ Burrows, Millar (1968). "Reviewed Work: The Essene Heritage, or the Teacher of the Scrolls and the Gospel Christ by Martin A. Larson". Journal of Biblical Literature . 87 (2): 236–238. doi:10.2307/3263372. JSTOR   3263372.
  6. ↑ Horn, Siegfried H. (1968). "Review: The Essene Heritage or the Teacher of the Scrolls and the Gospel Christ". Andrews University Seminary Studies . 6 (2): 219–221.
  7. ↑ Clark, Ian D. L. (1969). "The Essene Heritage by Martin A. Larson" (PDF). Indian Journal of Theology . 18: 224–225.
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