Kersey Graves

Kersey Graves (November 21, 1813 – September 4, 1883) was a skeptic, atheist, spiritualist, reformist and writer.

Life

Kersey Graves was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on 21 November 1918. [ [http://www.spirithistory.com/kgraves.html Graves bio] .] His parents were Quakers, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, and then later moved to the Hicksite wing of Quakerism. Graves was largely self-educated, 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 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 utopian settlers in Wayne County, Indiana. 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, and they later had five children at their home in Harveysburg, Ohio. 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, whereby all clergy, creeds, and set liturgy in worship were irrelevant, and a hindrance to God's work. This was intensified by Hicks's brand of Quakerism - Quietism - 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, and withdrew further from even Christianity and eventually a belief in God.

Graves died at his home just north of Richmond, Indiana 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" (1875), and "Bible of Bibles" (1881).

Criticism

His scholarship was, however, quickly criticized by Reverend John Taylor Perry of Cincinnati. He showed that all sources Graves used were Freethought texts, which in turn had synthesised random, mis-understood 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 as a challenge to church teaching.

Graves made leaps of logic similar to those of Alexander Hislop. Graves's central thesis that Christendom is a mere retelling of Pagan myths, echoes the similar claim of Alexander Hislop, who wrote "The Two Babylons", although Hislop intended only to nullify the claims of the Catholic Church and prove they were serving Satan. 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' "Anacalypsis" [ [http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/explain.html http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/explain.html] .]

Historian Richard Carrier, a proponent of the Jesus myth hypothesis, has heavily criticized Graves' work, particularly his book "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors", as being unreliable and unscholarly. [ [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/graves.html infidels.org] , review of "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" by Richard Carrier.]

Brian Flemming, director of Jesus myth hypothesis documentary "The God Who Wasn't There", has cautioned against using Graves as a source due to his lack of scholarship and unreliability of his claims. [http://www.thegodmovie.com/faq.php FAQ for "The God Who Wasn't There" by Brian Flemming.]

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 a major source for Acharya S, author of "The Christ Conspiracy". His writings even make a brief showing in "The Da Vinci Code".

Tom Harpur has used Graves as a source for his books on Jesus Christ in comparative mythology. Atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair was also a fan of Graves' work. [ [http://www.spirithistory.com/kgraves.html Kersey Graves page] , "In February 1974, Madalyn Murray O’Hair lectured listeners of the American Atheist Radio’s program on the subject of American Freethinker Kersey Graves, the author of the 1875 book, The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors...".]

ee also

*Jesus myth hypothesis
*Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
*Godfrey Higgins
*Alvin Boyd Kuhn
*Gerald Massey

References

External links

* [http://www.spirithistory.com/kgraves.html Who was Kersey Graves?] (John Benedict Buschler)
**A well-researched and documented modern study on which this article has been based.
* [http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/index.shtml "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors"] (Kersey Graves, full text)
* [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/graves.html Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors] (Richard Carrier)
**A modern commentary by Richard Carrier of Graves and his accuracy.