Hugh J. Schonfield

Hugh Joseph Schonfield (17 May 1901 – 26 January 1988) was a British Bible scholar specialising in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church. He was born and died in London, and educated there at St Paul's School and King's College, doing additional studies in the University of Glasgow. He was one of the founders and president of the pacifist organisation Commonwealth of World Citizens "Mondcivitan Republic".

Religious and political beliefs

Born Jewish, Schonfield became a liberal and Hebrew Christian who sometimes referred to himself as a Nazarene. In 1937 Schonfield was excluded from membership of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA), He later associated with Messianic Judaism for a while, but was bitterly disillusioned by the experience. and at the time of his death he was described in obituaries as a "non-practicing Jew."

At one time he was president of the H. G. Wells Society. He founded the "Mondcivitan Republic," Commonwealth of World Citizens, in 1956. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

Works

Schonfield wrote over 40 books including commercially successful books in the fields of history and biography as well as religion. In 1958 his non-ecclesiastical historical translation of the New Testament was published in the UK and the US, titled The Authentic New Testament. This aimed to show without idealised interpretation the meaning intended by the writers while maintaining the original structures. A revised version appeared in 1985 titled The Original New Testament. In 1965 he published the controversial The Passover Plot, a book the thesis of which is that the Crucifixion was part of a larger, conscious attempt by Jesus to fulfill the Messianic expectations rampant in his time, and that the plan went unexpectedly wrong. According to Steve Turner, this was one of the books John Lennon was reading when he commented that the Beatles were "More popular than Jesus".

Schonfield followed The Passover Plot with a sequel in 1968, Those Incredible Christians. This was also described as controversial, but had less impact than the earlier book.