Martin A. Larson (March 2, 1897 – January 15, 1994) was an American populist freethinker and a writer specializing in theological history and the
EssenesThe Essenes were a Jewish religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE that some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...
. Originally from a fundamentalist
EvangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...
background, he "rejected its dogmas and practices" when he was about 20 years old. Following service in the US Navy, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. He earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
in 1927 with a thesis on the unorthodoxies of
MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
, whom he found to have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
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Martin A. Larson (March 2, 1897 – January 15, 1994) was an American populist freethinker and a writer specializing in theological history and the
EssenesThe Essenes were a Jewish religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE that some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...
. Originally from a fundamentalist
EvangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...
background, he "rejected its dogmas and practices" when he was about 20 years old. Following service in the US Navy, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. He earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
in 1927 with a thesis on the unorthodoxies of
MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
, 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.
Larson's lifelong body of work reconstructs a complete version of the story of Christian origins and its theological controversies, detailing its evolution from the cults of
OsirisOsiris was an Egyptian god, usually called the god of the Afterlife, underworld or dead.Osiris is one of the oldest gods for whom records have been found; one of the oldest known attestations...
and
DionysusIn classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, amongst whom Greek mythology treated him as a late arrival...
to modern times. This includes the synthesis of ideas, deities and personalities that historically gave favor to Christianity against religious competitors such as
MithraismFor related deities see Mitra .The Mithraic Mysteries or Mysteries of Mithras was a mystery religion which became popular among the military in the Roman Empire, from the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Information on the cult is based mainly on interpretations of monuments. These depict Mithras as born...
, which lacked a human founder and barred the general public, or
ManichaeismManichaeism was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia. Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived...
, which lacked a deified founder. He summarizes the exposition of this story:
And so we see that Egypt gave the world the god-man savior, who was several times reconstituted in the Greek and barbarianBarbarian is a term for an uncivilized person, often used pejoratively, either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
mysteries. Persia filled the void with fears of hell, with hopes of paradiseParadise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...
, and with the concept of the Last JudgmentThe concept of a Last Judgment is found in all Abrahamic religions and elsewhere like Zoroastrianism and Duat.In Islam, the Last Judgment is referred to as "the Day of Standing" and God Almighty, will judge all Creation....
, and with the expectation of a renovated universe. The Jews and the Brahmanas gave us the priest-state. The Buddhists gave us renunciation, which made sex, family, wealth, labor and comfort into crimes and which made of idle communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
and parasitismParasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the host....
the saintly way of life. The Greeks gave us democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
and private property, which PythagorasPythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy...
attempted to replace with a celibate but self-reliant communism. He also popularized the ZoroastrianA Zoroastrian is an adherent to Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion that is based on the teachings and philosophies of Zoroaster....
metaphysics, the Brahmanic-Buddhist eschatologyEschatology is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world...
, and the Egyptian-Dionysiac soteriologyChristian Soteriology is the branch of Christian theology that deals with salvation. It is derived from the Greek sōtērion + English -logy...
in the Graeco-Roman world. PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world...
absorbed the communism, anthropology, and eschatology of Pythagoras, but rejected his celibacyCelibacy is defined as the lifestyle of someone who is, and is striving to remain, unmarried all his/her life. It is also used to describe a state of life where one chooses to abstain from all sexual activities...
and his soteriology, as well as his concept of religion as a mystery-cult. Aristotle rejected the features of PythagoreanismPythagoreanism is a term used for the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were much influenced by mathematics and probably a very inspirational source for Plato and Platonism....
which Plato accepted and embraced the concepts of private property and the secular life, in this respect returning to the ideology of HesiodHesiod was a Greek oral poet. His date is uncertain but leading scholars , agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the eighth century BCE. Since at least Herodotus's time , Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often...
. The EssenesThe Essenes were a Jewish religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE that some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...
were Pythagoreans who encased their pagan religious synthesis, which Jesus absorbed, in a Jewish entegument, which he rejected, although He considered Himself one of the prophets of YahwehYahweh is the English rendering of יַהְוֶה , a Hebrew vocalization of the Tetragrammaton that was proposed by the Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius in the 19th century. Although this vocalized Hebrew spelling יַהְוֶה is found in no extant Hebrew Manuscript, several English Bibles use the spelling...
; but he incorporated a definitely Buddhist element, not found among the Essenes. In the Gospel, therefore, we find a synthesis of Osirian-Dionysiac soteriology, Zoroastrian eschatology, Buddhist ethics and renunciation, Pythagorean communism, and the Essenic Parousia. (Origins 416-17)
Larson was also a tax critic and tax expert, who authored books on the immunities of organized religion, the Federal Reserve, and the IRS, including a text on
The Theory of Logical Expression. His articles, including a series titled
Our World in Conflict, have appeared in
Parade Magazine,
Fortune Magazine,
Reader's DigestReader's Digest is a monthly general-interest family magazine co-founded in 1922 by Lila Bell Wallace and DeWitt Wallace, and based in Chappaqua, New York, United States of America...
and other publications.
Published books
- The Essene-Christian Faith (1989, 273 pp. ISBN 0-939482-16-9). Larson's views on the development of the Essene movement.
- New Thought: A Modern Religious Approach (1985, 458 pp. ISBN 0-8022-2464-4). A historical overview of the New Thought movement, giving it origins in the European Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
of the 18th century. New Thought broadly describes the set of religions that claim to be based on the Bible and Jesus Christ but which, in Larson's view, reject many basic Christian doctrines : Phineas Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Modern New Thought institutions: the Church of Divine Science, Unity, the Churches of Religious Science, and the International New Thought Alliance.
- The I.R.S. vs. The Middle Class (1980-02, 209 pp. ISBN 0-8159-5824-2)
- Jefferson: Magnificent Populist A collection of quotes from Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
, organized into Larson's categories.
- The Continuing Tax Rebellion (1979, 273 pp., ISBN 0-8159-5220-1)
- The Story of Christian Origins (1977, 711 pp. ISBN 0883310902 ). First published as The Religion of the Occident 1959, this expanded volume details the synthesis of facts regarding the Christian epic, from its pagan origins, Palestinian primary and secondary sources, and age-old religious concepts introduced by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persions, Buddhists, Greeks, Jews, Phrygians, and Syrians. It also examines the soteriology, eschatology, ethics, and the Messianic concept which make up Christianity.
- The Religious Empire: The growth and danger of tax-exempt property in the United States (1976, 281 pp., ISBN 0-88331-082-1)
- The Great Tax Fraud: How the Federal government favors the rich and exploits the masses (1968, 326 pp., ISBN B0007E793A)
- Thee Federal Reserve: Devin-Adair Publishing ( don't know the date of publication ? )