Edwin Johnson (historian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other people named Edwin Johnson, see Edwin Johnson

Edwin Johnson (1842-1901), English historian, is best known for his radical criticisms of Christian historiography, continuing scholarship in the vien of Bruno Bauer, S.A. Naber, and A. Pierson. Among his known works are "Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins" (1887, published in London anonymously) and "The Pauline Epistles: Re-studied and Explained" (1894).

In "Antiqua Mater" Johnson examines a great variety of sources related to early Christianity "from outside scripture"^[1], coming to the conclusion that there was no reliable documental evidence to prove the existence of Jesus Christ or the Apostles. He asserts that Christianity had evolved from a Jewish Diaspora movement, he provisionally called the Hagioi. They adhered to a liberal interpretation of the Torah with simpler rites and a more spiritualized outlook. Hagioi is a Greek word meaning "saints", "holy ones", "believers", "loyal followers", or "God's people", and was usually used in reference to members of the early Christian communities. It is a term that was frequently used by Paul in the New Testament, and in a few places in Acts of the Apostles in reference to Paul's activities^[2]

Both Gnosticism as well as certain Bacchic pagan cults are also mentioned as likely precursors of Christianity.

In "The Pauline Epistles" Johnson suggests that the whole historical period between 700 and 1400 A. D. did not actually exist. The Church Fathers, the Gospels, St. Paul, the early Christian texts as well as Christianity in general are identified as mere literary creations and attributed to monks from competing orders who drew up the entire Christian mythos in the early 16th century.

Johnson’s critical stance is in good correspondence with the views voiced by Sir Isaac Newton, Wilhelm Kammeier, Jean Hardouin, Robert Baldauf and Christoph Marx; many of his assertions were repeated by modern scientists who call for a radical revision of historical chronology as we know it, among them the German scientists Hermann Detering, Eugen Gabowitsch and Uwe Topper, as well as the Russian mathematicians Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovsky.