The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors

Kersey Graves was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on November 21, 1813 and past away on September 4, 1883 in Richmond, Indiana. That is physically, as this flamboyant skeptic, God-critic, rationalist, spiritualist, reformist writer, who gained so much popularity among the 19th century American free thought circuit, still manages to stir up the moods. His devastating comments on the Christian foundations and assumptions are still feared by those God-fearing believers who sold their soul to this religion, and Graves’ controversial books are still quoted and debated. The occasional modern historian who criticizes Graves historical research is mostly right. However, this offers the Christian believer little comfort. The point is, Graves cannot be solely commented on from the historical perspective alone. The latter would make him an easy victim of modern historians who hold the (rather extreme and ungrounded) vision, that every historical book written before 1950 is virtually worthless in the 21st century.

Graves and his legacy are simply too big for academic shortcuts. The authors’ main objective was not primarily centered around academic aspirations. Instead, he wrote passionately about his subjects as the Bible, Christ, Satan and church dogmas, from the perspective of a socially engaged researcher, using the historical data of his time as a plaster, in search for uninvestigated, denied or repressed truths beyond our “taken for granted-Christianity”.
For a better understanding of his argumentation and style a little insight in his Quaker background is invaluable.

Read more about Kersey Graves in the post scriptum of 'The Biography of Satan'.