Hugh Joseph Schonfield (17 May 1901 – 26 January 1988) was a British Bible scholar specialising in the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

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 The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

. He was one of the founders and president of the

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ''a ...

organisation Commonwealth of World Citizens "Mondcivitan Republic".

Religious and political beliefs

Born Jewish, Schonfield became a liberal Hebrew Christian who sometimes referred to himself as a Nazarene. In 1937 Schonfield was excluded from membership of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA), of which he had been a founding member since 1925, due to his unwillingness to affirm the deity of Jesus. He later associated with Messianic Judaism for a while, but was bitterly disillusioned by the experience. He called himself "the Jewish historian of Christian beginnings", 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 Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

Society. He founded the "Mondcivitan Republic," Commonwealth of World Citizens, in 1956. He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. 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 Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the condemned is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam or stake and left to hang until eventual death. It was used as a punishment by the Achaemenid Empire, Persians, Ancient Carthag ...

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 "More popular than Jesus" is part of a remark made by John Lennon of the Beatles in a March 1966 interview, in which he claimed that the public were more infatuated with the band than with Jesus Christ, and that Christian faith was declining ...

". 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. An additional aspect of his work was the revision of the

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

writing system. In ''The New Hebrew Typography'', published in 1932, he argued for a significantly revised version of the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

modelled after the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, including a capital-lowercase distinction, no final forms, a vertical emphasis, and serifs. This alphabet has not been adopted.

Selected bibliography

* An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew's Gospel, Translated ''(translator, with notes and appendices, 1927)'' * The Lost 'Book of the Nativity of John' ''(1929)'' * Letters to Frederick Tennyson ''(editor, 1930)'' * The New Hebrew Typography ''(1932)'' * An Astounding Scientific Discovery: The Authentic Photograph of Christ: His Face, and Whole Figure as Marvellously Appearing on the

Shroud Shroud usually refers to an item, such as a cloth, that covers or protects some other object. The term is most often used in reference to ''burial sheets'', mound shroud, grave clothes, winding-cloths or winding-sheets, such as the Jewish '' ...

Which Was Thrown over His Body after the Crucifixion ''(by Kazimir de Proszynski; edited with an historical supplement by Hugh J. Schonfield)'' * The Speech That Moved the World ''(1932)'' * For the Train: Five Poems and a Tale ''(by

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

; arranged poem order, wrote preface, 1932)'' * The Book of British Industries ''(editor, 1933)'' * Jesus Christ, Nineteen Centuries After: The Search Symposium by Leaders of the Great World Faiths ''(1933)''
The History of Jewish Christianity from the First to the Twentieth Century
''(1936)'' * Richard Burton, Explorer ''(1936)'' * Ferdinand De Lesseps ''(1937)'' * According to the Hebrews: a New Translation of the Jewish Life of Jesus (the Toldoth Jeshu), with an Inquiry into the Mature of its Sources and Special Relationship to the Lost Gospel according to the Hebrews ''(1937)'' * Travels and Researches in South Africa * The Suez Canal ''(1939)'' * Jesus: A Biography ''(1939)'' * The Treaty of Versailles, The Essential Text and Amendments ''(1940)'' * Readings from the Apocryphal Gospels ''(editor, 1940)'' * The Divine Plan of World Government: An Introduction to the Doctrine of a Holy Nation ''(1940)'' * Italy and Suez ''(1941)'' * Judaism and World Order ''(1943)'' * This Man Was Right: Woodrow Wilson Speaks Again ''(editor, 1943)'' * The Jew of Tarsus: An Unorthodox Portrait of Paul ''(1947)'' * Saints Against Caesar: The Rise and Reactions of the First Christian Community ''(1948)'' * The Suez Canal in World Affairs ''(1952)'' * Egypt: Cross-Road on a World Highway ''(1953)'' * Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Studies Towards their Solution ''(1956)'' * The Bible Was Right: An Astonishing Examination of the New Testament ''(1956)'' * The Song of Songs ''(editor and translator, 1960)'' * A Popular Dictionary of Judaism ''(1962)'' * A History of Biblical Literature ''(1962)'' * The Passover Plot: New Light on the History of Jesus ''(1965)'' * Reader's A-to-Z Bible Companion ''(1967)'' * Those Incredible Christians ''(1968)'' * Suez Canal in Peace and War ''(1969)'' * Travels in Tartary and Thibet ''(1970)'' * Politics of God ''(1970)'' * The Jesus Party ''(published in the UK as ''The Pentecost Revolution: The Story of the Jesus Party in Israel, A.D. 36–66,'' 1974)'' * For Christ's Sake: A Discussion of the Jesus Enigma ''(1975)'' * The Shroud of Turin
The Original New Testament
''(originally published in 1958 as The Authentic New Testament, updated and re-published under this title in 1985)'' * The Essene Odyssey: The Mystery of the True Teacher and the Essene Impact on the Shaping of Human Destiny ''(1984)'' * After the Cross ''(1981)'' * Proclaiming the Messiah: The Life and Letters of Paul of Tarsus, Envoy to the Nations ''(1997)'' * The Mystery of the Messiah ''(1998)'' * Jesus: Man, Mystic, Messiah ''(2004)'' Articles * ''Wells as religious humanist''Religious humanism: Volume 3 Fellowship of Religious Humanists – 1969 WELLS AS RELIGIOUS HUMANIST By Hugh J. Schonfield – Experiment in Autobiography, by HG Wells"

References

The Cramoisy Queen: A Life of

Caresse Crosby Caresse Crosby (born Mary Phelps Jacob; April 20, 1892 – January 24, 1970) was the recipient of a patent for the first successful modern brassiere, bra, an American patron of the arts, a publisher, and the woman ''Time (magazine), Time'' called ...

– Page 168 Linda Hamalian – 2009 All that was required, she thought, was formal official status, and so she merged with the legally established Commonwealth of World Citizens founded by Dr. Hugh Schonfield, a British historian and scholar of what the West called..." * The politics of God, Hugh Joseph Schonfield – 1970 "There shall be identical treatment of those outside the Commonwealth as of those within it, treatment that is founded on reverence for the human personality. 3. The Commonwealth of World Citizens shall ever promote and actively assist ..." * World citizenship and mundialism: a guide to the building of a ... – Page 23 John Charles de Villamar Roberts – 1999 "The Commonwealth of World Citizens offered itself as an example of a new "nation" devoted solely to serving humanity. Its founder, Dr. Hugh Schonfield, a distinguished Biblical scholar, had worked for world citizenship and mundialism ..." * Alternative approaches to world government Hanna Newcombe – 1967 "The Commonwealth of World Citizens, or Mondcivitans , was founded long before Garry Davis. In 1938, Dr. Hugh Schonfield, distinguished British Jewish scholar and diplomat, conceived the civilized world's need for a new "independent and ... * No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe – Page 141 Matt Young – 2001 "Hugh Schonfield was a New Testament scholar who was educated at King's College, London, and earned a doctorate in sacred literature at the University of Glasgow. He was a prolific author but received attention mostly for ''The Passover Plot''..."

External links

The Hugh & Helene Schonfield World Service Trust

The International Leadership and Business Society ( A business society based on the ideas of Hugh Schonfield)

'Passing over the Plot: The Life and Work of Hugh Schonfield' (in Mishkan ISSUE NO 37 Fall 2002, Caspari Centre, Jerusalem)

Mondcivitania page on Facebook

A Life for Mankind: The Biography of Hugh Schonfield

Hugh Schonfield: A Case Study of Complex Jewish Identities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schonfield, Hugh 1901 births 1988 deaths British biblical scholars British Jews Translators of the Bible into English People educated at St Paul's School, London Alumni of King's College London Jewish translators of the Bible 20th-century British translators Swoon hypothesis World Constitutional Convention call signatories