Hugh J. Schonfield

Hugh J. Schonfield (May 1901-January 24, 1988) was a British Bible scholar specializing in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church. He was born in London, and educated in Glasgow. He was one of the founders of and was president of the pacifist organization Commonwealth of World Citizens, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his services toward international humanity. At one time he was president of the H.G. Wells Society.

Schonfield was a Jew who termed himself a "Nazarene," meaning that he believed, as a Jew, that the Messiah, as predicted in Judaism's Hebrew Bible, had come in the person of Jesus. He believed, furthermore, that Jesus was aware of and believed in himself as born to fulfill the role of the Jewish Messiah, and consciously made the effort to see that the prophecies were fulfilled in his daily life (and death); that Jesus did not intend to found a new religion, but intended instead to lead to the fulfillment of God's covenant with the Jewish people as documented in the Hebrew Bible; that Christianity, the religion, was the product of Jesus' followers, especially as proclaimed to "the Nations", i.e., non-Jewish people, at which point the connection to Jesus' original purpose was lost.

This disconnect from the original message occurred over a period of time, under great distress (wars, loss of nationhood, slavery, exile from Jerusalem and Palestine), and for a multitude of reasons. Among those who are mentioned as having distorted the message is Saul of Tarsus, also known as the Apostle Paul, who Schonfield depicts as mentally ill and as believing himself to be the Messiah. Schonfield believes that Jesus, himself, had nothing but good intentions in living his life out as predicted for the Messiah; Schonfield questions the result of the distortion at the hands of some of his followers, and at the hands of some who used this burgeoning new religion for less than honourable purposes.

Schonfield encourages believers in Jesus to take a critical view of what is told to them about him, and to endeavor to learn about the historical Jesus, how he fit into his times and land, and what was the purpose of his original message— faith in the Scriptures, living the exemplary life according to them, and for the purpose of alleviating misery, and making a difference to humanity.

Schonfield wrote over 40 books including commercially successful books in the fields of history and biography as well as religion. In 1958 the New American Library published his translation of the New Testament entitled "The Authentic New Testament", translated as a non-ecclesiastical historian, not a theologian. In 1965 he published the controversial "The Passover Plot", a book whose thesis 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.

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 one.

In 1985 Harper and Row published "The Original New Testament", his new translation which aimed to show without idealised interpretation the meaning intended by the writers while maintaining the original structures [http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/scriptures/ONT.htm] .

An additional direction of his work has been the revision of the Hebrew writing system. [http://www.geocities.com/snortar/schonfield.html] In "The New Hebrew Typography", published in 1932, he argued for a revised version of the Hebrew alphabet modeled after the Latin Alphabet, including a capital-lowercase distinction, no final forms, a vertical emphasis, and serifs. This alphabet has not been adopted.

The thinking and work of Hugh Schonfield is continued and supported by the Hugh & Helene Schonfield World Service Trust and the International Leadership and Business Society. A small museum and reading room has been established in Tuningen Germany.

Works

* (trilogy)
** "Jesus a Biography"
** "Saints Against Caesar, the Story of the First Christian Community"
** "The Jew of Tarsus, a life of Paul"
* "An old Hebrew text of St. Matthew's Gospel, translated with an introduction, notes, and appendices" (Edinburgh: 1927)
* "The Authentic New Testament", a new translation of the New Testament, 1958
* "The Original New Testament", a later translation, 1985
* "The Bible Was Right"
* "The Song of Songs"
* "A Popular Dictionary of Judaism"
* "The Passover Plot, New Light on the History of Jesus"
* "Those Incredible Christians"
* Letters to Frederick Tennyson
* The New Hebrew Typography
* The Authentic Photograph of Christ
* For the Train: Five Poems and a Tale
* The Book of British Industries
* The History of Jewish Christianity from the First to the Twentieth Century
* Richard Burton, Explorer
* Ferdinand De Lesseps
* According to the Hebrews
* Travels in Tartary and Thibet
* Travels and Researches in South Africa
* The Suez Canal
* Jesus A Biography
* The Treaty of Versailles
* Readings from the Apocryphal Gospels
* Italy and Suez
* Judaism and World Order
* This Man Was Right.Woodrow Wilson Speaks Again
* The Jew of Tarsus: An unorthodox portrait of Paul
* Lost Book of Nativity of John
* The Suez Canal In World Affairs
* Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Studies Towards their Solution
* The Bible was right. An astonishing examination of the New Testament
* A History of Biblical Literature
* Readers' A To Z Bible Companion
* Suez Canal in Peace and War
* Politics of God
* The Jesus Party
* For Christ's Sake
* The Shroud of Turin
* The Original New Testament
* The Essene Odyssey
* After the Cross
* Proclaiming the Messiah
* The Mystery of the Messiah
* Jesus: Man and Messiah

External links

* [http://www.schonfield.org/ The Hugh & Helene Schonfield World Service Trust ]
* [http://www.ilbs.org/ The International Leadership and Business Society ( A business society based on the ideas of Hugh Schonfield)]
* [http://www.geocities.com/snortar/schonfield.html/ The Schonfieldian Script Page]
* [http://www.bringyou.to/MartinSchonfieldDebate.mp3 Debate between Hugh Schonfield and Baptist minister Walter Martin] - MP3 file
* [http://www.zion-jpn.or.jp/caspari/mishkan/contents/contents32.html/Richard Harvey 'Passing over the Plot: The Life and Work of Hugh Schonfield' (in Mishkan ISSUE NO 37 Fall 2002, Caspari Centre, Jerusalem)]