2009-12-15

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

The following is quoted from the introduction to "The Bible's Inner Meaning: The Biblical Interpretations of Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn" by Clyde W. Burnham II. It should provide a brief background on the author of this following article. Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn was a prolific writer, and at the conclusion of this article you will find a fairly extensive index of the entire literary works of this influential thinker:

Born  in 1880 on a farm in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kuhn graduated from Princeton, he studied the Greek language, to which he later attributed great importance regarding his interests in theology. Kuhn's graduation address, "The Lyre of Orpheus", focused upon Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece. This speech, he later felt, would prime his interest in the Orphic Mysteries.

For the next twenty-five years Dr. Kuhn was a high school teacher of foreign languages. In 1927 he enrolled at Columbia University where, in 1931, he received his Ph.D. His thesis, Theosophy: A Modern Revival of the Ancient Wisdom, was, according to Kuhn, the first instance in which an individual has been "permitted" by any modern American or European university to obtain his doctorate with a thesis on Theosophy.

His major work, The Lost Light (1940) - an exposition of the allegories, parables, and personages of biblical Christianity as having been extant in pre-Christian paganism under different forms and names--was deemed by the chair- man of the Philosophy Department of Ohio University to be the greatest of theological works to have occurred in the English language.

In September of 1963 Dr. Kuhn passed away in Morristown, New Jersey just after completing The Ultimate Canon of Knowledge.

The central thesis of Dr. Kuhn's work hypothesizes that the sages of ancient mythologies did not intend for biblical writings to be read in a literal manner, but that it was their plan to transmit veiled truths via parable and allegory. Holy writ, asserts Professor Kuhn, has no basis for interpretation along historical lines. Orthodoxy's interpretation of the Bible has resulted, in Dr. Kuhn's words, in the "unconscionable stultification" of man's ability to perceive and utilize divine truths. Moreover, Kuhn advises us that true Christianity was proscribed in the third century and replaced with "Christianism." In his brilliant and illuminating The Shadow of the Third Century, Kuhn quotes St. Augustine to assert that Christianity existed in different forms and under different names in times preceding the Galilean:

That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the very beginning of the human race [perhaps this explains the equal-arm crucifix intaglios of Neolithic times] until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed, began to be called Christianity. - Retractt. I, xiii.

During the southern Spring of 1996, after making an extensive search of any reference to Alvin Boyd Kuhn, there appeared to be only one source of information - the web site of one Pharoah Chromium 93

For those who found the above article of interest, you will be encouraged to learn that pc93 has meticulously gathered and indexed a growing collection of the works of Alvin Boyd Kuhn. The following index, the individual items of which all point to the pc93 website, summarises the entent of the publications of A.B. Kuhn on the WWW at this time......

 Alvin Boyd Kuhn

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