Alvin Boyd Kuhn (September 22, 1880 - September 14, 1963) was a scholar of comparative religion, mythology, linguistics and language. Born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kuhn studied the Ancient Greek language at university. He started his career working as a language teacher in high schools. He later enrolled at Columbia University to work on his PhD on Theosophy. 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 ...
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Alvin Boyd Kuhn (September 22, 1880 - September 14, 1963) was a scholar of comparative religion, mythology, linguistics and language. Born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kuhn studied the Ancient Greek language at university. He started his career working as a language teacher in high schools. He later enrolled at Columbia University to work on his PhD on Theosophy. 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. Kuhn later expanded his thesis into his first book of the same name in 1930. Highly influenced by the work of Gerald Massey and Godfrey Higgins, Kuhn contended that the Bible derived its origins from other Pagan religions and much of Christian history was pre-extant as Egyptian mythology. He also proposed that the Bible was symbolic and did not depict real events, and argued that the leaders of the church started to misinterpret the bible at the end of the third century. Many authors including Tom Harpur and John G. Jackson were influenced by the works of Kuhn. His final book, A Rebirth for Christianity, was completed shortly before his death on 14 September 1963. Preface: When in a moment of high dudgeon, exasperation or exhausted patience at someone's despicable conduct we cavalierly consign his immortal soul to Dante's Inferno, we should be told that our mode of redress is silly and ridiculous beyond measure, since both he and we are already in that dark and gloomy underworld of theology. There is no sense in urging a fellow mortal to go to a place when he is already there. The present writer could, with full legal equity, claim an international copyright on the idea, now to be proclaimed for the first time authoritatively, that in plain cold fact, devastating to the canons of theology, but nevertheless irrefutable, that no one can go from this earth to hell, or ever will go there. This declaration is not thrown out in either scurrility or buffoonery. It is meant to be asserted as literal truth, and, as will be shown, is demonstrated as true by the simplest and most inexpugnable logic. One can not go to a place where one already is. One has to be elsewhere to go to a given place. And this fact and this logic can now bring to this world release and relief from the most frightful of its theological nightmares over the centuries by shattering forever the baneful religious superstition that a human soul can go to hell. Because, as better scholarship now clarifies it, all the souls now inhabiting physical bodies on this earth are already in hell. It can now be heralded to the four quarters of the world that this earth is the only hell ever contemplated in the minds of the sage writers of the ancient sacred Scriptures of the world, and therefore hell is not to be found or located anywhere else. For better or worse, for good or ill, we are all right now in hell; and it is only a matter of our education, our understanding, our culture or our self-discipline whether we are enjoying what can legitimately and not too irreverently be called a hell of a fine time or making a devil of a bad go at it. As God the Father never designed that his children should fall into a region where pain and misery are suffered gratuitously or out of relation to purposed beneficence, it has to be presumed that our sojourn in this hell has been contrived in cosmic counsels to bring us joy and eventual bliss.
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