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Shadow of the Third Century: A Revaluation of Christianity
Shadow of the Third Century: A Revaluation of Christianity is a book written by Alvin Boyd Kuhn with the goal of exposing the truth about christianity which he believes has produced a great deal of clearly irrational behavior. It is the hypothesis of Kuhn that there has been significant effort to suppress, hide and even destroy the true history regarding christianity and to expose it as a religion that was constructed to fit the ideals of its leaders instead of merely following the teachings of Jesus. This is an important book for those who are interested in alternative christian beliefs than those in the main stream, and has been popular among people who have studied the gnostic gospels and writings as well as the Da Vinci code writings.
661 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 5, 2019
No one says it better than ABK.
This is one of a good number of books by the above author that I have read in the past few months and it just may be the best. To someone, as myself, who has been trying to make real sense of my experience into and through Christianity, there has been no better mentor than Alvin Boyd Kuhn.
This is one of a good number of books by the above author that I have read in the past few months and it just may be the best. To someone, as myself, who has been trying to make real sense of my experience into and through Christianity, there has been no better mentor than Alvin Boyd Kuhn.
July 14, 2018
Some of Kuhn's basic arguments are these:
-"Christianism" is an intellectual disease that supplanted true Christianity by literalizing its teachings for the benefit of the unintelligent masses.
-All world religions essentially teach the same high values.
-Christian doctrine, Scriptures, practices, etc. are all derived from pagan (especially Egyptian) sources.
-The ultimate aim of man is to be guided by reason
-The Gnostics, the Greek philosophers, and the Egyptians were the best people ever. ;)
I think one line from the back cover gives an accurate statement of this book's content: "With its many citations from earlier works, 'Shadow of the Third Century' also serves as a bibliographic introduction to alternative histories of Christianity." After reading it, I must say that this is the bulk of the book. Kuhn's book makes many claims, but primarily seeks to support those claims with mere claims from other historians--I was surprised at the relative absence of primary sources. In this, the prime accomplishment of the book is essentially to provide an excessively long bibliography of alt-Christian history.
I have a multitude of other problems with this book; I'll only list a few at this time. He largely ignores important sources of early church history that invalidate some of his claims (Ignatius, the Epistle to Diognetus, Polycarp, Athanasius, Cyprian, Basil, Irenaeus, Tertullian etc.), opting to focus almost exclusively on Origen and Clement instead. His understanding of Christian teaching seems to be very general, and in many cases incorrect. For instance, he accuses Christianity of claiming "newness" all throughout the book. He says, "the universally proclaimed insistence of the Christian Church" is "that the world, before the coming of Christianity, was enveloped in "heathen" darkness....God had not hitherto bestirred himself to vouchsafe to mankind any inkling of its relationship to him" (p. 14). A simple reading of Hebrews 1 totally overturns this claim. These sorts of assumptions permeate Kuhn's work, so that his arguments are often in response to completely unrealistic depictions of Christian teaching. He also seeks to make no distinction between the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the Christian Church, but understands "Roman Catholic" to be synonymous with "Christian," which evidences a great misunderstanding of Christian doctrine.
His references to Scripture were horrendously negligent of context. He even misquoted Scripture on several occasions. For instance: he made a big deal out of the fact that Paul said we must "add to our faith knowledge," when Paul never said that. It was Peter!--the one he accuses of representing the "anti-Paul" theology of willful ignorance, or "formal, fixed, authoritative, canonized and invested religious power, requiring only prescribed loyalty and routine observance" (272). Also, he made another point from the Bible's reference to the authors of Scripture being "holy men of old," claiming that even the Scriptures show that these men were invested with beliefs that significantly pre-dated them. Again, the Bible never says that--the correct quotation would be "holy men of God" (2 Peter 1). His condescending tone throughout the book--setting himself up as a warrior for enlightened knowledge and intellectual precision--rings hollow when he builds his points off of plain errors. What he grossly misunderstands about the Bible is that it is a book about God, not a book about man. Kuhn just needs to jettison the Bible altogether. Though he feels the need to save it as some sort of mystical-allegorical source of ancient wisdom, it clearly does not support the claims he is making.
His self-appointed "golden text" in this work is the quote from St. Augustine...("That which is known as the Christian religion..." p. 3) It's a small quote, that doesn't seem at all to communicate what Kuhn derives from it, and so I wanted to examine the context. After searching and searching the citation that Kuhn provided, I was unable to find this quote. After searching online, I am still unable to find this quote. I'm not saying it doesn't exist; but after searching for it, the only references to it I could find were secondary.
The book was extremely redundant, especially in the first half. In fact, it was the last 1/3 of the book that saved a 2nd star for me, because the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book were just insufferable. He took around 12 chapters to do what could've been done in 2. Also, Kuhn's primary evidence for his claims was a litany of appeals to secondary sources that he deemed authoritative. Another issue was his tone--the off-the-charts levels of arrogance and condescension helped to weaken his arguments for me, not strengthen them. As the arbiter of ancient wisdom, he should be a bit more charitable towards his opponents. Honestly, the book was about 45% vitriolic rhetoric, 45% appeals to authority, and 10% actual claims and supporting evidence that need to be considered.
Finally, I don't understand the nature of the book itself. One of his primary accusations against Christianity is that it sought to popularize esoteric knowledge, instead of keeping it locked away in secret for the philosophical elites. They wrote these things down and disseminated them, to the eternal harm of mankind. If that's his issue, then why would he want to write this book at all? Why try to re-publish the secrets of the ancients, and thereby sully the mystical principles of the Christos all over again? I'm not trying to find loopholes here, it's just that the elitist, high-minded, 'secret-society' tone of the book seems antithetical to the idea of even publishing a book in the first place.
In all, this book was a chore to read--especially the first half. However, I took copious notes, and I'm excited to explore some of his claims about Egyptian Christ-figures. Glad to be finished with this one.
-"Christianism" is an intellectual disease that supplanted true Christianity by literalizing its teachings for the benefit of the unintelligent masses.
-All world religions essentially teach the same high values.
-Christian doctrine, Scriptures, practices, etc. are all derived from pagan (especially Egyptian) sources.
-The ultimate aim of man is to be guided by reason
-The Gnostics, the Greek philosophers, and the Egyptians were the best people ever. ;)
I think one line from the back cover gives an accurate statement of this book's content: "With its many citations from earlier works, 'Shadow of the Third Century' also serves as a bibliographic introduction to alternative histories of Christianity." After reading it, I must say that this is the bulk of the book. Kuhn's book makes many claims, but primarily seeks to support those claims with mere claims from other historians--I was surprised at the relative absence of primary sources. In this, the prime accomplishment of the book is essentially to provide an excessively long bibliography of alt-Christian history.
I have a multitude of other problems with this book; I'll only list a few at this time. He largely ignores important sources of early church history that invalidate some of his claims (Ignatius, the Epistle to Diognetus, Polycarp, Athanasius, Cyprian, Basil, Irenaeus, Tertullian etc.), opting to focus almost exclusively on Origen and Clement instead. His understanding of Christian teaching seems to be very general, and in many cases incorrect. For instance, he accuses Christianity of claiming "newness" all throughout the book. He says, "the universally proclaimed insistence of the Christian Church" is "that the world, before the coming of Christianity, was enveloped in "heathen" darkness....God had not hitherto bestirred himself to vouchsafe to mankind any inkling of its relationship to him" (p. 14). A simple reading of Hebrews 1 totally overturns this claim. These sorts of assumptions permeate Kuhn's work, so that his arguments are often in response to completely unrealistic depictions of Christian teaching. He also seeks to make no distinction between the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the Christian Church, but understands "Roman Catholic" to be synonymous with "Christian," which evidences a great misunderstanding of Christian doctrine.
His references to Scripture were horrendously negligent of context. He even misquoted Scripture on several occasions. For instance: he made a big deal out of the fact that Paul said we must "add to our faith knowledge," when Paul never said that. It was Peter!--the one he accuses of representing the "anti-Paul" theology of willful ignorance, or "formal, fixed, authoritative, canonized and invested religious power, requiring only prescribed loyalty and routine observance" (272). Also, he made another point from the Bible's reference to the authors of Scripture being "holy men of old," claiming that even the Scriptures show that these men were invested with beliefs that significantly pre-dated them. Again, the Bible never says that--the correct quotation would be "holy men of God" (2 Peter 1). His condescending tone throughout the book--setting himself up as a warrior for enlightened knowledge and intellectual precision--rings hollow when he builds his points off of plain errors. What he grossly misunderstands about the Bible is that it is a book about God, not a book about man. Kuhn just needs to jettison the Bible altogether. Though he feels the need to save it as some sort of mystical-allegorical source of ancient wisdom, it clearly does not support the claims he is making.
His self-appointed "golden text" in this work is the quote from St. Augustine...("That which is known as the Christian religion..." p. 3) It's a small quote, that doesn't seem at all to communicate what Kuhn derives from it, and so I wanted to examine the context. After searching and searching the citation that Kuhn provided, I was unable to find this quote. After searching online, I am still unable to find this quote. I'm not saying it doesn't exist; but after searching for it, the only references to it I could find were secondary.
The book was extremely redundant, especially in the first half. In fact, it was the last 1/3 of the book that saved a 2nd star for me, because the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book were just insufferable. He took around 12 chapters to do what could've been done in 2. Also, Kuhn's primary evidence for his claims was a litany of appeals to secondary sources that he deemed authoritative. Another issue was his tone--the off-the-charts levels of arrogance and condescension helped to weaken his arguments for me, not strengthen them. As the arbiter of ancient wisdom, he should be a bit more charitable towards his opponents. Honestly, the book was about 45% vitriolic rhetoric, 45% appeals to authority, and 10% actual claims and supporting evidence that need to be considered.
Finally, I don't understand the nature of the book itself. One of his primary accusations against Christianity is that it sought to popularize esoteric knowledge, instead of keeping it locked away in secret for the philosophical elites. They wrote these things down and disseminated them, to the eternal harm of mankind. If that's his issue, then why would he want to write this book at all? Why try to re-publish the secrets of the ancients, and thereby sully the mystical principles of the Christos all over again? I'm not trying to find loopholes here, it's just that the elitist, high-minded, 'secret-society' tone of the book seems antithetical to the idea of even publishing a book in the first place.
In all, this book was a chore to read--especially the first half. However, I took copious notes, and I'm excited to explore some of his claims about Egyptian Christ-figures. Glad to be finished with this one.
October 6, 2025
The light of Truth in a world darkened by Christianism
Christian, you're caught in a cul-de-sac of delusion and fanaticism. Kuhn has masterfully give you a path out. Fear not and take it NOW!
Christian, you're caught in a cul-de-sac of delusion and fanaticism. Kuhn has masterfully give you a path out. Fear not and take it NOW!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews