Works
Schonfield was one of the original Dead Sea Scrolls team.
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 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 book.
An additional aspect of his work was the revision of the Hebrew writing system. 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.
Read more about this topic: Hugh J. Schonfield
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.” Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World’s University, and even leaves Plutarch behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)