Martin A. Larson

Who was Martin A. Larson?

Martin A. Larson was an American populist freethinker and a writer specializing in theological history and the Essenes. Originally from a fundamentalist Evangelical background, he "rejected its dogmas and practices" when he was about 20 years old. Following service in the United States Navy, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. He earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Michigan in 1927 with a thesis on the unorthodoxies of Milton, whom he found to have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He retired from a career in business at the age of 50 to devote himself to private study, lecturing and writing.

Larson's lifelong body of work reconstructs a complete version of the story of Christian origins and its theological controversies, detailing its evolution from the cults of Osiris and Dionysus to modern times. This includes the synthesis of ideas, deities and personalities that historically gave favor to Christianity against religious competitors such as Mithraism, which lacked a human founder and barred the general public, or Manichaeism, which lacked a deified founder. He summarizes the exposition of this story: