Мартин Альфред Ларсон: Американ тарихшысы және жазушысы

American historian and writer

Martin Alfred Larson (March 2, 1897 in Whitehall, Michigan January 15, 1994 in Phoenix, Arizona) was an American historical revisionist and freethinker. He specialized in the history of Christianity and wrote on its origins and early theological history, best known for his assertion that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist were Essenes. Larson was a long term member of the Institute for Historical Review.

Larson was originally from a fundamentalist Christian Evangelical background but "rejected its dogmas and practices" when he was about twenty years old. Following service in the United States Navy, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan, after which 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. A long time friend of historian Harry Elmer Barnes, Larson was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Institute for Historical Review's Journal of Historical Review from its first issue in 1980 to his death. Larson was also a tax critic and tax expert who was popular with the Tax protester movement for his books on the tax immunity of organized religion, the Federal Reserve, and how to fight the IRS. His articles have appeared in Parade Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Reader's Digest and other publications, and he had a regular column in The Spotlight entitled "Our World In Conflict". He spent the final years of his life with his wife Emma in Phoenix, Arizona.