Ancestor · 1813–1883
Kersey Graves
He listed sixteen crucified saviors before Jesus — and named Higgins as his source.
19th-century ancestor and connector — his catalog of pre-Christian parallels to the Jesus story is one of the earliest consolidated Christ-myth source texts, feeding directly into D.M. Murdock and the modern astrotheology scene.
Kersey Graves published his central argument in 1875: sixteen saviors, predating Christianity, share the essential features of the Jesus story. He laid them out by name — Chrishna, Mithra, Prometheus among them — cataloging virgin births, star announcements, crucifixions, and resurrections, and placing them against the Gospel narrative in parallel columns. Graves acknowledged his debt openly: Godfrey Higgins’s Anacalypsis supplied many of his most important comparisons, and Graves named it. That transparency makes him a visible link in a chain. D.M. Murdock drew directly on Graves’s catalog in The Christ Conspiracy and Suns of God, and the Zeitgeist film’s religion section stands on the same foundation. Graves is the 19th century’s version of a connector: not a system-builder, but a compiler whose list has never stopped circulating.
Core claims
- Graves taught that sixteen pre-Christian 'saviors' share the key biographical features of the Jesus story — birth of a virgin, star announcement, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection — making the Gospel narrative a late variant of a universal pattern.
- Graves acknowledged deriving 'many of the most important facts' from Godfrey Higgins's Anacalypsis, positioning himself explicitly in the comparative-religion lineage Higgins founded.
Key works
- The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors · 1875
Signature decodes
- The catalog of sixteen saviors — Chrishna, Budha Sakia Muni, Thammuz, Wittoba, Iao, Hesus, Quirinus, Prometheus, Thulis, Indra, Alcestos, Atys, Crite, Bali, Mithra, and Odin — each presented as bearing the marks of the Christ story.
- The explicit acknowledgment of Higgins: Graves traces his comparative method and many of his parallels directly to Anacalypsis, making the transmission chain visible within the text itself.
Influenced by
Influenced
Sources
Status Deceased (1813–1883). The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors is in the public domain and widely available in reprint and digital form.