Obituaries : Hugh J. Schonfield, 86; Biblical Scholar, Author

Hugh J. Schonfield, a biblical scholar and religious writer whose best-known book, “The Passover Plot,” provoked widespread controversy, has died at the age of 86.

Family death notices published in London said he died Jan. 26 after what was described as a short illness.

Schonfield was a non-practicing Jew who spoke Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic and English and read French, German and Italian.

He became famous in 1965 with “The Passover Plot,” which portrayed Jesus as a messiah who planned his own martyrdom by arranging to be drugged so he appeared dead and then taken from the cross.

But the plot misfired when Jesus was pierced in the side by a Roman soldier and died, the scholar said.

The book sold 2 million copies in the United States and Britain and was reprinted more than 20 times.

A succeeding book, “Those Incredible Christians,” was a tale of plot and counterplot in the early Christian decades. It was followed by “The Pentecost Revolution,” covering the 30 years between the Crucifixion and the outbreak of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in the year 66.

It claimed to show that Jewish followers of Jesus in that period were not Christians at all but loyal Jews adhering to the Jewish faith, and as far as they were concerned, there was no other religion.

Schonfield told the Associated Press in 1969: “The practice of forgery in the early church is well attested. Paul mentioned it and the author of Revelation put a curse on anyone who added to or subtracted from what was in his book.”

Answering attacks on his books by Christian churchmen, Schonfield said in another interview in 1974: “The church says the events related in the New Testament are historical. I say the New Testament is a secondary, not an authoritative, source. The New Testament, however, is the only authority of the (Anglican) Church of England, so any inquiry into its origins is held to undermine the faith.”

He said: “The period of the life of Christ and the first decades of Christianity is one about which we know too little--we are trying to reconstruct it. . . . A historian has to assemble material from every source and try to fill in some of the blanks.”