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Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III

By Kris Grint, on 30 April 2013

 

The Bentham Project is pleased to announce the publication of a preliminary edition of Jeremy Bentham’s Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III.

This is the first time that the third volume of Not Paul, but Jesus has been published in any form. The first volume, appearing in 1823, was published under the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith. In the work as a whole, Bentham aimed to drive a wedge between the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul — between Christianity and Paulism. In this third volume, he focused on sexual morality. This version will eventually be superseded by an authoritative version in the complete edition of Not Paul, but Jesus in the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.

Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III by Jeremy Bentham, edited by Philip Schofield, Michael Quinn and Catherine Pease-Watkin, is now freely available to view online, and can be downloaded as a PDF. An XML version of the text is also available.

Encoding text with XML to the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) has been a practice at the heart of the Bentham Project’s research ever since the launch of Transcribe Bentham in 2010. Since that time, Bentham’s manuscripts have been transcribed directly into TEI-compliant XML by volunteers using our Transcription Desk software. We are also converting our legacy transcripts (over 13,000 folios) into this format to ensure their preservation and future usability. These transcripts, along with high-resolution photographs of the original manuscripts, are collected together in UCL’s online digital repository. Not Paul, but Jesus, however, marks the first time an edition of Bentham’s work suitable for publication has been encoded into XML. It has subsequently been transformed, via XSLT, into online and PDF versions. This process posed numerous technical challenges, some of which will be described in subsequent blog posts.

We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust whose generous grant has made possible the online publication of this important work. We are also grateful to University College London Library for permission to reproduce this transcript of manuscripts in their possession.

We would welcome any comments or feedback about this electronic edition of Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III. Please send them to k.grint [at] ucl.ac.uk.

10 Responses to “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III”

  • 1
    Jeremy Bentham’s *Not Paul, but Jesus, vol. III* wrote on 4 May 2013:

    […] mode” — is now available in its entirety, for the first time I believe.  Here is a blog post about the new publication.  It is a fascinating work throughout and homosexuality is central to his answer to Malthus and […]

  • 2
    Bentham on Christianity, Paulism, and sexual morality « Thought du Jour wrote on 5 May 2013:

    […] Grint, “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III“, The Bentham Project, 30 April […]

  • 3
    some links | NSSR Philosophy wrote on 22 July 2013:

    […] defense of homosexuality has been published for the first time, online. According to Kris Grint, of the Bentham Project at the UCL, the defense comes in volume 3 of Bentham’s Not Paul, […]

  • 4
    Jeremy Benthams’ 18th C Biblical Defence of Homosexuality! Queering the Church | Queering the Church wrote on 15 May 2014:

    […] evidence for Jesus’ homosexuality as part of his theological defense for same-sex love in “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III.” It was published for the first time in 2013 and is freely available to download or view […]

  • 5
    ‘God and the Gay Christian’ is not a new thing wrote on 27 May 2014:

    […] 2002 The Good Book was a New York Times best-seller. And they go way, waaay back – Jeremy Bentham wrote a book defending the compatibility of Christianity and same-sex love in the […]

  • 6
    Jeremy Bentham | Ecumenics and Quakers wrote on 15 February 2016:

    […] evidence for Jesus’ homosexuality as part of his theological defense for same-sex love in “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III.” It was published for the first time in 2013 and is freely available to download or view […]

  • 7
    Lee Thompson wrote on 7 June 2016:

    Just read the read of this work with great interest. Looking forward to reading the work.

  • 8
    Jeremy Bentham Hinted that Jesus was a Homosexual | Shaun Miller's Ideas wrote on 12 July 2016:

    […] this sexual ethic, Bentham wrote a piece that was never published until 2013!  The work is called “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III.”  Obviously, he couldn’t publish any of his work on homosexuality in his lifetime, and the […]

  • 9
    Homosexuality of Jesus explored by 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham | Gay Catholic Priests wrote on 18 June 2017:

    […] evidence for Jesus’ homosexuality as part of his theological defense for same-sex love in “Not Paul, but Jesus Vol. III.” It was published for the first time in 2013 and is freely available to download or view online. […]

  • 10
    Raph Martin wrote on 7 June 2020:

    Bentham has certainly captured the interest of the entire gay community by relegating Paul’s published views on same sex love to Jesus’ non-articulated ones. That’s quite a gulp to swallow -especially since the disciple claims to be an apostle of the latter and articulates a revealed gospel whose content on homosexuality was never incorporated or commented on by some 4 evangelists years after Paul’s death in the mud 60s. Whose gospel does one accept as revelatory then -the one in Romans 1 that condemns “arsenokoitai” (males having sex in bed with other males) or the one that presumes Jesus is a homosexual but says nothing about it -except suggestively? Quite a choice, isn’t it- the written or non-written. Bentham chose the latter and gave us a kind of “tertium quid” -a contemporary gospel to reckon with. And we’re left to discern whether he’s the one who has filled in the gaps missing in the writings of a Mt., Mk., Lk., or John. Will people reluctantly or wholeheartedly embrace a 19th century updated version of homosexuality and call it a revealed gospel?

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