Hugh Joseph Schonfield (17 May 1901 – 26 January 1988) was a British Bible scholar specialising in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church.
He was born and died in London, and educated there at St Paul's School and King's College, doing additional studies in the University of Glasgow.
[2] In 1937 Schonfield was excluded from membership of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA),[3] of which he had been a founding member since 1925, due to his unwillingness to affirm the deity of Jesus.
[11][12] As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
In 1965 he published the controversial The Passover Plot, a book the thesis of which is that the Crucifixion was part of a larger, conscious attempt by Jesus to fulfill the Messianic expectations rampant in his time, and that the plan went unexpectedly wrong.