John Zephaniah Holwell FRS (17 September 1711 – 5 November 1798) was a surgeon, an employee of the British East India Company, and a temporary Governor of Bengal (1760).

Holwell was a survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta, June 1756, the incident in which British subjects and others were crammed into a small poorly ventilated chamber overnight, with many deaths.

He wrote about this in the second and third volumes of his work Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan (1765–1771).

He wrote that Moses's version of the creation and Fall of Man is "clogged with too many incomprehensible difficulties to gain our belief", and is only made intelligible with the Hindu doctrine that humankind are fallen angels.

[8] Holwell believed that metempsychosis accounted for the problem of Original sin as the Fall of Man had occurred in heaven long before the creation of Adam and Eve who were fallen angels.