Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

Edmond Bordeaux Szekely (March 5, 1905 – 1979) was a Hungarian philologist/linguist, philosopher, psychologist and natural living enthusiast.

Szekely authored The Essene Gospel of Peace, which he claimed he had translated from an ancient text he supposedly discovered in the 1920s.

Scholars consider the text a forgery.

Szekely's grandfather was Sándor Székely, poet and Unitarian Bishop of Kolozsvár; his mother was French and Roman Catholic, and his father was a Hungarian Unitarian.

According to Szekely's book 'Essene Gospel of Peace', he was a descendant of Hungarian philologist and orientologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (although the latter never married and had no children ).

Per publications of the International Biogenic Society, including 'The Essene Gospel of Peace', Szekely received a Ph.D. from the University of Paris, and other degrees from the universities of Vienna and Leipzig.

He held professorships in philosophy and in experimental psychology at the Bolyai University in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, in Romania).

Szekely claimed to have translated a text he discovered at the Vatican in 1923, called The Essene Gospel of Peace which he published in four parts over several decades.

Szekely claimed that, while studying at the Vatican in 1923, he had found and translated several obscure Hebrew and Aramaic texts which he said proved the Essenes were vegetarians, and that vegetarianism was prescribed by Jesus.

Szekely claimed to have found an Aramaic translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace and The Essene Book of Revelation at the Vatican library.

In the scriptorium of the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino he claimed to have found the original Hebrew text of The Essene Gospel of Peace.

His findings, as did the writings of Romain Rolland, often challenged the assumptions of conventional religious adherents and politicized, established religious institutions about the life and teachings of Jesus, and he was therefore often criticized by them.

Szekely later said that he recognized several fragments in these that were either similar, or identical, to various passages from the Old and New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Avesta and thus he relied on available English editions of those works to produce the style of language used in his translations.

The Vatican also denied that Szekely had ever been admitted to the Vatican Archives in 1923.

The third claimed manuscript source was the library at Monte Cassino, which was destroyed during World War II.

Szekely's claims were rejected by biblical scholars.

Per Beskow has noted that:

"The [Essene] Gospel of Peace is a sheer forgery, written by Szekely himself. It is one of the strangest frauds we know of in the biblical field, as it has been carried through by stages during a whole lifetime and has been built onto an entire body of research based on imagination only."

Richard A. Young has written:

In 1928 Szekely founded the International Biogenic Society, with Nobel Prize-winning novelist Romain Rolland Szekely travelled widely, to Tahiti, Africa, the Carpathians, France, and Eastern Europe.

During the late 1930s he lived in Leatherhead, England working there as the director of the British International Health and Education Centre.

L Purcell Weaver met Szekely in Tahiti in 1934 and attributed his improved health to him.

Weaver went on to translate several of Szekely's works, beginning with the 1936 book "Cosmos, Man and Society: A Paneubiotic Synthesis".

Book 1, which he said constituted an eighth of the material, was published in 1936.

His books were published in English, Romanian, Esperanto, German, French, Hungarian, and Spanish, per the introductory bibliography in his 1938 book 'Cosmotherapy, the Medicine of the Future'.

In 1939, Szekely married Brooklyn-born Deborah Shainman, whose mother was a past vice-president of the New York Vegetarian Society.

In 1940 the couple opened a camp in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, which they named Rancho la Puerta, where they could explore and test their ideas.

The couple had two children, Alexander and Sarah Livia.

Edmund Szekely continued his research, writing numerous books and conducting seminars all over the world.

In 1970, Szekely and his wife divorced and he retired from Rancho La Puerta to go live near Orosi, Costa Rica.

Szekely married Norma Nilsson, a long-time assistant, and focused on his writing and teaching.

With the 1974 edition, he also included what he said was the complete original Hebrew text from which he translated Book 1.

He published more material in following years, including Books 2 and 3 in 1974, which with Book 1, he said, make up a third of the material.

With the 1974 edition, he also included what he said was the complete original Hebrew text from which he translated Book 1.

While Szekely's claimed translations of the so-called "Essene Texts" have drawn interest from followers of various faiths, the original manuscripts have never been located, and have been considered forgeries by some modern religious scholars.

When University of Lund theologian Per Beskow investigated Szekely's claims in Strange Tales About Jesus, both the Vatican and the National Library of Vienna denied that the original manuscripts existed.

He died in 1979.

Szekely was a raw foodist and vegetarian who advocated "biogenic living".

His diet consisted of 75% "biogenic" foods such as whole grains, nuts and seeds and "bioactive" raw fruits and vegetables.

He recommended a raw food diet, hydrotherapy, breathing clean air and bathing in sunshine.