Iosif A. Kryvelev (M / Russia, 1906-1991), scholar
Iosif Aronovich Kryvelev (1906-1991) was a Russian scholar. Born in Moscow, Kryvelev graduated from the Moscow Institute of History and Philosophy in 1934. In 1934-1936 he was a research fellow at the Central Council of the Union of Militant Atheists. In 1936-1939 he worked at the Central anti-religious Museum, and in 1939-1941 and 1947-1949 at the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR, serving at the front in the years of the Second World War. He was out of work during the campaign against cosmopolitanism, working again, from 1959 until his death, at the Institute of Ethnography. Kryvelev's research was devoted to the study of religion, Judaism and Christianity, and the origins of the biblical texts. A follower of Arthur Drews, he was the major promoter of scientific atheism in the Soviet Union. A supporter of the Jesus Myth Theory, he denied the historicity of Jesus and his disciples as well as of Old Testament characters such as Moses and Joshua. Kryvelev died in Moscow, Russia.