[Gutenberg 40210] • Thomas Paine, the Apostle of Liberty / An Address Delivered in Chicago, January 29, 1916; Including the Testimony of Five Hundred Witnesses

John Eleazer Remsburg (variously Remsberg; January 7, 1848 – September 24, 1919) was an ardent religious skeptic in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In his book 1909 book The Christ, Remsburg lists forty-two ancient writers who did not mention Jesus or whose mentions are suspect, and this list has appeared in many subsequent books that question the historicity of Jesus. Remsburg himself wrote that the man Jesus may have existed, but that the Christ of the gospels is mythical.

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".