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as posted by Marg
I think Seekerof got confused I am talking about the five Gospel that are Forgeries.
as posted by Byrd
(g) Guys, THESE gospels are not the ones in the Bible, but they are claimed to be "lost Gospels." There are, indeed, a lot of "lost Gospels" that show up and there's a lot of apocrypha that did not make it into the Bible.
These were proclaimed (by the forgers) to be authentic letters of Pontius Pilate and to be authentic gospels (including one letter purportedly written by Jesus, which is actually... a chain letter (you know; make six copies and pass this along before next week otherwise your teeth will fall out and your dog will leave you to go sing country western songs with Willie Nelson.)
Modern Apocrypha, Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes by Edgar J. Goodspeed (The Beacon Press, Boston, 1956) the Library of Congress catalog card number is 56-10075
--snip--
Chapter Four of the book, "The Report of Pilate", deals with the Archko Volume.
In 1879 a Boonville, Missouri minister, the Rev. W.D.Mahan, published a pamphlet entitled A Correct Transcript of Pilate's Court. In 1884, after the apparent successful distribution and wide spread popularity of the report, Mahan issued a new volume that contained an expanded version of this report along with eleven other such works, under the title, The Archaeological and the Historical Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews, Translated from the Ancient Parchments and Scrolls at Constantinople and the Vatican at Rome.
This volume has been reprinted many times under various titles, most often as The Archko Volume or Archko Library.
Mahan accompanied his original report with an account of how he came into possession of the work. In short, he says he obtained the copy through the help of a German scholar, Henry C. Whydaman, from Father Peter Freelinhusen, the chief guardian of the Vatican. Father Freelinhusen provided the Latin text for 35 darics. Whydaman's brother-in-law, C.C. Vantberger of New York, translated the volume. Mahan even includes a letter from Father Freelinhusen to Whydaman that certifies the accuracy and authenticity of the book.
Needless to say, the Vatican does not admit to having any book of this kind nor is there any record in the annals of the Vatican library of any such person as Father Peter Freelinhusen.
The Archko Volume was produced after the Rev. Mahan supposedly traveled to Rome and Constantinople to study the original sources for the life of Jesus. He was assisted by two great, but otherwise unknown scholars, Dr. Twyman of England and Dr. McIntosh of Scotland.
General Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur, was the American minister to Turkey in 1883. According to Wallace, No one connected with the American legation in Constantinople had any knowledge of a visit by Mahan, nor did any American missionaries at the time, neither did Zia Bey, who was in charge of the library of the mosque of St. Sophia, know of any Mahan or of any of the manuscripts that Mahan professed to have seen there.
Dr. Goodspeed does a great job of documenting many of the absurdities and errors in this "Volume". The most incredible and glaring of these is in the manuscript called "Eli's Story of the Magi". It appears that several pages of this story were copied verbatim from Ben Hur. One striking detail is the use of the word anuman. Eli's story reads, "Egypt is satisfied with her crocodiles and anuman, holding them in equal honor." Page 272 of _Ben Hur_ has some lines that read:
"Egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and anubis, the Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd and Ahriman, holding them in equal honor ..."
The anuman word arose because a line was skipped when copying this sentence.
The Archko is Rev. Mahan's fabrication.
The work presented in the early pamphlet, however, predates the Rev. Mahan. There was an earlier pamphlet published in Boston, 1842, under the title, Pontius Pilate's Account of the Condemnation of Jesus Christ, and his own Mental Sufferings. This was supposedly extracted from an Old Latin manuscript recently found at Vienna. According to Dr. Goodspeed, this earlier pamphlet carries no notice of an author or publisher. This earlier Boston tract is substantially the same as the Rev. Mahan's document. It also appears to be the antecedent of another modern apocryphal work called The Confession of Pontius Pilate.
Goodspeed says that nothing is known about where this Boston pamphlet came from, but he does analyze the contents sufficiently well to show that it is historically improbable.
As concerns the "letters from Jesus's own hand," no scholar of any worth, Christian or otherwise, has ever considered these "letters" to be "genuine." Like most Christian writings and artifacts, these "letters" are forgeries. The Catholic Encyclopedia truthfully asserts that the legendary event purported in the most infamous of these "letters," i.e., that to "King Abgar," is an "imaginary occurrence," and states concerning the spurious letter from Christ:
The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter. Moreover, the quotations are made not from the Gospels proper, but from the famous concordance of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the "Diatessaron," thus fixing the date of the legend as approximately the middle of the third century.
The Catholic Encyclopedia also says of this "letter":
Its legendary environment and the fact that the Church at large did not hand down the pretended epistle from Our Lord as a sacred document is conclusive against it.
As Wells says in The Historical Evidence for Jesus:
About 1200, Constantinople was so crammed with relics that one may speak of a veritable industry with its own factories. Blinzler (a Catholic New Testament scholar) lists, as examples, letters in Jesus' own hand, the gold brought to the baby Jesus by the wise men, the twelve baskets of bread collected after the miraculous feeding of the 5000, the throne of David, the trumpets of Jericho, the axe with which Noah made the Ark, and so on . . .
And Wheless says in Forgery in Christianity:
[T]hat "very dishonest writer," Bishop Eusebius, in the fourth century . . . forged the Letters between Abgar and Jesus, falsely declaring that he had found the original documents in the official archives, whence he had copied and translated them into his Ecclesiastical History . . . If the Gospel tales were true, why should God need pious lies to give them credit? Lies and forgeries are only needed to bolster up falsehood: "Nothing stands in need of lying but a lie." But Jesus Christ must needs be propagated by lies upon lies; and what better proof of his actuality than to exhibit letters written by him in his own handwriting? The "Little Liars of the Lord" were equal to the forgery of the signature of their God - false letters in his name, as above cited from that exhaustive mine of clerical falsities, the Catholic Encyclopedia.
No, a myth doesn't write letters. Forgers do.
Originally posted by Byrd
The purpose of them, of course, was to convert the unbelievers and the writers saw nothing wrong in producing these new documents. Unquestioning believers took these as true, and some of the unsuspicious brought them into their sects. Apparently the Jehovah's Witnesses published a number of them and some of the Mormons took them as gospel.
Originally posted by marg6043
I think Seekerof got confused I am talking about the five Gospel that are Forgeries.
And is also a fact about the writers of the time not mentioning Jesus.
Occurs I am not bible follower and I am not believer of the divinity of the Christ and the super natural birth.
I have to clarify that. I am very much intrigue on the historical Jesus and that is what I will like to learn more and I would love to see some new lights of who he really was, without the virginal birth.
Originally posted by marg6043
I always feel that the worst mistake the church ever made what to make Jesus into a divine being of heavenly origins.
Originally posted by dbates
Originally posted by marg6043
I always feel that the worst mistake the church ever made what to make Jesus into a divine being of heavenly origins.
How do we explain the words of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 7:14 when he prophicies that He will be called Immanuel? ("God with us") How do we explain Psalm 110:1? Even if you leave out the New Testament, there's plenty of evidence that the Messiah is God. Read Micah 5:2 and tell me you can't see that Jesus was God Eternal.
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times