Some time in the 3rd century, a pagan writer named
Porphyry wrote a book entitled "Against the Christians."
Porphyry argued that there was a parallel between Christ and
pagan deities. Porphyry's book was burned by edict of
Emperor Constantine in A.D. 448.

Criticism of the origins of Christianity has been suppressed
ever since then.
 
 

THE CHARGES:

Christian writers generally tend to quickly dismiss any idea that the Gospels are a lie. As one
writer puts it, "the idea that we have been lied to by the writers of the New Testament is very
properly discountenanced as a moral and psychological impossibility." F. Bruce, New
Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? p. 65 (1978).

It is hardly the case that the early church fathers found it impossible to lie. In fact, evidence can
be produced which shows that they were generally dishonest. Hundreds of known forgeries
exist, the product of the early church. Many preposterous frauds were perpetrated on the gullible
and ignorant common people. Christian historians acknowledge the dishonesty of the early
church, and they further admit that the saints, martyrs and ceremonies of the Christian Church
were copied from pagans. Christian historians admit that events in the New Testament were
copied from pagan myths.

In the strictest legal sense, in the strictest moral sense, the Bible is a huge fraud. Every book.
Every passage. Every Dogma. The church is little more than a forgery mill. Every conceivable
form of dishonesty -- lies, fraud, imposture and forgery -- has been used by the early church to
cheat and decieve.

THE DISHONESTY OF THE EARLY CHURCH:

In a court of law, a charge of plagiarism may be supported by evidence of the general dishonesty
of that person. And, no greater evidence could be produced than the testimony of church fathers
themselves. By their own admissions, they show themselves to be destitute of honesty.

Lactantius, a Christian apologist of the 4th century, wrote: "Among those who seek power and
gain from religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and lie for it." Quoted by
C. Middleton, Misc. Works of Conyers Middleton, D.D., vol. 3, p. 51 (1752)

Hermas, an early church father, wrote: "O Lord, I never spoke a true word in my life, I have
always affirmed a lie as truth to all men, and no man contradicted me; instead, they all gave
credit to my works." Visions of Hermas, vol. 2, c.3.

Gregory of Nazanzius, a 4th century church father and bishop of Caesarea, wrote to St. Jerome:
"A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the
more they admire." Quoted by C. Volney, The Ruins, p. 177 (1872).

Angustine of Hippo, the greatest figure in Christian antiquity, wrote: "It is lawful, then, to him
that discusses, disputes and preaches of things eternal, or to him that narrates of things temporal
pertaining to religion or piety, to conceal at fitting times whatever seems fit to be concealed."
Augustine, On Lying, c. 19

Eusebius, a 4th century Bishop and ecclesiastical historian, wrote that he unscrupulously
suppressed all that would be a disgrace to early Christianity. Ecclesiastical History, vol. 8,
c.21.

Edward Gibbon confirms this. He writes: "The gravest of all the ecclesiastical historians,
Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory,
and that he has suppressed all that would tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an
acknowledgement will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one
of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict observation of the other." E.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 16 (1883).

None other than Paul of Tarsus admits of trickery (2 Cor. 12.16), imposture (1 Cor. 9.19-20),
and deception. He wrote: "For if the truth of God hath more abounded by my lie unto his glory,
why yet am I also adjudged a sinner?" Romans 3.7 (King James Version)

SPECIFIC INSTANCES OF DISHONESTY:

Augustine of Hippo told the following as truth: "I was already bishop of Hippo, when I went
into Ethopia with some servants of Christ to preach the Gospel. In this country we saw many
men and women without heads, who had two great eyes in their breasts; and in countries farther
south, we saw people who had but one eye in their foreheads." Augustine, Sermon 37

Eusebius relates as truth a ridiculous story of writing a letter to Jesus the Christ and then
receiving an answer. Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, c. 13.

Eusebius assures us that "on some occasions the bodies of martyrs who had been devoured by
wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their stomachs." Quoted by E.
Gibbon, History of Christianity, p. 601 (1883).

Eusebius claims to be an eyewitness when he reports martyrs who stood naked and were
unmolested by attacking wild beasts. he says the beasts "were stopped short as if by some divine
power, and then retreated to the starting point." Ecclestiastical History, vol. 8, c. 8.

Socrates Scholasticus relates as truth the story of the mother of emperor Constantine traveling to
Jerusalem and actually finding the cross of Jesus, nails and all. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History,
vol. 1, c. 13.

Quotes such as these show the early Christians were people with no respect for truth at all.
Instead, they imposed on the gullibility of the common person as they saw fit.

FORGERIES BY THE HUNDREDS:

There are actually some 200 gospels, epistles and other books concerning the life of Jesus the
Christ. Of these, only 27 are accepted by the church. The other 173 have been declared by the
church itself to be "pious frauds."

One Christian writer, professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, dismisses these
hundreds of forged writings with these words:

"(they are merely) another genre of literature, devised for reading by the faithful during their
leisure time, and corresponding in some ways to the novels of a later era." J. G. Davies, The
Early Christian Church, p. 83 (1965).

While these apocryphal writings have all the fictional qualities of a modern novel, they are
certainly not another genre of literature. As a matter of fact, there is no way to distinguish them
from the accepted Gospels. The apocryphal Book of James narrates the miraculous birth and
infancy of the Virgin Mary. The apocryphal Gospel According To Thomas contains accounts of
Jesus' life up till the age of twelve. These apocryphal writings fit alongside the accepted
writings.

The origin of these fraudulent documents was none other than the church. Gibbon tells us:
"Orthodox theologians were tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to compose fictions, which
must be stigmatized with the epithets of fraud and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical
works to the most venerable names of Christian antiquity." E. Gibbon, History of Christianity, p.
598 (1883)

These apocryphal (i.e., fraudulent) writings are almost exclusively written in the names of
apostles or disciples of Jesus the Christ. The professor of Early Christian History at the Divinity
School, University of Chicago, admits that:

" . . . they arose during the 2nd century, when popular piety seems to have been rather freely
expressed." R. Grant, New Testament Apocrypha, in the article, "Biblical Literature," in
Encyclopedia Brittanica, vol. 2, p. 973 (1977).

Some examples of these "pious frauds" are the Gospels written in Jesus Christ's own hand; the
personal correspondence of Jesus Christ; letters written by the Virgin Mary; Pilates official
report to the Emperor of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus; the offician documents of the Roman
Senate about Jesus; official documents about church law written by the apostles; 50 other
gospels, more epistles, acts of the apostles, and other writings. The writer of the Gospel of Luke
tells us there were many other accounts of the life of Jesus circulating about when he wrote his.
Luke 1.1.

How exactly did the church separate the documents which were supposedly divinely inspired,
from the "pious frauds"? How did the church distinguish the Apocalypse of Peter from the
Apocalypse of John? How were the Acts of John, of Paul, of Peter, of Phillip, of Thaddeus, of
Thomas (all declared forgeries by the early church) distinguished from the Acts of the Apostles?

They took a vote! What was popular, became divinely inspired. What was unpopular, was
admitted to be a forgery. These 173 writings show the early church was nothing more than a
forgery mill. Many of these fraudulent documents can be found in Wilhelm Schneemelcher (ed.).,
New Testament Apocrypha.

To top it off, a papal decree declaring about 50 works to be apocryphal is itself an admitted
forgery. Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1, p. 615.

There are parts of the canonical New Testament books which were never part of the oldest
manuscripts. These parts are not found in the oldest papyrus codices, and were instead the
insertions of later transcribers. Some of these inserted passages are: Mark 1.1 The words, "Son
of God."; Mark 16:9-20, concerning the appearances of Christ after the resurrection; Luke
22:43, 44, about the bloody sweat of Jesus; John 7:53 to 8:11, about the woman taken in
adultery. The Revelation of John was itself rejected by the early church as a forgery. See R.
Grant, above.

The canonical gospels are further discredited by the historical evidence of alterations made at
the order of Emperor Anastasius in 506 A.D., That evidence has been reported by Victor, of
Tunis in Africa: "Messala V.C. Consule, Constantinopili, jubente Anastasio Imperatore, sancta
evangelia, tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita, reprehenduntur et emendantur."
Translation: "The Illustrious Messala, by the command of the Emperor Anastasius, the Holy
Gospels, as having been written by idiot evangelists, are hereby censured and corrected."
Quoted by Rev. R. Taylor, The Diegesis, p. 118 (1894).

Some of the passages in the New Testament seem to show that Jesus was never regarded as
anything but a mythical person. In Luke 9.29, Jesus glows white while praying. In Luke 24.3,
Jesus vanishes into thin air. In Mark 9.3, Jesus' clothes become "a dazzling white, with a
whiteness no bleacher could equal." (New English Bible). Jesus is about as realistic as a
laundry detergent commercial.

The famous church father Augustine never failed to subordinate reason to faith. He followed that
maxim when he wrote: "I would never believe the Gospels to be true, unless the authority of the
Catholic Church restrained me." Augustine, De Genesis..

There are still more forgeries. Of fifteen letters allededly written by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
in 69 A.D., eight are generally rejected by Christian scholars as forgeries, having no authority at
all. Giles, Christian and Hebrew Records, vol. 2, p. 99 (1877). See also Cyril R. Richardson,
The Christianity of Ignatius of Antioch, preface (1967). Richardson only accepts seven as
authentic.

Computer analysis of literary style shows that only the four larger of Paul had a common author.
All the others are forgeries of unknown authorship. This study, called "statistical stylometry,"
involves computer analysis of how how many times a certain pronoun is used by a Greek author,
the percentage of times it is used in the genitive form, and the number of words in sentences. For
example, the occurrences of "de" (but) between the occurrences of "kai" (and) are compared as
they appear in different Epistles. Results indicate that the chances of all fourteen Epistles being
of a common authorship are highly unlikely, and are instead authored by different writers.

Statistical stylometry does show a common authorship for such Greek authors as Plato,
Hippocrates, and a good selection of others.

This technique is considered reliable enough to be admissible in courts of law to prove the
authenticity of such documents as confessions. A. Morton, Literary Detection: How to Prove the
Authorship and Fraud in Literature and Documents (1979).