"There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they
should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself
could not contain the books that should be written." This is more like
the language of a myth-maker than of a historian. How much reliance
can we put in a reporter who is given to such exaggeration? To say
that the world itself would be too small to contain the unreported
sayings and doings of a teacher whose public life possibly did not
last longer than a year, and whose reported words and deeds fill only
a few pages, is to prove one's statements unworthy of serious
consideration.

And it is worth our while to note also that the documents which have
come down to our time and which purport to be the biographies of
Jesus, are not only written in an alien language, that is to say, in a
language which was not that of Jesus and his disciples, but neither
are they dated or signed. Jesus and his twelve apostles were Jews; why
are all the four Gospels written in Greek? If they were originally
written in Hebrew, how can we tell that the Greek translation is
accurate, since we can not compare it with the originals? And why are
these Gospels anonymous? Why are they not dated? But as we shall say
something more on this subject in the present volume, we confine
ourselves at this point to reproducing a fragment of the manuscript
pages from which our Greek Translations have been made.[Footnote: See
page 57.] It is admitted by scholars that owing to the difficulty of
reading these ancient and imperfect and also conflicting texts, an
accurate translation is impossible. But this is another way of saying
that what the churches call the Word of God is not only the word of
man, but a very imperfect word, at that.

The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary documents, altered