and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on anonymous
manuscripts of an age considerably later than the events therein
related--manuscripts which contradict each other as well as
themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the belief in
a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the insufficiency of the
evidence which drove the missionaries of Christianity to commit
forgeries.

If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his
biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian
writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the
presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian,
Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to
employ deception and fraud." [Footnote: Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I,
P. 247.]

Again, he says: "The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all
of them infected with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us
why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of
Jesus. Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was
admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an
age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times
immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles
declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were
written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it is the opinion
of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous floating mass of
spurious literature created to suit party views." Books which are now
rejected as apochryphal were at one time received as inspired, and
books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time
regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is