Forgery in Christianity: A Documented Record of the Foundations of the Christian Religion [Paperback]

The committed faithful, especially those who take the Christian story literally, will probably want to bypass this book. It's long, it's dense, and it rejects the story out of hand.

However, for those who can value the hard and intelligent research and the look into early Christian writings, the book is a great reward. To begin with, Wheless argues what (nearly) all Christians would also argue--that every non-canonical writing associated with both Judaism and early Christianity is a forgery--if it's non-canonical, it simply didn't form part of the canon. Many, many writers produced texts and attributed them to well-known figures in or outside of the Bible. What will rankle the faithful is the argument that the gospels themselves are also "forgeries," though that is now acknowledged by much mainstream Christian Bible scholarship. That is, no one knows who the actual authors of the gospels were; the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are simply traditionally accepted attributions. Wheless is definitely interesting and rewarding in his discussion of the Antenicene Fathers--the early Christian writers--and their arguments on behalf of Christianity. They were pagans converted to Christianity themselves, and Wheless quotes excerpts that I've never seen in other, more recent discussions of their ideas. For example, in his discussion of Irenaeus, he quotes this early Christian father of Church dogma to the effect that pagans ought to accept what seems absurd in Christianity--the resurrection, the virgin birth--because such circumstances abound in the pagan world. Wheless argues that someone like Irenaeus, early Christian apologist though he is, believes those stories, believes in the powers of pagan magic, as fundamental to his argument to other pagans. He and other early writers simply credit the pagan examples of hard-to-believe stories about divinities and semi-divinities (resurrection, virgin birth) to demons, while Jesus is the true semi-divinity, born of a virgin, resurrected by the true God. Even more interestingly, much of the support for his arguments, Wheless draws from the Catholic Encyclopedia itself, which often, though sometimes hesitantly, acknowledges the undependability of the documents that form the foundation of Christian doctrine. I haven't been able to find a copy of the Catholic Encyclopedia yet to check these quotes, but Wheless is good about citations, as he is about the citations of the Antenicene Fathers. Irenaeus is even quoted as arguing that the idea of Jesus being crucified at an early age is tantamount to blasphemy, since it nullifies the possibility that the savior of all mankind should have had such a short life in which to carry out his mission. Indeed, Irenaeus refers to hearsay that Jesus lived into the late years of the first century (85-90 AD). Now this certainly will be an alien idea to any traditional believer. Wheless's citations go to show that when it comes to selective quotation, Christian apologetics applies the same techniques to the early church fathers that it does to the gospels.

The value of this book, I believe, is to further substantiate the fact that early Christianity was entirely diverse in its beliefs (even moreso than contemporary Christianity, where--to the regret of many--differing beliefs abound, ranging from the entirely literal acceptance of the Biblical texts to their interpretation as symbolic and metaphorical, not to mention polemical). Wheless's strident tone and prejudices aside, this is a valuable book for its genuine and factual insights into early Christianity and the nature of its earliest texts. One final note: Wheless argues that the earliest dates for the gospels as we know them must be mid-second century, since none of the early writers (Papias, Irenaeus) seems to know them as other than scattered notes, recorded from hearsay and memory before that time. Current mainstream scholarship dates the gospels from around 70 CE (Mark) to somewhere in the 90s (John), with Luke and Matthew probably in the eighties. I have not seen any scholarship accounting for the stages by which the lower dating has been reached, but that would be interesting. The lowest dating possibility I have seen would be shortly after Jesus' death, making the gospels "eyewitness" accounts much more believable. But this is a very conservative dating, apparently depending on the willingness to accept the prophetic passages as true prophecy rather than as accounts of or references to events that have already transpired (e.g., the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE) or events that are impacting the later congregations of believers for whom the gospels were written.

In such an enterprise, accurate citation is everything. Unfortunately, those who verify his quotes come away with a feeling of discomfort.

Firstly, they are often verbally correct. However, it is not uncommon for him to practise the lawyers' trick of deceit by selection. In a number of cases, he stops quoting, just before a sentence which explicitly denies the suggestion he wishes his readers to suppose the father (or whoever) is giving.

An examination of the introduction gives some 25 citations from the fathers or the Catholic Encyclopeda. I looked all of these up, as the CE and the Ante-Nicene fathers are all online these days.

28% of the references are wrong; 28% are inaccurate or otherwise can't be checked from his reference; and only 24% of the quotes correctly represent the author's views! In the latter case, few of these really support his thesis.

He abuses St. Augustine, for instance as credulous -- but has not noticed that the 'quotes' he gives are not by this author, but from a medieval piece of narrative fiction.

If someone writes a book to prove his neighbour a liar, it is an absolute requirement to be 100% accurate himself, and to be give the victim the benefit of any doubt. Otherwise, the work is a piece of hate-literature. But Wheless distorts and misleads, relying on the inaccessibility of the sources he uses, in the pre-internet era, in order to abuse his neighbour.

Most atheists today are aware that Wheless cannot be trusted where facts are concerned. This book highlights the dangers of uncritical acceptance of theories, simply because they are congenial. Avoid, unless you are willing to verify everything yourself.