Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Craig B]

Well first of all - it is not a "fascinating thesis", it's what all translations of Paul's letters actually say.

Secondly - whether Paul had met any earlier Christians is irrelevant. Because the mere fact that anyone described anyone as "Christians" only means they believed in the Jewish messiah prophecies of the OT, and those messiah prophecies had been preached and believed since at least the time of Moses c.1000BC.

That is complete balderdash. So Christianity goes back "at least" to Moses, and if there were Christians in the mid first century, they can't be distinguished from the people who wandered across the Red Sea. Dear me! No, even before that, you say. Were they stowaways on Noah's Ark, then? That would make as much sense.

And thirdly - why on earth should I bother trying to point that out to bible scholars, when (a) they know all that very well indeed (as has has been pointed out in most modern sceptic books), and since (b) I have zero interest in trying to change the mind of religiously interested, religiously self-serving bible scholars who invariably have an extensive personal history of devout religious faith, and where (c) I don’t regard them as serious objective genuine academics at all.

Devout, self-serving, eh? Brainache is not far wrong when he describes your arguments as ad-hom rubbish.

 

[Craig B]

Here's another contact between Paul and the Jerusalem group.

Acts 11:22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

25 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

Did Paul follow this envoy from Jerusalem to Antioch, and participate with him in this teaching activity involving large numbers of people, but never obtain any information from him? Is that in the least degree credible?

 

[maximara]

. None of the Gospels, in your estimation, may be dated prior to c 130?

No Church father so much as quotes from them until the 130s so if they did exist before that time why weren't they used?

 

[dejudge]

Here's another contact between Paul and the Jerusalem group. Did Paul follow this envoy from Jerusalem to Antioch, and participate with him in this teaching activity involving large numbers of people, but never obtain any information from him? Is that in the least degree credible?

I am afraid you cannot use the existing Acts of the Apostles as corroborative evidence.

The earliest recovered and dated Papyri of Acts of the Apostles is around c 250 CE and later.

There is no supporting evidence to show that Acts of the Apostles gave historical accounts of Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

Acts of the Apostles FAILS Source Criticism by "miles".

Acts of the Apostles in its present state is just a plausible Ghost story.

 

[Craig B]

No Church father so much as quotes from them until the 130s so if they did exist before that time why weren't they used?

Therefore in your estimation none of the Gospels can be dated prior to the 130s? I'm correct in stating that?

 

[Craig B]

I am afraid you cannot use the existing Acts of the Apostles as corroborative evidence.

The earliest recovered and dated Papyri of Acts of the Apostles is around c 250 CE and later.

There is no supporting evidence to show that Acts of the Apostles gave historical accounts of Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

Acts of the Apostles FAILS Source Criticism by "miles".

Acts of the Apostles in its present state is just a plausible Ghost story.

Dear Heavens! I thought the entire NT was a second century or fourth century forged hoax. Now it turns out to be a third century hoax as well. This earliest extant copy argument makes Josephus a tenth century hoax, I suppose. We're back in Jean Hardouin's madhouse. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/jean_hardouins_theory_of_universal_forgery

 

[dejudge]

Dear Heavens! I thought the entire NT was a second century or fourth century forged hoax. Now it turns out to be a third century hoax as well.

You use Chinese Whispers to date the NT.

This earliest extant copy argument makes Josephus a tenth century hoax, I suppose. We're back in Jean Hardouin's madhouse. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/jean_hardouins_theory_of_universal_forgery

You have no idea that the earliest extant copy of Josephus contains the HOAX called the "TF" in Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3.

 

[Craig B]

You use Chinese Whispers to date the NT.

You have no idea that the earliest extant copy of Josephus contains the HOAX called the "TF" in Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3.

Comment on what I wrote. Does a tenth century date for an earliest manuscript indicate a tenth century origin of the text it contains? Clue: 18.3.3 is first noticed by the fourth century writer Eusebius. But wait a minute. The earliest extant manuscript of Eusebius's work is c 11th century. http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/eusebius_history.htm So he must be a forgery too! A forgery inside a forgery inside a forgery ... Where will it all end I wonder.

 

[David Mo]

OK, well you actually had no answer in the whole of that above reply, except to admit that Paul’s letters do in fact actually say what I had said, and not at all what you had said!

It is your opinion. My opinion is that you are trying to caricature my arguments.

And in your own defence, you can only offer the idea that you should ignore what the letters actually say, because you think you have the gift of reading something else into it by “reading between it’s lines”!

This is a peculiar way to translate my words. In this peculiar way you write, yes, every historian or anthropologist has to analyze the sources and interpret them if they seem not credible to him (“reading between its lines”, you say). Witnesses sometimes don’t tell the truth, you know.

As far as the crucifixion story is concerned - we have discussed this in detail dozens of times before. And it’s a flagrant waste of sceptics time trying to get us to re-run all those same arguments endlessly over and over again every couple of weeks.

The point about Paul’s belief in the crucifixion, which iirc he says he believes from scripture (…)

… and as I have said before - you certainly can find passages in the OT which do talk about someone being “hung on a tree”, being “pierced or fastened hand and foot”, (…).

No, there is no passage in the Bible that speaks of “hung in a tree” or “pierced” in the sense of crucifixion. This is a twisted reading of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. The inventor(s) of the Jesus’ crucifixion should be a twisted guy to go to an isolated passage of the Bible and to do a twisted interpretation of it in order to invent a repugnant death to his divine invention.

I have already written days ago:

“If Paul or his circle had invented the death of a sacred man he wouldn't have used the cross and the Pilate story because Pauline movement (Gospels include) was trying to extend Christianity to the gentiles of Roman Empire. And the cross directly involved the Roman soldiers and Pilate”.

And:

“It is to say, no Christian neither in the first nor in the second centuries would invent a humiliating and degrading death to his God or messiah. It will be as we chose for a contemporary prophet to be executed as a paedophilic killer. Not very fit for catechesis.”

I know a better interpretation than yours... Do you really want I repeat it?

 

[eight bits]

max

No Church father so much as quotes from them until the 130s so if they did exist before that time why weren't they used?

Putting aside that allusions to stories (whether written or not, if the reader knows them) or unsourced quotes or close paraphrases (for example, "Jesus said..." or "Jesus said that...") can serve rhetoric as effectively as sourced verbatim quoting, could you please point us to a church father's wiritng before 130 that urgently calls for a sourced verbatim Gospel quotation in your view, and the father declined to quote the Gospel passage whose absence you discern?

Obviously, it would be helpful if you could at least allude to that "missing" passage, and indicate how the father supported his point in the absence of a Gospel quotation.

In any case, verbatim quotation by readers is not the sole "use" of any book. We do not know why Mark and Matthew were written, or when they first became viewed as authoritative for doctrinal, pedagogical or historical purposes, nor by whom. (On the contrary, we know that some books of the canon were of disputed usefulness at various times before their enlistment) It is entirely possible that the Gospel books were first "used" for altogether different purposes, such as liturgical recitation, private meditation, or "pamphleteering."

David Mo

“It is to say, no Christian neither in the first nor in the second centuries would invent a humiliating and degrading death to his God or messiah...

You've got to be kidding. Krishna dies in a hunting accident. Obviously, no pious Hindu would invent such a stupid death for his God's avatar. Dionysos is chopped up before he gets resurrected. Hercules, the son of his chief god, dies by accidental poisoning during a domestic dispute about his infidelity.

These are all made up, David. This is the kind of stuff people make up about their gods, avatars of God and sons of god. Jesus is not "copied" from these models, in my opinion, but he fits right in. After all, how are people supposed to recognize him as being a god, if he doesn't resemble other gods?

 

[Belz...]

I am afraid you cannot use the existing Acts of the Apostles as corroborative evidence.

Another big lie.

 

[zugzwang]

Well first of all - it is not a "fascinating thesis", it's what all translations of Paul's letters actually say.

Secondly - whether Paul had met any earlier Christians is irrelevant. Because the mere fact that anyone described anyone as "Christians" only means they believed in the Jewish messiah prophecies of the OT, and those messiah prophecies had been preached and believed since at least the time of Moses c.1000BC.

And thirdly - why on earth should I bother trying to point that out to bible scholars, when (a) they know all that very well indeed (as has has been pointed out in most modern sceptic books), and since (b) I have zero interest in trying to change the mind of religiously interested, religiously self-serving bible scholars who invariably have an extensive personal history of devout religious faith, and where (c) I don’t regard them as serious objective genuine academics at all.

Well, full marks again, as your thesis has become truly comprehensive, as you seem to be saying that Christians had existed for a 1000 years. I particularly like that 'only' in the sentence, 'only means they believed in the Jewish messiah prophecies'.

This seems to suggest that in fact, all Jews were Christians, going back a long time. Well, this is the sword which has cut the Gordian knot - history itself will tremble and quake at this insight, as many of its ideas are now redundant.

 

[Craig B]

... No, there is no passage in the Bible that speaks of “hung in a tree” or “pierced” in the sense of crucifixion. This is a twisted reading of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.

Of Psalm 22, more "twisted" even than it seems. The Evangelists are looking for Tanakh texts to make sense of the crucifixion. Evidence: they all four report the crucifixion, but use different and garbled bits of the OT "prophecies". Luke reports that the guards appropriated Jesus' clothing, a normal practice permitted to executioners of many ages. A humiliation for Jesus. So John looks for a justificatory text.

John 19:23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus they took his garments and made four parts, one for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was without seam, woven from top to bottom; 24 so they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be." This was to fulfil the scripture, "They parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." 25 So the soldiers did this.

That is from Ps 22:18. But here the author of gJohn has misunderstood a poetic parallelism, and thinks that the parting and the casting lots are two separate activities, but they are merely two ways of saying the same thing. He invented a seamless garment so that he could use this passage to make sense of the crucifixion.

Further evidence. Psalm 22:16 has

... they pierce my hands and my feet

mostly in the Greek LXX version. The standard Masoretic reading is "like a lion", rather than "pierced". So the mode of Jesus' execution was not invented from the text of Ps 22 by Hebrew or Aramaic readers, to whom that psalm would not suggest a crucifixion at all. Is this a crucifixion?

For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.

(Ps. 22:17, Jewish Publication Society translation.) It's more like someone being attacked by a gang of bandits who steal his clothes.

 

[Craig B]

You've got to be kidding. Krishna dies in a hunting accident. Obviously, no pious Hindu would invent such a stupid death for his God's avatar. Dionysos is chopped up before he gets resurrected. Hercules, the son of his chief god, dies by accidental poisoning during a domestic dispute about his infidelity.

These are all made up, David. This is the kind of stuff people make up about their gods, avatars of God and sons of god. Jesus is not "copied" from these models, in my opinion, but he fits right in. After all, how are people supposed to recognize him as being a god, if he doesn't resemble other gods?

But the early Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels was not a god. He was a Messiah, thus a "Son of God" in the Solomonic and Davidic sense. An "anointed" King. Such people are to win for Israel, like Cyrus in Isaiah 45:1, not be put to death by torture at the hands of Israel's foes. That this normally prophesied messianic performance was expected of Jesus, and that his failure was the occasion of embarrassment, is indicated in

Mark 15:32 "Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
Luke 22:30 ... so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Luke 24:21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.
Acts 1:6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

 

[IanS]

Well first of all - it is not a "fascinating thesis", it's what all translations of Paul's letters actually say.

Secondly - whether Paul had met any earlier Christians is irrelevant. Because the mere fact that anyone described anyone as "Christians" only means they believed in the Jewish messiah prophecies of the OT, and those messiah prophecies had been preached and believed since at least the time of Moses c.1000BC.

That is complete balderdash. So Christianity goes back "at least" to Moses, and if there were Christians in the mid first century, they can't be distinguished from the people who wandered across the Red Sea. Dear me! No, even before that, you say. Were they stowaways on Noah's Ark, then? That would make as much sense. .

Of course it’s not balderdash. You really have no credible answers here any more do you.

Whatever Jewish religious belief was called at the time of the supposed figure of Moses c.1000BC (a figure who bible scholar John Huddleston says may never have existed anyway!), the religious belief of the people had throughout all of this time, afaik, centred around the belief that God would send to them a saving messiah or “Christ” … the term “Christ” just means “messiah” … the word “Christianity” just means the ancient messiah belief of the people in that region.

The only two elements that were new with Paul, was that he named the messiah as “Yehoshua”, which was the name supposedly prophesised by Moses as far back as 1000BC. And, by the 1st century or whenever the author of Paul’s letters was writing, the author (“Paul”) interpreted the OT prophecies to mean that the messiah would be an apocalyptic scion of God, sent to gather the faithful in preparation for what they believed was the now imminent day of God’s Final Judgement … though even that apocalyptic view of the messiah had apparently already been preached by the Essenes in that exact same small region since at least around 100BC (the usual dating of DSS scroll writing being given as c.170BC all through to 70AD).

But you have absolutely no credible answer do you! You cannot show any shred of any evidence of Paul ever saying that he obtained his Jesus beliefs from what he had been told by earlier people!

Afaik, there is no such suggestion anywhere in any of Paul’s letters. Instead what there is, is a very clear and repeated statement of the complete opposite where the letters say that Paul obtained his knowledge of Jesus “from no man”, not from “any human origin”, and “according to scripture”.

And thirdly - why on earth should I bother trying to point that out to bible scholars, when (a) they know all that very well indeed (as has has been pointed out in most modern sceptic books), and since (b) I have zero interest in trying to change the mind of religiously interested, religiously self-serving bible scholars who invariably have an extensive personal history of devout religious faith, and where (c) I don’t regard them as serious objective genuine academics at all.

Devout, self-serving, eh? Brainache is not far wrong when he describes your arguments as ad-hom rubbish.

Every time you reply you appear to deliberately try to misquote people. Why do you keep doing that in almost every reply?

Here you just started by saying “Devout, self serving, eh?” As if I had just claimed that all these bible scholars (eg Bart Ehrman) are currently devout religious believers. Whereas what I actually said about them is that they are “religiously interested, religiously self-serving bible scholars who invariably have an extensive personal history of devout religious faith” … as we have shown here repeatedly with quoted biography of their academic and religious backgrounds, bible scholars like Bart Ehrman, Dominic Crossan, EP Sanders etc., invariably have an early background in highly devout religious Christian faith … and almost all their entire adult lives have invariably been spent positively drowning in all sorts of religious and theological studies.

So where is this claimed “Ad Hom”? You and others here regard these bible scholars as revered experts who you place upon a pedestal by saying that their opinions on Jesus must not be questioned by anyone other than their fellow bible scholars and theologians. But like most sceptics, inc. it seems to me most who have written books on this subject, I don’t actually have very much respect for these people as typical objective university research academics … because what I have seen of their writing, their comments, and their qualifications and religious background interests and beliefs, seems to me about as far from genuine objective university academic research of the kind that I have spent much of my life in, as it’s possible to get … or to put that simply; compared to anything remotely like objective science, the practices & conclusions of bible studies seem to be very poor indeed.

 

[IanS]

Well, full marks again, as your thesis has become truly comprehensive, as you seem to be saying that Christians had existed for a 1000 years. I particularly like that 'only' in the sentence, 'only means they believed in the Jewish messiah prophecies'.

This seems to suggest that in fact, all Jews were Christians, going back a long time. Well, this is the sword which has cut the Gordian knot - history itself will tremble and quake at this insight, as many of its ideas are now redundant.

See the above longer reply to Craig, which I think covers your remarks.

See also the quote below from Wiki re. the word “Christ” -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ
Christ (/kraɪst/) (ancient Greek: Χριστός, Christós, meaning 'anointed') is a translation of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Māšîaḥ), the Messiah, and is used as a title for Jesus in the New Testament.[3][4] In common usage, "Christ" is generally treated as synonymous with Jesus of Nazareth.[4][5] Jesus came to be called "Jesus Christ", meaning "Jesus the Christós" (i.e. Jesus, the anointed; or "Jesus, the Messiah" by his followers) after his death and believed resurrection.[6][7] Before, Jesus was usually referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus son of Joseph".[6] In the epistles of Paul the Apostle, the earliest texts of the New Testament,[8] Paul most often referred to Jesus as "Jesus Christ", "Christ Jesus", or "Christ".[9] The followers of Jesus became known as Christians (as in Acts 11:26) because they believed Jesus to be the Messiah (Christos) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible,[7][10] for example in the Confession of Peter. Christ was originally a title, yet later became part of the name "Jesus Christ", though it is still also used as a title, in the reciprocal use Christ Jesus, meaning "The Messiah Jesus".[11]

 

[Craig B]

... the religious belief of the people had throughout all of this time, afaik, centred around the belief that God would send to them a saving messiah or “Christ” … the term “Christ” just means “messiah” … the word “Christianity” just means the ancient messiah belief of the people in that region.

Thus, "Christianity" simply means, the religious belief of the Israelites and later Jews since the time of Moses. I see. Well, we'll see how that goes down with the Mythicists. Presumably the "Christ" was to be crucified by the enemies of Israel? As this couldn't have happened because it's in the Gospels, which are simple nonsense throughout (as you assert), it must be part of the post-Mosaic "Christianity" which up to now we have been calling "Judaism" until you corrected us.

But you have absolutely no credible answer do you! You cannot show any shred of any evidence of Paul ever saying that he obtained his Jesus beliefs from what he had been told by earlier people!

I've listed masses of such people from James and his "myriads" of pious Jewish followers to Barnabas who went to Tarsus to collect Paul and take him to Antioch on a conversion campaign, where the Jesus followers were called "Christians" for the first time, by the way.

Afaik, there is no such suggestion anywhere in any of Paul’s letters. Instead what there is, is a very clear and repeated statement of the complete opposite where the letters say that Paul obtained his knowledge of Jesus “from no man”, not from “any human origin”, and “according to scripture”.

So that must be right then. Paul couldn't have received information from anyone else because he said, or even thought, it came from on high. I see. And you accept these words of Paul as incontrovertible, even in the face of this?

Acts 11:25 Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: 26 And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. 27 And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.

But of course there's not "a shred of any evidence" that Paul ever spoke to Barnabas from Jerusalem, or the "prophets" from Jerusalem, is there? He went on a mass conversion spree with them, but he obtained no information from them. Well, OK.

 

[IanS]

It is your opinion. My opinion is that you are trying to caricature my arguments.



This is a peculiar way to translate my words. In this peculiar way you write, yes, every historian or anthropologist has to analyze the sources and interpret them if they seem not credible to him (“reading between its lines”, you say). Witnesses sometimes don’t tell the truth, you know.




No, there is no passage in the Bible that speaks of “hung in a tree” or “pierced” in the sense of crucifixion. This is a twisted reading of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. The inventor(s) of the Jesus’ crucifixion should be a twisted guy to go to an isolated passage of the Bible and to do a twisted interpretation of it in order to invent a repugnant death to his divine invention.

I have already written days ago:

“If Paul or his circle had invented the death of a sacred man he wouldn't have used the cross and the Pilate story because Pauline movement (Gospels include) was trying to extend Christianity to the gentiles of Roman Empire. And the cross directly involved the Roman soldiers and Pilate”.

And:

“It is to say, no Christian neither in the first nor in the second centuries would invent a humiliating and degrading death to his God or messiah. It will be as we chose for a contemporary prophet to be executed as a paedophilic killer. Not very fit for catechesis.”

I know a better interpretation than yours... Do you really want I repeat it?

Well there is nothing at all in the above where you can disagree with anything I said to you!

And there is nothing there which supports what you had claimed about Paul learning about Jesus from any earlier people.

And when you say the highlighted, i.e. this -

"No, there is no passage in the Bible that speaks of “hung in a tree” or “pierced” in the sense of crucifixion."​

- what is the point of you saying that??

What I said to you was not that Paul, g-Mark or g-Mathew had found explicit OT sentences saying "Jesus will be crucified, hung on a tree". For what must be the tenth time!!! ... Paul and the gospel writers did not need to find any precise explicit sentences to be quoted and believed verbatim! What they did was to interpret as they saw fit, various parts of quite disparate sentences in different books of the OT, to decide that in their belief, those passages were actually referring in a coded hidden way to the true messiah prophecies of God ...

... IOW, they took passages like that, and simply read-into-them what they wanted to find as messiah prophecies. They were looking for anything they could interpret as a coded message about the messiah that they had all believed in anyway for generations.

And that's apart from the likely (it seems to me) complicating factor that Paul and the others may have been working from oral transmission of what they had been taught about the contents and meaning of the OT, rather than actually having complete original written copies which they could read from themselves. In which case, oral transmission like that would obviously introduce almost infinite scope for all manner of highly personalised interpretations & beliefs of what preachers like Paul thought the prophecies had ever really said or meant.

Keep in mind throughout all of this, that 1st century preachers like Paul were not remotely like rational educated objective people today. Paul was someone who, iirc, spoke in tongues and saw religious visions, and whose entire life and every waking moment was consumed by the most fanatical religious superstitious certainties of belief in the supernatural. It is a huge mistake to imagine that Paul and similar preachers would be treating what they believed to be the actual original OT words in a modern objective impartial way. On the contrary, afaik, they were almost certainly reading into all of their ancient prophecies and messiah beliefs, whatever naïve uneducated superstitious interpretations they wished ... accuracy and objective caution were probably no part of anything they said or belied in their fanatical faith.

 

[Craig B]

And there is nothing there which supports what you had claimed about Paul learning about Jesus from any earlier people.

Can you respond to my observations on that at #4677?

And when you say the highlighted, i.e. this -
"No, there is no passage in the Bible that speaks of “hung in a tree” or “pierced” in the sense of crucifixion."
- what is the point of you saying that??

It's very relevant. If there is nothing really like that, then it is difficult to imagine that Paul etc invented a non-existent crucifixion by using these sources. Is it not much more probable that they were presented with the crucifixion as a real datum, and frantically searched for Biblical passages that they could torture into some semblance of justification for it?

You paint a remarkable portrait of "preachers like Paul", as sorts of raving lunatics who

... spoke in tongues and saw religious visions, and whose entire life and every waking moment was consumed by the most fanatical religious superstitious certainties of belief in the supernatural ... afaik, they were almost certainly reading into all of their ancient prophecies and messiah beliefs, whatever naïve uneducated superstitious interpretations they wished ... accuracy and objective caution were probably no part of anything they said or belied [sic: believed?] in their fanatical faith.

So if someone was to say to you, your analysis of Paul's work seems void of sense, you can simply respond with that picture of a Paul doing and saying fanatical incautious things "every walking moment" of his "entire life". I have to say that Paul's epistles do not look in every part like the ravings of a demented madman. He utters reasoned arguments and disquisitions, at least on occasion, which seem like the products of ordered thought, though in general I disagree with him.

 

[maximara]

Comment on what I wrote. Does a tenth century date for an earliest manuscript indicate a tenth century origin of the text it contains? Clue: 18.3.3 is first noticed by the fourth century writer Eusebius. But wait a minute. The earliest extant manuscript of Eusebius's work is c 11th century. http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/eusebius_history.htm So he must be a forgery too! A forgery inside a forgery inside a forgery ... Where will it all end I wonder.

Sarcasm aside there is something a little wonked with using a tenth century document to "prove" the existence of a passage though to be forged by the very man who first references it in the fourth. Espcially as according to Drews there was a copy in the 16th century (ie as late as 1600) that did NOT have the passage.