PIOUS FRAUD

PIOUS FRAUD

Hugh Fogelman

Forgery during the first centuries of the Church's existence was admittedly rampant, so common in fact, that a new phrase was coined to describe it: "pious fraud." Wheless, op cit. Mangasarian states: "The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, 'The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud.' [Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, p. 347.]

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.”

Rev. Giles says: “The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are never mentioned by him (Justin)―do not occur once in all his writings.” In A Short History of the Bible, Keeler says, "The books [canonical gospels] are not heard of till 150 A.D., that is, till Jesus had been dead nearly a hundred and twenty years. No writer before 150 A.D. makes the slightest mention of them." (J. Wheless, Forgery in Christianity).

In The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, John Remsburg states: "The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels.”

Such prevarication is confessed to repeatedly in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Wheless: "The clerical confessions of lies and frauds in the ponderous volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia alone suffice … to wreck the Church and to destroy utterly the Christian religion. . . . The Church exists mostly for wealth and self-aggrandizement; to quit paying money to the priests would kill the whole scheme in a couple of years. This is the sovereign remedy."

"Those who concocted some of the hundreds of "alternative" gospels and epistles that were being kicked about during the first several centuries CE have even admitted that they had forged the documents." (J. Wheless, Forgery in Christianity).

Christians are betting their souls on this type of FRAUD.

What a shame!

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