I forgot to add a link to that update here. Doing that now!

Oh, you missed my update! See: “Bullshit from Day One: The First Century Gospel Is a Third Century Gospel.”

Indeed I cite that Wallace article there (among much else on this development).

https://danielbwallace.com/2018/05/23/first-century-mark-fragment-update/

See Wikipedia’s article on List of New Testament Papyri (for the canonical NT at any rate). Next most important is the List of New Testament Uncials. Those two lists exhaust everything that we have that predates the Middle Ages.

Yeah. Madness.

Thanks for answering.

He claims that his thesis is totally possible because two people (with help from some others, of course) writing almost all day every single day for about 20 years is enough to fake the whole New Testament, the writings of the Early Church Fathers and interpolating random passages in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, and others (why not interpolating contemporary historians to make the whole thing more credible?).

He claims that his book, written as a novel (of course, it is historical fiction) shows exactly what happened. But, where is the document where Constantine orders a bunch of geniuses of postmodern literature, able to fake different writing styles, to write several books? He hides behind “Constantine didn’t want anyone to realise it was all fake!”

This are his three “irrefutable proofs” that “prove” Christianity was invented in the IV century (prepare to have a good laugh):

1) The double wording Eusebius used in all of his works, with two stages of wording using opposed ideas. While Eusebius had the “knowledge of the Greek teachers” (as Conde calls them), Lactantius ideas involved more fantasy. Eusebius introduced his ideas in the first stage and surrounded them with Lactantius thoughts, which made his own disappear, because they did not make sense, since they were mixed with opposed ideas. Conde claims there is an example of this in James, where two “different letters” are together with Lactantius “barbarities”.

2) Structures. The ancients wrote with structure. Based on counting the words that were added to their work, they formed a succession of numbers, as the writing lengthened. There were certain numbers, or text lengths, that were special. And the author could go through many of those numbers – or lengths – or through a few. Thus, there were complicated structures and other simpler ones. So far there is no proof of anything. But Lactantius, who besides being a fanatic was short, to show off, he wrote all his works with the same structure, a very complicated one. This should not be so; each author had to have a different structure; some, complicated, but others, much simpler. The proof is that, by that structure, it is recognized that Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter and Jude are written by the same person. And many more false primitive Christian writings.

3) Acrostics. He found the “SIMON” (humbug, lie, etc) acrostic, which is always in the last three letters of a sentence, and the amount of spaces between the letter and the end of the sentence will always add up to 8. It was only used by Eusebius. If any text mentioning Christians which dates before the Council of Nicaea and does not contain such an acrostic, then it was faked by other member of the team. Let me give you an example of this with the Testimonium Flavianum (found on p. 520 of his book).

“There was at that time Jesu-s-, 1

…………………………………….

…………………………………….

So until today the Christians, by him called, continue to exist as a cla-n-. 1

And at that time another terrible fact terrified the Jews [in Spanish it’s “judíos”, so judí-o-s], 2

what happened in the temple that was in Ro-m-e, 2

shameful acts related to Is-i-s. 2″

There you have it. Now, let’s try the original Greek.

“Ihsou-s-, 1

……..

fulo-n-. 1

dein-o-n, 2

Rw-m-h, 2

suntugcanous-i-n. 2”

He already claims to know, without reading them, that the writings of Origen, Irenaeus, Celsus, and some others, are fake. His brilliant (sarcasm) explanation is:

“The reason for my answer, without having been able to study the Greek texts of Origen and Celsus, they obey the following: What I studied was the process of writing the New Testament and, by extension, the early Christian books, prior to Nicaea, and there are THREE documentary proofs, independent of one another, which show that everything, NT and “primitive” Christian texts, were falsified by Eusebius of Caesarea, friend of Constantine, in the fourth century. Eusebius left irrefutable evidence of this. I knew how to do it. Back then, it was written with tricks that have become unknown today and that I discovered in my 24-year research, from 1992 to 2016.

It is demonstrated by written tests, easily falsifiable (falsifiable = verifiable), that practically everything that carries the word “Christian” and is before the year 325 is forgery. There may be a few writings that I have not analyzed, but Christianity is proven to be a forgery of the first quarter of the fourth century. Loose writings before Nicea can not but be part of that same falsification, even though the modern propagandists, for obvious personal interests and maintained during the last 160 years, do not want to recognize it.”

Now, someone mentioned the Gospel of Judas to him (I know this because he keeps a written record of every single discussion he has ever had with someone about his book). He replied that it dates between 220 and 340, so it’s inside the margin of his hypothesis. Then, he said (prepare for a good laugh):

“It is not necessary that the maximum probability is that the papyrus was torn from the Nile in the year 280, so distant years from the center are possible. Now let’s situate ourselves in Trier (today Germany) in the year … 310, in which there were already original texts to be copied and distributed in the future, the Gospels, the Letters of Paul and others written by Lactantius, as Acts and some false ancient Christian writings, like Arnobiobius, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, etc.

Eusebius must acquire quantity of papyrus to copy them and make them pass through ancient books, almost 300 years ago. Will he ask from distant Egypt lots of new papyrus, or will he ask for old papyrus, of at least … 30 years old? In the book I favor this second option. The papyrus that came to him would be a papyrus made … 20 years before, towards the year 290. Also, cheaper. As you can see everything fits like a glove. It is that lying is dangerous.”

Now, prepare for a final laugh. According to him, you and others who disagree with his ridiculous thesis are propagandists and “defenders of the forgery”.

“Christianity, despite some defenders of the forgery, (…) with no scientific mentality, was invented from the year 303, by Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea, under the order of Constantine, as shown in the book with reliable, documentary evidence, visible and not erasable, nor refutable.”

What’s even funnier is that he claims his “proofs” are falsifiable and not refutable. Then, he goes on to say that his book was written for academics, historians and scholars. When I asked him “Then why didn’t you send it for peer review or academic publishing?” he never replied, although I found a comment of his saying that, several years ago, he sent what now is chapter 126 of his book to Oxford, but it was rejected because it was “too complicated for students”.

I hope you laughed at least once with this amount of “irrefutable scholarship”. Even if Jesus himself appeared to him and took him to the II century, he would still find a way to “explain” it, usually by employing the most amazing mental gymnastics you will ever see.

Reliable enough to refute his thesis.

As I note in the article, it’s accurate to +/-50 years (sometimes +/-25 if the manuscript is large enough). Which has been verified by stratigraphic and carbon dating of the comparands (the same way benchmark stars verify the use of the Hubble Constant to calculate distance to other stars).

His thesis is fantastically absurd for reasons even other than that. Because it requires A Vast Incredible Conspiracy to invent not just dozens of books in the NT (and like Satan planting fossils, distributing dozens of manuscripts of each book, in multiple languages, across three continents), but all Christian literature before 300 (the extensive writings of Origen, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Cyril, Clement of Alexandria, and on and on). As well as inexplicable claims of interpolated derogatory mentions of Christians even in Marcus Aurelius’s meditations and various books of Galen and Lucian, for example. As well as the fantastical hypothesis that not only were all the writings of Origen fabricated, but even Origen’s refutation of the pagan critic Celsus’s book, which contains extensive quotations of Celsus, a forgery within a forgery! This is epicycles upon epicycles upon epicycles. A tinfoil hat on top of a tinfoil hat on top of a tinfoil hat.

Some early papyri were discovered in situ and thus dated by archeology, not just paleography. For example, P1, P5, P9, P119, etc., were recovered from the Oxyrhynchus site, an ancient garbage dump, whose contents can be roughly but well enough dated by the layering of refuse (newer documents & artifacts sit atop, older below; just like geological stratification dating). Though possibly they were discarded in (e.g.) the 4th century. I haven’t checked.

Of course, the manuscript of the Gospel of Judas (which depends on the prior existence of the NT) has actually been carbon dated to the 3rd century, matching paleographic and chemical ink analysis dating. So that’s a problem for him. But he’d just add another tinfoil hat on his head and make up some reason to reject that. Being that he is clearly insane, there is no possible way his claims will ever be falsified by any evidence. Even if Jesus himself descended from the heavens and took him back to the 2nd century in Dr. Who’s TARDIS and showed him a scribe actually in the act of creating an edition.