Acknowledgments and Notes

Emmett Fields

Rae West

Bill Williams

FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY

by Joseph Wheless

1930

I (Rae West) downloaded the original file (thanks to Emmett F Fields - see below) on 13 Sept 1995, and corrected spelling and scanning errors, of which there were very many, some rather annoying, e.g. 'Lure' for Luke, 'scriptitre' for scripture. Wheless was sometimes spelt 'Wheliss'; I've adopted 'Wheless'. Most were typical scanner errors, e.g. faintly-printed 'n' scanning as 'il' or 'll' or something similar. Some text seems to have been omitted in error.
        Despite the lengths of these files, since I now have a site search engine I thought it worthwhile to put up my version of this book on Internet: anyone can search for the chapters containing remoter items (for example Ammon, Mithraism, Zoroastrianaism, Newton, indulgences, Hebrew forgeries, legal codes, the phoenix) and rely on the table of contents to find better-known topics: Arians, Augustine, Origen, Gospels, the Donation of Constantine, and so on-the pagination has been left in to give a clue to the lengths of the passages. With some hesitation I've retained the original chapters since Wheless presumably intended to collect together similar material in similar chapters. Rather than browse endless small files, with my arrangement you will face delays while downloading big files - but the material ought to be more substantial. In any case, download times tend to be shorter, and modems and servers faster, than they were.
        I've put in text size changes & bold and italic, and colour, for visual clarity (and variety). The detailed table of contents was originally placed at the very end of the book, at the end of Chapter 7; the foreword had contents, but of chapter headings only, giving an overview. Wheless put a note on his four most-quoted sources in several places; I've collected all these things into this contents section. The book was indexed, I infer, but the index was not scanned in and so doesn't appear here; at the time of writing I haven't generated my own.
        Original pagination is retained like this: {55} means original number of page 55, which was at the END of that page. These are presumably the numbers referred to in the contents pages (though these are internally inconsistent!).Wheless was an American judge. There are many honourable American rationalists in this book, including White, Draper, Lowell, Niebuhr and Mencken. British authors include James Harvey Robertson, Joseph McCabe, Buckle, Milman, Lecky, Gibbon and Hobbes. (Sample of authors not included: Bury, Wells, Russell; Bishop Creighton; Coit; Coughlin; Belloc, Chesterton). There are few if any from the modern non-English speaking world. There are of course lots of 'fathers' of the church (& lots of Greeks, e.g. Aristotle, and Thucydides and Plato in 'the glory that was Greece', just like the traditional British treatment!). Wheless was an American judge; there are many honourable American rationalists in his book. - Rae West.

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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.

This file, its printout, or copies of either are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.

Emmett Fields has compiled new CD-ROMs of PDF files of rationalist books, for sale. One includes his own legal battles over freethought. Fields writes: '.. in the U.S. the Federal Government simply included it with Communism, Anarchism, subversives, etc., and forcefully destroyed it. I place the end of "The Golden Age of Freethought" in America at.. January 2, 1920 -- that was the time of the big Palmer Raid. From that time on, the Federal Government waged relentless war against religious liberty..'-RW]

The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful, scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so that America can again become what its Founders intended The Free Market-Place of Ideas.

The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old, hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts and information for today.If you have such books please contact us, we need to give them back to America.

END OF CHAPTER I HAS THIS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FOR MOST OFTEN  USED SOURCES:-

The libraries of the Union Theological Seminary and of Columbia University, in New York City, were the places of the finds here recorded. Cited so often, space will be saved for more valuable uses by citing by their initials,-which will become very familiar-my chief ecclesiastical authorities, to wit:

ANF.; The Ante-Nicene Fathers, cited as ANF.; A Collection of the extant Writings of all the Founders of Christianity down to the Council of Nicaea, or Nice,in 325 A.D. American Reprint, eight volumes. The Christian Literature Publishing Co., Buffalo, N.Y., 1885. [xxx]

N &PNF.; The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, cited as N&PNF.; First and Second Series; many volumes; same publishers.

CE.; The Catholic Encyclopedia, cited as CE.; fifteen volumes and index, published under the Imprimatur of Archbishop Farley; New York, Robert Appleton Co., 1907-9.

EB.; The Encyclopedia Biblica, cited as EB., four volumes; Adam & Charles Black,London, 1899; American Reprint, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1914.

This HTML version based on Emmett Fields' scanning; somewhat corrected, links inserted, by Rae West. Not compared with the original book; there must certainly be mistakes. First uploaded 99-02-16. Plea 2000-04-26. Fields, Williams notes 2000-11-20

It serves neither God nor truth to try and rationalize irrational things said of God.