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To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Between 1879 and 1896, the Rev. William D. Mahan, a minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, published three tracts of previously unknown contemporary accounts of Jesus Christ’s life. There’s virtually unanimous agreement that his work is a fraud, and Mahan’s Presbytery suspended him for falsehood and plagiarism. Still, the last version, The Archko Volume, is readily available today, and some modern readers praise it for providing information from historical documents. Mahan’s first work, a 32-page pamphlet called “A Correct Transcript of Pilate’s Court,” has a unique origin story. According to Mahan, he met Henry Whydaman, a German, in 1856. Whydaman said he’d spent five years in Rome and came across a document called “The Acts of Pilate” in the Vatican library. He mentioned he probably could obtain a transcript of it, which he said was an official report from Pontius Pilate to Roman Emperor Tiberius of Christ’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion. During a three-year exchange of letters, Whydaman told Mahan that Father Freelinhusen, “the chief guardian of the Vatican,” would copy the document for 35 “darics,” or $62.44 (equivalent to $2,002 today). After Whydaman provided “a true copy, word for word,” in 1859, Mahan sent it to his brother-in-law in New York City, paying him $10 ($320 today) to translate it from Latin. Without explaining why he waited 20 years, Mahan published it in pamphlet form in 1879. According to University of Chicago theologian Edgar J. Goodspeed, it seemed well-received and was reprinted at least four times within a year. Many called the pamphlet a fraud. Later investigators also did, including Goodspeed, the author of several books about Apocrypha. He pointed out that, among other things, neither the name of Mahan’s brother-in-law nor the bank he used to transmit money to Whydaman appear in New York City records. Additionally, no one at the Vatican had heard of Father Feelinghusen, and darics were ancient Persian coins not used in the 19th century. In analyzing the content, Goodspeed was blunt. “The whole work is a weak, crude fancy, a jumble of high-sounding but meaningless words, and hardly worth serious criticism. It is difficult to see how it could have deceived anyone.” Moreover, in 1941 Goodspeed discovered a pamphlet published in Boston in 1842 virtually identical to Mahan’s work. That pamphlet, in turn, copied a short story published in Paris in 1837 The criticism didn’t dissuade Mahan. In 1884 he published The Archaeological and the Historical Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds. “Pilate’s Court” was joined by nine additional previously unknown works Mahan resulted from a 10-year investigation and trips he and two experts made to Rome and Constantinople. The new items included interviews with “the shepherds and others at Bethlehem” when Jesus was born, an interview with Mary and Joseph, who were living in Mecca at the time, and a report from Jewish high priest Caiaphas on the resurrection of Jesus.
That story was some 1,200 words longer than the original pamphlet. Mahan said the Vatican library promptly brought them the original document. While it was “more than satisfactory,” he claimed seeing it allowed them to expand what he’d published. The “true copy, word by word” from Father Freelinhusen evidently wasn’t. Perhaps the most damning evidence came from Rev. James A. Quarles, then president of the Elizabeth Aull Seminary in Missouri and later a philosophy professor at Washington and Lee University. About one-quarter of the book was “Eli’s Story of the Magi,” a parchment Mahan said he found in Constantinople. Yet Quarles established that much was copied verbatim from Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur, published four years earlier. Goodspeed would later observe, “The freedom and extent of Mr. Mahan’s copying of ‘Ben-Hur’ are almost beyond belief.” Quarles also presented evidence casting serious doubt on whether Mahan went to Rome or Constantinople. Mahan never proved he went nor the existence of the two experts accompanying him. Mahan’s response to Quarles was odd. In a November 13, 1884, letter, he told Quarles there were some “misprints” in the book he hoped to revise but stood by its authenticity. Yet he also wrote that the book
This good outweighs any falsity argument didn’t impress the New Lebanon Presbytery, which governed Mahan’s ministry. On September 28-29, 1885, the Presbytery held a trial on four charges against Mahan, including plagiarizing Ben-Hur and not traveling to Constantinople. The 17 members unanimously agreed that he plagiarized “Eli’s Story of the Magi,” but a slight majority acquitted him of the travel charge. The Presbytery suspended him for one year, and Mahan promised to no longer sell the book. Mahan again wasn’t deterred. On September 10, 1886, the Presbytery said the suspension “was more the result of sympathy for him and his family, than a desire for rigid administration of the law,” hoping he would work to heal the wounds he caused. It learned, though, that Mahan continued to sell his book and was planning to bring out new editions. As a result, it suspended him indefinitely or until he complied with the Church’s dictates. There’s no record of reinstatement. The Presbytery was right. Several new editions, all without “Eli’s Story,” were published from 1897 to the end of the 19th century. By then, the work was known as The Archko Volume. Of the ten documents in it, only one, a letter from Emperor Constantine requesting 50 copies of the Scriptures, is authentic. Even then, Mahan ventured into the incredible, claiming he transcribed it from the first page of one of Constantine’s copies when in Constantinople. The letter, though, appeared in a 4th-century biography of Constantine. Mahan died in 1906. He never proved the original documents existed. Mahan wrote in The Archko Volume that “the time has been too long and the distance to the place where the records are kept is too great for all men to make the examination for themselves.” Dr. Richard Lloyd Anderson, a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, observed that the “Eli’s Story” parchment “evaporated.” No one ever found the other documents. Yet The Archko Volume still lives. At least six editions were published in the U.S. in the last ten years. Moreover, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Walmart all sell new copies online. “The book obviously thrives because it is too easy to confuse what we would like to find with what is authentic,” Anderson said. In the end, Mahan created what may be the hoax that won’t die. [P]erversions of fact contaminate virtually every page of this book. Richard Lloyd Anderson, “The Fraudulent Archko Volume,” (Originally published at History of Yesterday) Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubez
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[N]o one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son German shipyard worker Ewald Schlitt probably didn’t know a Berlin newspaper reported his March 1941 assault conviction in a court 275 miles away from the capital. His misfortune was that Adolf Hitler read the article. In the summer of 1940, Schlitt’s wife of three years confessed to a sexual relationship with another man. She ended up in a nursing home due to injuries suffered during the couple’s violent argument. She contracted intestinal flu there and died in October 1940. Unable to establish that Schlitt caused her death, a court in Oldenberg found him guilty of assault and gave him the maximum five-year sentence on March 14, 1941. On March 22, Hitler read about the case in the Berliner Nachtausgabe (“Berlin Night Edition”). Believing the punishment too lenient, a furious Hitler almost immediately set about to become Germany’s “Supreme Law Lord.” He intended to finally eliminate whatever remnant of judicial independence existed in the country. When the Nazis came to power, they quickly moved to gain control over the legal system. Immediately following the Reichstag Fire on February 27, 1933, a decree was issued suspending civil liberties. On March 24, the Reichstag adopted the so-called “Enabling Act.” Not only did it allow Hitler’s government to enact laws without the Reichstag’s approval, but those laws could “deviate from the constitution.” The Nazis also moved to control the legal system. By May 1933, all traditional bar associations, including the German Federation of Judges, were dissolved and replaced by the Nazi Party’s National Socialist German Jurists’ League. Beginning in August 1934, judges’ oaths said, “I will be loyal and obedient to the Fuehrer.” Likewise, in February 1936, the law required attorneys to swear to “remain loyal to the Fuehrer.” Hitler abhorred lawyers and judges and, to his anger, these actions didn’t exterminate judicial independence. After reading the Schlitt article, Hitler immediately called Franz Schlegelberger, the acting Minister of Justice, and demanded the sentence be revised. Two days later, Schlegelberger wrote Hitler that he agreed and filed an “extraordinary objection” with the Reich Supreme Court. The court quashed the sentence and, following a four-and-a-half-hour trial on March 31, sentenced Schlitt to death. The 29-year-old met the guillotine two days later. Hitler previously complained about certain judicial decisions. For example, in 1941, Hitler was agitated by newspaper articles reporting prison terms for a 19-year-old purse snatcher and a 74-year-old man who hoarded eggs. He told the Ministry of Justice that both should be sentenced to death. The court did not change the 19-year-old’s sentence but, the day after Hitler’s complaint, the egg hoarder was “handed over to the Gestapo for purpose of execution.” The Schlitt case was the final straw for Hitler. He was tired of his will not dictating judicial decisions. “I need men for judges who are deeply convinced that the law ought not to guarantee the interests of the individual against those of the State,” he told his inner circle on March 29, 1942. He called a special session of the Reichstag for Sunday, April 26. Hitler’s Reichstag speech was to review the war’s during the past winter. But he also used it to become Oberster Gerichtsherr (“Supreme Judge”). Near the end of the speech, Hitler said he expected to be able to remove any person who, in his view, “failed to do his duty.” He then specifically discussed Schlitt’s five-year sentence, although he didn’t mention Schlitt’s later received the death penalty. “From now on, I shall intervene in these cases and remove from office those judges who evidently do not understand the demand of the hour,” he announced.  Only official portrait of Hitler (Heinrich Knirr, 1937) By convening the Reichstag, he obtained a rubber stamp for his objective. The body unanimously voted that Hitler’s roles, including Supreme Judge, required he be able to act “without being bound by existing legal regulations.” Hitler also was entitled, “regardless of so-called well established rights,” to remove anyone from their position “without using prescribed procedures.” The Reichstag would not meet again before the war, and Hitler now had carte blanche over the judiciary. Reports came to the Ministry of Justice that judges were disturbed and alarmed by Hitler’s speech and the Reichstag’s action. Schlegelberger testified at the third Nuremberg War Crimes trial (known as “the Justice Case”) that he considered the address a “brutal” personal attack. He said that when reporting the judges’ concern, he also told Hitler he intended to protect any judge who followed the law. Hitler said his officials must carry out their duties without any criticism and suggested Schlegelberger resign, he testified. Hitler replaced Schlegelberger with Otto Georg Thierack on August 20, 1942. That same day he issued a decree authorizing Thierack to use “all necessary measures” to establish a Nazi justice system. Thierack was to follow Hitler’s directives and instructions. “In doing so, he can deviate from any existing law,” the decree concluded. Thierack quickly launched a method of bringing the judiciary into line. On September 7, he announced that all judges and prosecutors would get Richterbriefe (“Judges’ Letters”). The letters would illustrate how “National Socialist justice should be applied” by discussing various court decisions. The letters would be confidential and, he advised, “let every judge and public prosecutor take notice of them.” On October 1, 1942, the first letter advised that judges were the “direct assistant” to Hitler and should not “cling slavishly to the letter of the law.” As in ensuing letters, he championed Nazi doctrine and urged utter ruthlessness in sentencing. For example, in that first letter, he said three of five punishments for crimes committed during a blackout were too lenient; the other two were death sentences. In criticizing three cases against Jews, Thierack said Jews were “the enemy of the German people,” whose “racial aspect must be considered in meting out punishment.”. Although saying judges were to remain independent, Thierack wrote that “the State can and must lay down the general line of policy, which judges must follow.” Despite saying there was no intent to influence judges, a November 17, 1942, letter explicitly told judges that the letters should be “carefully locked up” as they were “subject to official secrecy.” In another letter that same day, Thierack directed that judges and prosecutors “suspected of political unreliability” not get the letters. Thierack thought the Richterbriefe successful enough that he started “Lawyers’ Letters” in 1944. They were to “inform lawyers of the aims of the administration of justice.” Thierack wasted no time doing so. The first letter told lawyers they no longer represented just the criminal defendant’s interests but had “enhanced” obligations to the community. Anyone not ready to “clearly and absolutely” accept that proposition or act accordingly should not be a criminal defense lawyer or appear in court, he said. In one case the letter discussed, Thierack said it was “outrageous” an attorney compared his Czech client’s speech praising National Socialism with Hitler’s views. Similarly, he opined an attorney’s argument that his client hadn’t insulted a woman whose son died recently in the war was saying there was no protection for the honor of those killed in action and their families. The Justice Case tribunal ruled the Nazis built their justice system on the principle that Hitler had absolute, incontestable power to enforce and adjudicate the law. “Hitler was not only the supreme legislator, he was also the supreme judge,” they wrote. They decried the judges’ and lawyers’ letters. They called the former “sinister,” aimed at “regimenting the judges and chief prosecutors and making them subservient” to Hitler’s aims. The former suggested attorneys not criticize the Nazi system of justice and “refrain from too much ardor in the defense of persons charged with political crimes.” Although initially a primary target in the case, Thierack apparently feared uncowed judges. Arrested after the war, he committed suicide in October 1946 while in British custody. Schlegelberger went trial but also avoided the death penalty. The Justice Case tribunal called him a “tragic character” who sold his intellect to Hitler. Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity on December 4, 1947, the 74-year-old received a life sentence. He was released in January 1951 due to ill health but lived until December 1970. Hitler’s asserted all-inclusive and unlimited power. It was intolerable that a judge might reach a different decision than him. We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963) (Originally published at History of Yesterday) Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubez
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The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance. Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Sky Is Not the Limit |
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The book quickly drew more fire than the “Pilate’s Court” pamphlet.