The Fraudulent Archko Volume

Would you like the views of Mary and Joseph about Jesus? An interview with the shepherds on the miracles at his birth? Reports of his last hours from Pilate, Herod Antipas, and Caiaphas? All these and more are promised to those who take the Archko Volume seriously. No scholar does; witness its quick dismissal by the apocrypha expert, M. R. James, who called it a “ridiculous and disgusting American book.” Credit belongs to an American authority, Edgar J. Goodspeed, for summarizing why such a verdict is required. Yet some Bible believers accept the Archko documents so that the book is often stocked in religious bookstores and periodically quoted to church audiences as containing “factual accounts” of those who came in contact with the Lord. Yet perversions of fact contaminate virtually every page of this book, so that anyone with basic knowledge of ancient history can multiply Goodspeed’s random samples of blunders that it contains. More significantly, the basic fallacy of each “ancient” discovery needs explanation, together with evidence beyond the survey level on how the Archko Volume was fabricated.