Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining and illuminating, BUT ...
Review: REVISED RATING: 3 stars
The author was a judge and he dissects the Bible, the history and the claims of Christianity with a sharp legal mind and an infectious sense of humour.
He deals with pagan frauds and Christian precedents, Hebrew forgeries, scripture forgeries, the Church Fathers, the Gospel forgeries, the church forgery mill and ends with the chapter: The `Triumph' of Christianity in which he takes stock of what he considers the disastrous influence of the faith on Western culture and the bad fruits of Christianity, concluding with an appeal to reason.
This is a brilliant antidote to superstition and religious brainwashing, and an appeal to the liberating light of reason. I like Wheless' clear and amusing style; the chapter on the early Church Fathers is especially funny, as he demolishes their fatuous fable-mongering and exposes them for the simple-minded clowns they were. Not even Saint Augustine escapes his probing wit, as he mercilessly exposes the "great doctor's" foolishness.
It's rare that such important food for thought is offered in such an engaging style. There's a guaranteed laugh on almost every page, so the book provides reading pleasure and also serves as a handy reference work.
But that is not the full story. In the introduction, Wheless heaps effusive praise on the Soviet Union of his day (1930s). Well, the archives have been opened and the full extent of the slaughter is known. Please consult The Harvest Of Sorrow and The Great Terror by Robert Conquest.
One of the problems with reason as the only moral guide is that people are incapable of morally functioning on the basis of reason alone. Factors like our passions, experiences, values, beliefs and emotions all influence the manner in which even the most rational individual determines what is moral and whether to act on it.
Wheless makes the mistake of assuming that people are basically good. One has to believe that people are basically good in order to believe that human reason will necessarily always lead to moral conclusions. This in itself is an irrational belief.
Reason is merely an amoral tool that can argue for evil or for good. If one wishes to do good, reason is immensely helpful; if one wants to do evil, reason is equally helpful. Reason alone cannot determine which you choose. Sometimes it is rational to do wrong and sometimes it is rational to do what is right.
There is great merit in exposing and ridiculing false beliefs and contradictions in holy books, but it is insane to throw the infant out with the holy water. No amount of Reason Worshippers will ever destroy the good essence of our Judeo-Christian tradition which has ultimately made the West the most tolerant and prosperous civilization in history.
Rating:
Summary: Wheless exposes the Christian forgery mill.
Review: This book is the sequel to Joseph Wheless' work entitled, Is It God's Word? - An Exposition of the Fables of Mythology of the Bible and the Fallacies of Mythology. It is the perfect companion to that previous volume. In Forgery in Christianity he describes what he calls the 'Christian forgery mill'. That mill produced dozens of gospels, apocalypses, epistles, and various other writings falsely attributed to disciples of Jesus and others among his contemporaries. There was even a forged document attributed to Pilate in which he confesses before Tiberius that Jesus was Lord and saviour. He sets this forgery mill into its historical context as being an extension of the Jewish apocalyptic literature tradition. He strengthens his argument by utilizing the commentaries of various orthodox sources and does so with great skill, showing that the force of biblical criticism leaves the rational critic with little option but to regard the New Testament (gospels and epistles) as a mass of forgery. Of particular interest to many will be his analysis of certain gospel passages which have had a tremendous political impact on western civilization, such as the keys of the kingdom passage found in 'Matthew'.----Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: On the Biblical Usages of the Term
Review: This is not a review of this book, per say, (so ignore the 1 star rating) but just a quick response to Geoff Puterbaugh's review comment on the Biblical usages of the term "elohim" :-
" 'Elohim' does NOT always mean "gods" (plural); the meaning of the term is to be determined by grammatical and contextual clues. GRAMMAR is IMPORTANT! Grammar is to language what your graphical internet browser is to the websites on the internet - it is the organizing vehicle that gives meaning to the data -bits of information; without it you'd have to create your own method of obtaining and understanding that information - it would be totally SELF STYLED. Grammar dictates the formation of words, the relationship of words to each other, and the meaning of those words with respect to that arrangement. Without attention to the rules of grammar that have governed the languages of ancient texts, you can make the texts say ANYTHING; grammar is a control against total subjectivity. Sitchin ignores grammar in his work on elohim in this passage (and others). The PDF files below illustrate (from the Hebrew) that "elohim" often refers to a "god" or "God" (proper name). Besides this evidence from the Hebrew Bible, I have also posted examples from ancient Mesopotamian texts (Akkadian) and the famous El-Amarna texts (also Akkadian) where the plural word for "gods" ('ilanu) refers to a single person or god - just as in the case of Hebrew elohim."
(...)
My point is simple: Any critique of the Biblical usages of the term 'elohim' that fails to take into account the 'grammatical' rules (or principles) of interpretation, (as indicated above by Michael S. Heiser, Ph.D.,) must ultimately be deemed as faulty.
Rating:
Summary: HILARIOUS & ENLIGHTENING
Review: This remains one of my favorite books of all time. The author was a judge and he dissects the Bible, the history and the claims of Christianity with a sharp legal mind and an infectious sense of humour. He deals with pagan frauds and Christian precedents, Hebrew forgeries, scripture forgeries, the Church Fathers, the Gospel forgeries, the church forgery mill and ends with the chapter: The 'Triumph' of Christianity in which he takes stock of the disastrous influence of the faith on Western culture and the sad fruits of Christianity, concluding with an appeal to reason. This is a brilliant antidote to superstition and religious brainwashing, and a wonderful confirmation of the liberating light of reason. I love Wheless' clear and amusing style; the chapter on the early Church Fathers is especially funny, as he demolishes their fatuous fable-mongering and exposes them for the simple-minded clowns they were. Not even Saint Augustine escapes his probing wit, as he mercilessly exposes the "great doctor's" foolishness. It's rare that such important food for thought is offered in such an engaging style. There's a guaranteed laugh on almost every page. I highly recommend this book for reading pleasure and as an invaluable reference work.
Rating:
Summary: This Forgery is itself a Forgery
Review: We have seen Wheless quoted (by the likes of Dennis McKinsey, Acharya S, and many others) as though his word were law; and well is that approporiate, since Wheless was by profession a judge and a lawyer...not that this means a lick; we have seen that legal expertise is no guarantee of being able to write a book on the Bible competently, as indeed the works of Haim Cohn demonstrate. Nor is it evidence necessarily of an ability to think clearly; men and women of law are supposed to be impartial weighers and sifters of evidence, but the cat is out of Wheless' bag from the get-go: No sooner do his books Is It God's Word? and Forgery in Christianity begin than we are told, outright, of "religious neurosis" and "quackeries" among the priesthood; of religion as purely a matter of geographic preference ("If you lived in India, you would be a Hindu" -- maybe, but what has that to do with the truth of Hinduism thereof? Can we say, "genetic fallacy"?); of countless conspiracies to cover up the truth, conspiracies so detailed and complex that there remains no evidence of them at all; of uncritically listed "parallels" in pagan religions and an anachronistic idea that something cannot be a "revelation" unless it is "original", otherwise it is a plagiarism (! - so God cannot reveal that a forgotten truth is correct?); Mithraism as "pre-Christian Christianity" (Mithraic scholars today will have laughing fits!). Is this the mother and father of all skeptical books? No, just a couple of squeaky wheels in need of greasing. Wheless wishes to affirm, respectively, in his two books, that a) the Bible is a sham; b) Christian history is rife with forgery, beginning with the documents of the Bible (our main avenue of concern here), and on through various apocryphal works credited to apostolic writers, and with a tendency in the works of the Church Fathers to tell lies. Yes, it is a vast, and long, conspiracy we are presented with here; we will not concern ourselves at all with the last; on the second, I might ask whether Wheless considered that a) many of these works he cites, like the forlorn Gospel of Thomas, were written by heretics rather than by the orthodox; b) whether these "forgeries" in the names of Apsotles were actually intended to be recognized as genuine by their authors, or were just meant to serve as edifying fiction; it is hardly the fault of Marjorie Holmes if some fool picks up Two from Galilee and assumes it to be intended as a certified historical account. In terms of the Bible itself, Wheless offers little in the second book, and a great deal in the first book, but little else other than two general tactics: 1) Bigoted generaliztions; i.e., Hebrew was a language without vowels, spaces between words, or punctuation; therefore it is impossible to be sure we are reading it correctly (read: although he supposedly knew Hebrew and Greek, this means no more than that Wheless could not be sure that he was reading it correctly; the idea of consulting an actual expert in these languages was beyond him); 2) Accepting as law the most far-fetched theses of the liberal Christian scholarship of his day, without any consideration of opposing points of view or evidence. The overwhelming majority of these views taken as law, incidentally, come from two sources, both of them religious encyclopedias; if you're expecting in-depth scholarship from Wheless, or critical-historical analysis, forget it; in fact, he reacts to one of the few in-depth analyses found in those sources, on the subject of the authenticity of Josephus' Testimonium Flavinium, by saying, "We cannot follow the lengthy and labored arguments; the simple reading of the section, in its bizarre context, and a moment's reflection, condemn it as a pious Christian forgery." Yep, that's right, Martha, we ain't got time to do more than a moment's reflection on this subject; you just ignore them thar long-winded scholars and their argyements. If you want to put your trust in this man who wouldn't even take the time (and apparently didn't even have the intelligence) to carefully sift the most detailed and relevant data, then frankly, you will have earned your eternal reward and I have no sympathy for you. Between the two books we find all of the same old arguments refuted here on this page, and by others in our loose association of Net apologists: for example, the usual peculiar exegesis that skeptics regularly offer of Romans 3:7 (and I still have not had any of them write me to explain how they interpret this verse); the usual series of uncritically-accepted liberal/skeptical literary-composition theses (JEDP, Q/Markan priority); the old quote of Pope Leo X from the 16th century, which was alse used by Paige Turner and many others (Skeptics of the conspiratorial bent, I ask again: how in blazes could an offhand comment from this late date overturn 1500 years of history, scholarship, and evidence?!? Are your heads screwed on straight?); the same use of Jer. 8:8 that Farrell Till made (Where Jerry refers to the "lying pen of the scribes"; now all Wheless needs to do is prove that one of them made it into the canon!) -- I cannot find an argument used by Wheless that is either new to me or else so obviously afflicted by bigotry that a believer of even average maturity could not see through it; of course anyone who thinks otherwise is welcome to write me and ask. To engage in detailed refutation would be a waste of time and more than this cretin deserves. While Wheless is undoubtedly the darling of a number of woolly-thinking skeptics (as is shown by the number who slavishly follow his arguments and imitate his style), to the educated Christian, he is a tiresome bore enamored of broad generalization and blather; his greatest asset is an unerring ability to say in 400 words what could just as readily and [in]correctly be said with 50. Don't be impressed by Wheless' extensive verbiage and rhetoric; behind the curtain stands only another angry critic whose work doesn't deserve the time of day.
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