William Dennes Mahan (July 27, 1824 - October 19, 1906) was an American Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Boonville, Missouri and author of a book, commonly known as The Archko Volume (1884), purported to be a translation of a Jewish, Roman, and other contemporary documents about the trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The volume was initially received by some as true, but soon after its publication, its authenticity was questioned. The book has been definitively discredited as a forgery and fraud.The early versions of this forgery are available online, and even a cursory reading shows an ignorance of Tannaic writing style and basic Judaism. For example, the forgery quotes Caiaphas the High Priest about Jesus: "He looked upon the whole of the Levitical institutions, temples, sacrifices, and priesthood included, as no longer necessary and not worth the life of the animal. This was certainly the opinion of the Hillelites. Jesus, it seems, found in this Hillelite school a party furnished to hand, ready to take up with his heresy."
In 1884 Mahan published the first version of the Archko Volume, entitled The Archaeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews, Taken from the Ancient Parchments and Scrolls at Constantinople and the Vatican at Rome, Being the Record Made by the Enemies of Jesus of Nazareth in His Day: The Most Interesting History Ever Read by Man. This included an expanded version of "Pilate's Court" plus a series of other texts that he claimed to have obtained himself in a visit to Rome and Constantinople and translated with the aid of Dr. M. McIntosh of Scotland and Dr. Twyman of England, also otherwise unheard of. These texts include interviews with the shepherds, Gamaliel's interview with Joseph and Mary, Caiaphas's reports to the Sanhedrin, Eli's story of the Magi, Herod Antipater's defense before the Senate for the slaughter of the innocents, and Herod Antipas's defense before the Senate—all with the claim that they were copied from ancient manuscripts and translated into English.
The texts are otherwise unknown to scholarship, and the volume contains various inconsistencies.
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Among the first to call Mahan's work into question was Rev. Dr. James A. Quarles, of Lexington, Missouri. He was soon followed by William E. Curtis, a correspondent for the Chicago Record-Herald. In Rome, Curtis investigated Mahan's claims and declared the manuscript spurious and the alleged translation a forgery.
Mahan denied all the charges against him and asserted the truth of he had written. He was summoned before church authorities in September 1885 on charges of falsehood and plagiarism, and a church trial was held. The New Lebanon Presbytery, of which he was a member, tried the case at length.
Evidence was introduced to show that Mahan had never been to Rome, but that he had spent the time he was absent from Boonville on a farm in Illinois. The editor of the Boonville Advertiser showed that the letters that paper had printed were postmarked from a small town in Illinois. Mahan rebutted the evidence by saying that they had been sent there to be re-mailed. Additional evidence that Mahan had not traveled to Rome included a letter from Father Ehrie, prefect of the Vatican Library. Ehrie stated that Mahan was entirely unknown there and that no person connected with the library had ever seen or head of the "Acta Pilati" or any such manuscript.
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The verdict of the presbytery was nearly unanimous. He was convicted and suspended from the ministry for one year.
Hillel a heretic?
In a later chapter Hillel the Third is said to have approved Peter's teachings, first-hand of course.
The book also purportedly has a conversation between Gamaliel with Jesus' contemporaries when the latter would have been 26, with the Tannaic giant concluding that there is no doubt that Jesus is the Messiah.
It is quite obvious that the entire work is meant to fulfill wishful thinking for contemporaneous accounts of Jesus' life that would correspond with the New Testament stories.
Even though the work was exposed as a forgery immediately after publication, it continues to be republished to this very day. A version available on Amazon from 1998 is getting reviews today, and there was another reprinting in 2012.