After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

[Leucius Charinus]

Imagine Socrates was a fictional person invented by Plato. No historical Socrates. Our later manuscripts include a play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes that pokes fun at Socrates. Another manuscript collection contains very different philosophical discussions from those of Plato, these by one claiming to be Xenophon. Is it likely that a later authority for some political agenda would have been responsible for forging the Aristophanes and Xenophon literature just to try to establish the fact that Socrates was historical? Surely there would be much easier ways to undertake such a program if there were such a program to establish the historicity of Socrates.

Would that analogy be a fair comparison with what you are proposing re Jesus and the time of Constantine?

Are you portraying Plato as one of the disciples and Aristophanes and Xenophon as a pair of "church fathers"? Or are Aristophanes and Xenophon (along with Plato) a pair of canonical authors ? I don't quite understand

[Leucius Charinus]

There is sufficient evidence IMO that, irrespective of any earlier provenance of the canonical Greek NT codices (such as Oxy papyri), there was an imperial circulation of these during the rules of Constantine and Constantius (325-360 CE).

What evidence is there for that?

* the Christian related papyri manuscripts at Oxy become statistically significant. These manuscripts are all from codices. People were copying NT Christian material onto codex material. If the people were doing it at Oxy then Constantine could also do it in his imperial libraries at the city of Constantine. He used the Chi Rho on his coins and so did those who followed.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Bib ... onstantine

* Some scholars conjecture that the earliest great codices (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus) could be exemplars of one of these 50 bibles, or a copy of one of these.

* We can reasonably know that Constantine legislated favorably on behalf of the Nicene church and the religious privileges of Christians. It is not unreasonable that part of Constantine's patronage of the Christian church involved circulating the "Good News".

* The NHL is dated to the mid 4th century and indicates the presence of a Christian book (codex) culture at that time. This is 25 years after the Nicene council.

* The earliest Greek NT codices and manuscripts contain the Eusebian canon tables as a preface to the four gospels. Eusebius claimed to work for the boss. Ergo ...


Do you think that Constantine did not order the production and circulation of any NT bible codices?

[Leucius Charinus]

Thanks for the data.

So what do you make of it?

NTC (NT canonical literature)

Any 4th century NTC invention hypotheses will need to be revised to include 3rd century Χρειστιανοι inscriptions. In the world of intellectual property an invention is identified as something which includes a novel step. So the data implies something related to Χρειστιανοι was already in the world before Constantine took control of the empire. The question is what was it.

Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia use nomina sacra? If not why not? Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia possess NTC literature? Did they possess NT Apocryphal (NTA) literature? Did they possess some Diatesseron-like "harmony" gospel such as that likely to have existed at Dura Europos earlier in the 3rd century? IDK the answers to these questions. Or indeed why we have no physical data at Rome, Alexandria or any of the cities of the empire until the 4th century.

Likewise wrt the manuscripts who was the χρησιανοι ("Chresian") mentioned in P.Oxy XLII 3035 explicitly dated 28 February 256 CE? Why do the manuscripts consistently have "Chrestians" in the early period? What role does the NHL Gospel of Philip have to play in its explicit juxtaposition of Christian and Chrestian along with two different nomina sacra (XS and XRS) for Christ? IDK.


NTA (NT apocryphal literature)

The theory on the provenance of the NTA is unaffected by these Χρειστιανοι inscriptions. Well over ten years ago I relegated the 4th century NTC invention idea to third place behind the exploration of two other ideas as outlined here:

Idea (1) - The Gnostic Gospels and Acts were authored 325-336 CE as a reaction to the Constantine Bible

Idea (2) - Evidence of systematic Christian identify theft suggests Arius may not have been a Christian, but in fact a Platonic theologian, and may be identified with the Gnostic Leucius Charinus (i.e. Arius authored at least some of the NTA)

Idea (3)- Constantine commissioned the fabrication of the New Testament and its history 312-324 CE

This re-ordering was accompanied by the note:

• It is important to note that idea (1) is to be examined first.
  Secondly, idea (2) is to be examined. Finally, idea (3) may be
  approached, and examined only after review of ideas (1) and (2).

http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/

The problem of course (as I see it) is that most researchers are only interested in determining the provenance and authorship of the NTC literature. Hence SA (this thread as an example) and others won't take any account of this note and just want answers to questions about Idea 3. It is difficult indeed almost impossible to disentangle exploration of the NTA (ideas 1 and 2) from that of the NTC (idea 3).

[Peter Kirby]

Thanks for the data.

So what do you make of it?

NTC (NT canonical literature)

Any 4th century NTC invention hypotheses will need to be revised to include 3rd century Χρειστιανοι inscriptions.

I appreciate this; it means at least we're making some kind of progress on these questions. That's what I was looking for.

In the world of intellectual property an invention is identified as something which includes a novel step. So the data implies something related to Χρειστιανοι was already in the world before Constantine took control of the empire. The question is what was it.

True, that is the question.

Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia use nomina sacra? If not why not? Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia possess NTC literature? Did they possess NT Apocryphal (NTA) literature? Did they possess some Diatesseron-like "harmony" gospel such as that likely to have existed at Dura Europos earlier in the 3rd century? IDK the answers to these questions.

In general, we don't know anything more about this family of Temenothyrai than what's on the inscription. Accordingly, any answers of "IDK" aren't necessarily very significant. However, that's not really how historians work either. The goal of a historian is to gather together relevant data and create an explanation of it. This doesn't mean engaging in a sort of logical empiricism where that which is not explicitly proven, does not enter into that explanation. For example, we may have some limited data for a Greek cult: some incriptions dedicated to it, some magical text papyri invoking it, some literary sources a century later describing it. We could atomize all this data and declare that we know nothing about the cult and that no one piece of information can be related to another. I would question why someone would consider that the best approach.

Or indeed why we have no physical data at Rome, Alexandria or any of the cities of the empire until the 4th century.

This kind of statement is completely inconsistent with the reality of material culture and interpreting it as historical data. As a rough estimate, based on my own reading, maybe 1 or 2 inscriptions in 100 have any explicit indication of date. The vast majority of inscriptions don't have an explicit indication of date. Even less papyri have an explicit indication of date. This question either resolves into the true answer -- the "why" is that it is a consequence of a blinkered methodology that implicitly assigns data later if the date is not certain -- or it leads down a rabbit hole when given the false answer that we somehow know that there is no such extant artifact that was produced before the 4th century.

Other than the overwhelming majority of artifacts having no explicit indication of date, at least a majority of inscriptions seem to have no explicit indication of which religious tradition it belongs to, and almost all art can be interpreted variously if we push hard enough. There are very many occasions where it's impossible to be completely sure of a "Christian" or non-"Christian" authorship. This is especially true once we have atomized our understanding of what "Christian" is, to the point that we would need some explicit term like the word "Christian" in a particular spelling to confirm it. While this does succeed in showing some kind of reasonable doubt about many artifacts and the religious beliefs that produced them, it's unsound to make a pronouncement like the one above on the basis of it.

Last but not least, I believe the typical hypothesis is that Christians were a small minority in the third century, a very small minority in the second century, and with at most limited existence in the first century. Another typical hypothesis is that they were, for large stretches of time, an illicit group. I have also provided some sources according to which valuables and texts were seized to be destroyed in the early fourth century. Every hypothesis has the imperial favor of Constantine greatly expanding their influence, allowing the flourishing of their material and literary culture. It's not logical to compare (and complain) that which is before the 4th century to that which is after.

If we're looking for a more appropriate comparison, it would be to look at some other cult - say, that of Mithras - and to compare the evidence for it to that of the pre-4th century Christ (or Chrest) cult. [With a caveat: no comparison is perfect. For example I think I recall that the Mithras cult sometimes was in favor with significant Roman leaders during this time period. -PK]

Likewise wrt the manuscripts who was the χρησιανοι ("Chresian") mentioned in P.Oxy XLII 3035 explicitly dated 28 February 256 CE? Why do the manuscripts consistently have "Chrestians" in the early period?

We should start by investigating the facts of the matter. I don't believe you've established them. Then we should develop explanatory hypotheses.

Fortunately, if I do get to my Part B (225-275), we will have some more data with which to work that is from an earlier time period.

What role does the NHL Gospel of Philip have to play in its explicit juxtaposition of Christian and Chrestian along with two different nomina sacra (XS and XRS) for Christ?

Both are questions we can ask.

NTA (NT apocryphal literature)

The theory on the provenance of the NTA is unaffected by these Χρειστιανοι inscriptions. Well over ten years ago I relegated the 4th century NTC invention idea to third place behind the exploration of two other ideas as outlined here:

This is kindly acknowledged. I figure we have to start somewhere.

Idea (1) - The Gnostic Gospels and Acts were authored 325-336 CE as a reaction to the Constantine Bible

It has to be allowed that most of the texts you're referencing have no explicit mention of authorship or date. So, for many of these texts, it's at least possible (if not probable) that they were produced in the timeframe of the mid 4th century. Therefore, at least some of these hypotheses of date, when regarding individual texts, will have a certain kind of respectability due to the fact that they can't be disproven.

I don't think your claim of a "Constantine Bible" in the year 325 is sound. Most evidence points a little later.

Idea (2) - Evidence of systematic Christian identify theft suggests Arius may not have been a Christian, but in fact a Platonic theologian, and may be identified with the Gnostic Leucius Charinus (i.e. Arius authored at least some of the NTA)

Unlike parts of idea (1), this will never really be respectable in any way. It will never be in the history books. This isn't a conspiracy. Its rejection is not at all a product of any kind of traditionalist, conventional, or Christian bias. It's not even in the slightest bit unfair. It's just a particularly poor idea that is abundantly contra-indicated by the information that we have available.

Idea (3)- Constantine commissioned the fabrication of the New Testament and its history 312-324 CE

This re-ordering was accompanied by the note:

• It is important to note that idea (1) is to be examined first.
  Secondly, idea (2) is to be examined. Finally, idea (3) may be
  approached, and examined only after review of ideas (1) and (2).

http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/

The problem of course (as I see it) is that most researchers are only interested in determining the provenance and authorship of the NTC literature. Hence SA (this thread as an example) and others won't take any account of this note and just want answers to questions about Idea 3. It is difficult indeed almost impossible to disentangle exploration of the NTA (ideas 1 and 2) from that of the NTC (idea 3).

I think there are bigger problems. I'd say that a most significant problem with this approach to (1) is that you can't address it first, even if you wanted to. Certainly you could try to address it before (2) or (3), but nobody is going to follow you on (2) or (3) anyway, so that's not what I mean by not being able to address it first. What I mean is that historical investigation, especially when we're talking about the difficult topic of assigning provenance and dating to texts and artifacts, generally goes from the most specifically dated and provenanced to the least.

Since the gospels, acts, dialogues, and treatises that you're mentioning generally have little to no explicit indication of genuine authorship or date, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to start with them. We would want to start with other things that are dated more specifically and try to build some context for the time period that we're talking about. Only then would we try to piece together where other texts and artifacts fit within that kind of chronology.

So you may be more interested in exploring these texts and your hypothesis about when they were written, but you're not going to make any headway if you start there. You've bitten off for yourself a very ambitious project that you would need to undertake first. That project is to work your way through all the other literature of the ante-Nicene period, especially that with an author attached, and place them historically.

You would need to be able to do more than express your personal doubts about them, or ask others to show something about them, or mention the dates of their manuscripts, or make idiosyncratic remarks on other texts such as pseudo-Seneca or pseudo-Isidore, or fulminate against a system of oppression that produced them and/or the unscientific nature of pretty much everyone else involved in the disciplines of history and scholarship. You would need to shoulder a certain level of burden of proof to rebut the presumption that other historians and scholars have some idea of what they're doing here. You would need to show that there's something significant that everybody else is missing (and to repeat, the date of the manuscripts isn't, that's just how it is) about these texts, something that shows that they were most likely produced at a later date.

So you're missing your idea (0) that you can go through all these other texts and show that they were most likely produced in the fourth century or later, referring to the texts that have more explicit indications of authorship and date that are regarded as ante-Nicene by contemporary academics. For each of these texts, the work required is significant. Individually and for each of these authors, at the very least (the very least), I would expect the equivalent of a minimum 30-50 page journal article establishing a new thesis regarding them. There's no alternative here, no shortcut. This is just the reality of taking up a quixotic approach to history. There are many windmills to be tilted against.

[neilgodfrey]

Imagine Socrates was a fictional person invented by Plato. No historical Socrates. Our later manuscripts include a play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes that pokes fun at Socrates. Another manuscript collection contains very different philosophical discussions from those of Plato, these by one claiming to be Xenophon. Is it likely that a later authority for some political agenda would have been responsible for forging the Aristophanes and Xenophon literature just to try to establish the fact that Socrates was historical? Surely there would be much easier ways to undertake such a program if there were such a program to establish the historicity of Socrates.

Would that analogy be a fair comparison with what you are proposing re Jesus and the time of Constantine?

Are you portraying Plato as one of the disciples and Aristophanes and Xenophon as a pair of "church fathers"? Or are Aristophanes and Xenophon (along with Plato) a pair of canonical authors ? I don't quite understand

Does it make a great difference? If so, I may be misunderstanding the import of your argument.

Let's imagine Aristotle as a church father referring back to an earlier Plato/Socrates in the "tradition"; Aristophanes as a critic, maybe a Josephus figure; and Xenophon as a supposed contemporary, a la Paul.

[Ulan]

Idea (2) - Evidence of systematic Christian identify theft suggests Arius may not have been a Christian, but in fact a Platonic theologian, and may be identified with the Gnostic Leucius Charinus (i.e. Arius authored at least some of the NTA)

If I look at suggestions like this, I am a bit surprised regarding that black&white thinking that lurks behind such suggestions. If we consider that early Christianity depended mostly on converts to grow (and, I guess, lost a good number of people to "apostasy"), those converts came from somewhere (or ended up somewhere else). We usually slap the term "Pagan" on this, but that includes Platonic philosophers just fine. I guess everyone knows that one of the most influential Western church fathers had been a Manichaean for about a decade, before he switched religions (and then there are still scholars questioning whether Christianity had any contact with Eastern philosophical ideas). Or look at the theory behind the Trinity: those Christian theologians might have had to kick and bend Platonic philosophy a bit, but before I had an idea of Platonic philosophy, I didn't understand the reasoning behind what looked to me like an extremely contorted argument about the nature of the divine to make. Those groups may have had some rather vicious arguments against each other, but those arguments had, sometimes subtle, sometimes less so, repercussions on their own way of thinking.

[Secret Alias]

It's like labeling 1970 celebrities as "gay" or "straight" as if there was an "either/or" when you're high as the sky on drugs at Studio 54.

[Leucius Charinus]

Thanks for the data.

So what do you make of it?

NTC (NT canonical literature)

Any 4th century NTC invention hypotheses will need to be revised to include 3rd century Χρειστιανοι inscriptions.

I appreciate this; it means at least we're making some kind of progress on these questions. That's what I was looking for.

In the world of intellectual property an invention is identified as something which includes a novel step. So the data implies something related to Χρειστιανοι was already in the world before Constantine took control of the empire. The question is what was it.

True, that is the question.

Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia use nomina sacra? If not why not? Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia possess NTC literature? Did they possess NT Apocryphal (NTA) literature? Did they possess some Diatesseron-like "harmony" gospel such as that likely to have existed at Dura Europos earlier in the 3rd century? IDK the answers to these questions.

In general, we don't know anything more about this family of Temenothyrai than what's on the inscription. Accordingly, any answers of "IDK" aren't necessarily very significant. However, that's not really how historians work either. The goal of a historian is to gather together relevant data and create an explanation of it. This doesn't mean engaging in a sort of logical empiricism where that which is not explicitly proven, does not enter into that explanation. For example, we may have some limited data for a Greek cult: some incriptions dedicated to it, some magical text papyri invoking it, some literary sources a century later describing it. We could atomize all this data and declare that we know nothing about the cult and that no one piece of information can be related to another. I would question why someone would consider that the best approach.

Or indeed why we have no physical data at Rome, Alexandria or any of the cities of the empire until the 4th century.

This kind of statement is completely inconsistent with the reality of material culture and interpreting it as historical data. As a rough estimate, based on my own reading, maybe 1 or 2 inscriptions in 100 have any explicit indication of date. The vast majority of inscriptions don't have an explicit indication of date. Even less papyri have an explicit indication of date. This question either resolves into the true answer -- the "why" is that it is a consequence of a blinkered methodology that implicitly assigns data later if the date is not certain -- or it leads down a rabbit hole when given the false answer that we somehow know that there is no such extant artifact that was produced before the 4th century.

Other than the overwhelming majority of artifacts having no explicit indication of date, at least a majority of inscriptions seem to have no explicit indication of which religious tradition it belongs to, and almost all art can be interpreted variously if we push hard enough. There are very many occasions where it's impossible to be completely sure of a "Christian" or non-"Christian" authorship. This is especially true once we have atomized our understanding of what "Christian" is, to the point that we would need some explicit term like the word "Christian" in a particular spelling to confirm it. While this does succeed in showing some kind of reasonable doubt about many artifacts and the religious beliefs that produced them, it's unsound to make a pronouncement like the one above on the basis of it.

Last but not least, I believe the typical hypothesis is that Christians were a small minority in the third century, a very small minority in the second century, and with at most limited existence in the first century. Another typical hypothesis is that they were, for large stretches of time, an illicit group. I have also provided some sources according to which valuables and texts were seized to be destroyed in the early fourth century. Every hypothesis has the imperial favor of Constantine greatly expanding their influence, allowing the flourishing of their material and literary culture. It's not logical to compare (and complain) that which is before the 4th century to that which is after.

If we're looking for a more appropriate comparison, it would be to look at some other cult - say, that of Mithras - and to compare the evidence for it to that of the pre-4th century Christ (or Chrest) cult.

Likewise wrt the manuscripts who was the χρησιανοι ("Chresian") mentioned in P.Oxy XLII 3035 explicitly dated 28 February 256 CE? Why do the manuscripts consistently have "Chrestians" in the early period?

We should start by investigating the facts of the matter. I don't believe you've established them. Then we should develop explanatory hypotheses.

Fortunately, if I do get to my Part B (225-275), we will have some more data with which to work that is from an earlier time period.

What role does the NHL Gospel of Philip have to play in its explicit juxtaposition of Christian and Chrestian along with two different nomina sacra (XS and XRS) for Christ?

Both are questions we can ask.

NTA (NT apocryphal literature)

The theory on the provenance of the NTA is unaffected by these Χρειστιανοι inscriptions. Well over ten years ago I relegated the 4th century NTC invention idea to third place behind the exploration of two other ideas as outlined here:

This is kindly acknowledged. I figure we have to start somewhere.

Idea (1) - The Gnostic Gospels and Acts were authored 325-336 CE as a reaction to the Constantine Bible

It has to be allowed that most of the texts you're referencing have no explicit mention of authorship or date. So, for many of these texts, it's at least possible (if not probable) that they were produced in the timeframe of the mid 4th century. Therefore, at least some of these hypotheses of date, when regarding individual texts, will have a certain kind of respectability due to the fact that they can't be disproven.

I don't think your claim of a "Constantine Bible" in the year 325 is sound. Most evidence points a little later.

Idea (2) - Evidence of systematic Christian identify theft suggests Arius may not have been a Christian, but in fact a Platonic theologian, and may be identified with the Gnostic Leucius Charinus (i.e. Arius authored at least some of the NTA)

Unlike parts of idea (1), this will never really be respectable in any way. It will never be in the history books. This isn't a conspiracy. Its rejection is not at all a product of any kind of traditionalist, conventional, or Christian bias. It's not even in the slightest bit unfair. It's just a particularly poor idea that is abundantly contra-indicated by the information that we have available.

Idea (3)- Constantine commissioned the fabrication of the New Testament and its history 312-324 CE

This re-ordering was accompanied by the note:

• It is important to note that idea (1) is to be examined first.
  Secondly, idea (2) is to be examined. Finally, idea (3) may be
  approached, and examined only after review of ideas (1) and (2).

http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/

The problem of course (as I see it) is that most researchers are only interested in determining the provenance and authorship of the NTC literature. Hence SA (this thread as an example) and others won't take any account of this note and just want answers to questions about Idea 3. It is difficult indeed almost impossible to disentangle exploration of the NTA (ideas 1 and 2) from that of the NTC (idea 3).

I think there are bigger problems. I'd say that a most significant problem with this approach to (1) is that you can't address it first, even if you wanted to. Certainly you could try to address it before (2) or (3), but nobody is going to follow you on (2) or (3) anyway, so that's not what I mean by not being able to address it first. What I mean is that historical investigation, especially when we're talking about the difficult topic of assigning provenance and dating to texts and artifacts, generally goes from the most specifically dated and provenanced to the least.

Since the gospels, acts, dialogues, and treatises that you're mentioning generally have little to no explicit indication of genuine authorship or date, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to start with them. We would want to start with other things that are dated more specifically and try to build some context for the time period that we're talking about. Only then would we try to piece together where other texts and artifacts fit within that kind of chronology.

So you may be more interested in exploring these texts and your hypothesis about when they were written, but you're not going to make any headway if you start there. You've bitten off for yourself a very ambitious project that you would need to undertake first. That project is to work your way through all the other literature of the ante-Nicene period, especially that with an author attached, and place them historically.

You would need to be able to do more than express your personal doubts about them, or ask others to show something about them, or mention the dates of their manuscripts, or make idiosyncratic remarks on other texts such as pseudo-Seneca or pseudo-Isidore, or fulminate against a system of oppression that produced them and/or the unscientific nature of pretty much everyone else involved in the disciplines of history and scholarship. You would need to shoulder a certain level of burden of proof to rebut the presumption that other historians and scholars have some idea of what they're doing here. You would need to show that there's something significant that everybody else is missing (and to repeat, the date of the manuscripts isn't, that's just how it is) about these texts, something that shows that they were most likely produced at a later date.

So you're missing your idea (0) that you can go through all these other texts and show that they were most likely produced in the fourth century or later, referring to the texts that have more explicit indications of authorship and date that are regarded as ante-Nicene by contemporary academics. For each of these texts, the work required is significant. Individually and for each of these authors, at the very least (the very least), I would expect the equivalent of a minimum 30-50 page journal article establishing a new thesis regarding them. There's no alternative here, no shortcut. This is just the reality of taking up a quixotic approach to history. There are many windmills to be tilted against.

Appreciate the thoughtful response PK and the suggestions offered especially Idea (0) which I agree is essential. Will be away for a few weeks and will respond in detail later. You have provided plenty of interesting stuff to think about. Thanks once again.

[Peter Kirby]

Appreciate the thoughtful response PK and the suggestions offered especially Idea (0) which I agree is essential. Will be away for a few weeks and will respond in detail later. You have provided plenty of interesting stuff to think about. Thanks once again.

Thank you for the kind words. Take it easy!

[Leucius Charinus]

Imagine Socrates was a fictional person invented by Plato. No historical Socrates. Our later manuscripts include a play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes that pokes fun at Socrates. Another manuscript collection contains very different philosophical discussions from those of Plato, these by one claiming to be Xenophon. Is it likely that a later authority for some political agenda would have been responsible for forging the Aristophanes and Xenophon literature just to try to establish the fact that Socrates was historical? Surely there would be much easier ways to undertake such a program if there were such a program to establish the historicity of Socrates.

Would that analogy be a fair comparison with what you are proposing re Jesus and the time of Constantine?

Are you portraying Plato as one of the disciples and Aristophanes and Xenophon as a pair of "church fathers"? Or are Aristophanes and Xenophon (along with Plato) a pair of canonical authors ? I don't quite understand

Does it make a great difference? If so, I may be misunderstanding the import of your argument.

Let's imagine Aristotle as a church father referring back to an earlier Plato/Socrates in the "tradition"; Aristophanes as a critic, maybe a Josephus figure; and Xenophon as a supposed contemporary, a la Paul.

So the comparison it to be between two lineages?
And whether we can rule out forgery of either lineage?

(1) Socrates, as found in the canonical books of Plato preserved and annotated by the apostolic succession of the ecclesia of the Platonists.

(2) Jesus, as found in the canonical books of Paul and the Gospels which were preserved and annotated by the apostolic succession of the ecclesia of the Christians.

There is a big difference between these lineages in terms of the political power they wielded at various epochs in antiquity. The import is that power corrupts and thus substantially increases the risk of fraud / forgery. This has always been the case. Anyway appreciate the arm chair experiment. Thanks.