The Greek text of the Gospels disproves their authenticity. Their assigned authors, or two of them at least, were unlearned Jews. Their work was confined chiefly to the lower classes of their countrymen, in a land where Greek was almost unknown. The absurdity of this is shown by Mrs. Besant: "The only parallel for so curious a phenomenon as these Greek Gospels, written by ignorant Jews, would be if a Cornish fisherman and a low London attorney, both perfectly ignorant of German, wrote in German the sayings and doings of a Middlesex carpenter, and as their work was entirely confined to the lower classes of the people, who knew nothing of German, and they desired to place within their reach full knowledge of the carpenter's life, they circulated it among them in German only, and never wrote anything about him in English." The doctrines of the immaculate conception and of a material resurrection, so prominent in the Four Gospels, are proofs of their late origin. These doctrines are not taught in the older books of the New Testament, and were unknown to the Christians of the first century. The scholarly author of "Supernatural Religion," after a patient and exhaustive examination of every accessible document relating to the subject, writes as follows: "After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Jesus" (Vol. II., p. 248). Bishop Faustus, a heretical theologian of the fifth century, referring to this so so-called Gospel history, says: "It is allowed not to have been written by the Son himself nor by his Apostles, but long after by some unknown men who, lest they should be suspected of writing things they knew nothing of, gave to their books the names of the Apostles." Regarding these four books and their sequel, Acts, Rev. Dr. Hooykaas, the noted theologian and critic of Holland, voices the opinion of himself and his renowned associates, Dr. Kuenen and Dr. Oort, in the following words: "Our interest is more especially excited by the five historical books of the New Testament. If we might really suppose them to have been written by the men whose names they bear, we could never be thankful enough for such precious authorities.... But, alas! not one of these five books was really written by the person whose name it bears--though for the sake of brevity we shall still call the writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--and they are all of more recent date than their headings would lead us to suppose.... We cannot say that the Gospels and the book of Acts are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III., p. 24).