It might perhaps be argued, on the biographical view, that the Roman soldiers, who are held to have been Asiatics, chose to improvise a version of a sacrificial rite which was unknown to the Jesuists, and that the latter simply reported the episode without understanding it, interpreting it from their prophets in their own way. But if the record be historical it is incredible that in a cult which is claimed to have made many adherents throughout the Roman Empire in east and west in a generation or two, it should not quickly have become known that the procedure of the Crucifixion was a copy of popular eastern and western rites of human sacrifice. If there had taken place what the hypothesis suggests, there was a purposive suppression. That is to say, the credibility of the narrative is at this point vitally impeached by a supporter of the biographical theory, which expressly rests on the narrative as regards non-miraculous data. And while on the one hand it is in effect charged with the gravest suppressio veri, on the other it is charged, equally in the name of the biographical view, with something more than suggestio falsi, with absolute fiction. M. Loisy does not merely dismiss the Barabbas story as unhistorical, offering no explanation of its strange presence: he comes critically to the conclusion that Jesus on the cross uttered no word, whether of despair, entreaty, or resignation. We need not ask what kind of credit M. Loisy can ask for a record which he thus so gravely discredits. The scientific question is, Upon what grounds can he demur to the extension of a myth-theory to which he thus contributes? If the record admittedly invented utterances for the Teacher on the cross, why should not the whole be an invention? In particular, why should not the trial before Pilate and the inscription on the cross be inventions?