While "The Age of Reason" is thus, in one aspect, the product of its time, the renewal of an old siege--begun far back indeed as Celsus,--its intellectual originality is none the less remarkable. Paine is more complete master of the comparative method than Tindal in his "Christianity as old as the Creation." In his studies of "Christian Mythology" (his phrase), one is surprised by anticipations of Baur and Strauss. These are all the more striking by reason of his homely illustrations. Thus, in discussing the liabilities of ancient manuscripts to manipulation, he mentions in his second Part that in the first, printed less than two years before, there was already a sentence he never wrote; and contrasts this with the book of nature wherein no blade of grass can be imitated or altered.* He distinguishes the historical Jesus from the mythical Christ with nicety, though none had previously done this. He is more discriminating than the early deists in his explanations of the scriptural marvels which he discredits. There was not the invariable alternative of imposture with which the orthodoxy of his time had been accustomed to deal. He does indeed suspect Moses with his rod of conjuring, and thinks no better of those who pretended knowledge of future events; but the incredible narratives are traditions, fables, and occasionally "downright lies." * The sentence imported into Paine's Part First is: "The book of Luke was carried by one voice only." I find the words added as a footnote in the Philadelphia edition, 1794, p. 33. While Paine in Paris was utilizing the ascent of the footnote to his text, Dr. Priestley in Pennsylvania was using it to show Paine's untrustworthiness. ("Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 73.) But it would appear, though neither discovered it, that Paine's critic was the real offender. In quoting the page, before answering it, Priestley incorporated in the text the footnote of an American editor. Priestley could not of course imagine such editorial folly, but all the same the reader may here see the myth-insect already building the Paine Mythology.