William Dennes Mahan

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 circumstances of composition, the letters to the Boonville Advertiser, and the proceedings of the church court were all investigated by Edgar J. Goodspeed and published in his books Strange New Gospels (1931) and Modern Apocrypha (1956). More recently Per Beskow (1983) identified Mahan's original sources and reported on subsequent editions of the Archko Volume.
More information on the Wikipedia page and here.
Category:Biographies
Category:Fakes and forgeries
Category:19th century