We can write a life of Julius Caesar or of Cicero, because we have in the first line letters, commentaries, and other authentic documents written by … - Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare

The earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention of feasts. The great church adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany; and before the 5th century there was no general consensus of opinion as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on the 6th of January, or the 25th of March, or the 25th of December.

The various writings—narrative, epistolary, and apocalyptic—which make up the New Testament had no common origin, but were composed at different times by at least a score of writers in places which, in view of the difficulties presented to travel by the ancient world, may be said to have been widely remote from each other. With the exception of the Epistles of Paul, none of them, or next to none, were composed until about fifty years after the death of Jesus; and another hundred years elapsed before they were assembled in one collection and began to take their place alongside the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible as authoritative scriptures.

... when a priest undertakes by certain movements of his hands, by use of certain invocations, of certain names and forms of words, which must on no account be varied, to impart to bread and wine, to water, oil, salt, bells, or what not, certain occult qualities and values, which they had not before and could not otherwise gain, he moves in the realm of pure magic.