Article 120

“Reason in Revolt: Europe’s Greatness Against Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad”

It is one of the strangest distortions in the long history of civilization that the greatest monuments of Europe are still attributed to prophets who never knew Europe, never lived in its landscapes, never breathed its air, and never contributed to its labor. The cathedrals of Chartres and Cologne, the paintings of Michelangelo, the symphonies of Bach, the discoveries of Galileo, and the equations of Newton are still narrated in the shadow of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, as if these Semitic figures had inspired them. But Moses never laid the foundation of Notre Dame. Jesus never traced the geometry of Brunelleschi’s dome. Muhammad never advised the stonemasons of Cologne on how to raise spires to the heavens. The entire crediting of prophets for Europe’s genius is an imposture: Europe did the work, but the prophets are given the glory.

The truth, which Europe’s own freethinkers long suspected, is that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad were impostors—fabricators of myths, founders of systems of control, men who claimed universality without warrant. The clandestine Enlightenment text De Tribus Impostoribus dared to say aloud what had been whispered for centuries: “The world has been deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.” This was not an insult hurled by outsiders but Europe’s suppressed conscience speaking. For centuries, monks, philosophers, and radicals passed the rumor of this forbidden book because it captured the unspoken truth: the prophets were not architects of civilization but obstacles to it, and the greatness of Europe was achieved in spite of them, not because of them.

The absurdity of the imposture is heightened when one recalls that these prophets were alien to the European world. Moses was a desert chieftain, his laws forged for a nomadic tribe wandering in Sinai. Jesus was a Jewish preacher, crucified in Jerusalem under Roman occupation, whose horizon never reached Athens or Rome. Muhammad was a tribal leader in Arabia, his imagination confined to camel routes, oases, and the tribal feuds of Mecca and Medina. None of them knew the forests of the North, the hill forts of the Celts, the cities of Italy, or the rivers of the Rhine. Yet their names were enthroned as the supposed inspiration for European genius. That a Florentine mason should be told his mathematics belonged to Moses, or that a German organist should be told his harmonies belonged to Jesus, or that a French chemist should be told his discoveries belonged to Muhammad, is not humility but cultural theft.

The Gothic cathedrals are perhaps the clearest example of this imposture. These structures were not metaphysical miracles but feats of engineering. The vaulting of Chartres required precise calculations of stress and thrust, of ribbed arches and flying buttresses. This was not handed down in prophecy but worked out on scaffolds by builders who experimented until stone obeyed. The stained glass, long described as the light of God, was the product of European artisans who mastered the chemistry of minerals to produce luminous blues and reds. The prophets had nothing to do with this. The sermons inside the cathedrals may have been filled with dogma, but the stones themselves were arguments in geometry and mechanics.

And even those stones carry traces of Europe’s suppressed memory. The facades of so-called Christian cathedrals are filled with pagan symbols: green men peering from foliage, zodiac signs circling portals, grotesques drawn from folklore. These are not Hebrew or Arabian motifs but Europe’s own imagination, grafted onto Christian buildings because the craftsmen who built them had not forgotten their own ancestors. The official credit went to prophets; the unofficial spirit remained European. The imposture lived in the dedication, but the reality lived in the stone.

The same is true of music. Bach may have written Soli Deo Gloria at the end of his fugues, but the counterpoint of those fugues owed nothing to Galilee. Polyphony grew out of medieval experimentation with harmony, grounded in the mathematical spirit of Europe, not in any biblical tradition. The inversion and augmentation of a fugue are not scriptural. They are the audible counterpart to Gothic architecture: symmetry, balance, complexity, reason. To call them Christian is to mistake the dedication for the origin. They were European, through and through.

Science, more than any other field, exposes the imposture. The Copernican revolution did not emerge from prophets but from astronomers who dared to contradict scripture. Galileo’s telescope revealed moons orbiting Jupiter, directly falsifying biblical cosmology. For this he was silenced, not praised. Giordano Bruno was burned alive for imagining infinite worlds. Spinoza was excommunicated for declaring scripture a human product. Newton’s laws were not deduced from revelation but from mathematics. Darwin’s Origin of Species was not a commentary on Genesis but its refutation. Each scientific advance was achieved against the inertia of prophecy, not with its blessing. To then turn around and credit prophets with the age of science is grotesque.

And yet this grotesque imposture was institutionalized in scholarship. Tomoko Masuzawa has shown that the very category of “world religions” was not descriptive but ideological. “The very idea of ‘world religions’… was not a neutral descriptive category but an ideological construction, one that privileged Christianity while relegating others to the margins.” The invention of “world religions” ensured that Christianity and its Semitic kin would appear central and universal, while Europe’s own plural and classical traditions were dismissed as mere “paganism.” The fraud became systemic: Europe produced the genius, but the credit was siphoned to the prophets.

Abraham Kuenen deepened the critique by showing that Judaism was not universal but parochial, and that Christianity’s universality was borrowed. “Judaism was in its essence a national religion; Christianity became universal only by borrowing from other faiths, especially Buddhism, the spirit and method of mission.” Christianity’s missionary zeal, long claimed as its triumph, was derivative. Judaism was tribal. Neither was universal. How then can universality be credited to prophets who never conceived of it? Europe’s genuine universality lay elsewhere: in its law, its science, its philosophy, its revolutions.

Otto Pfleiderer, in his historical studies, stripped revelation of its divinity altogether: “Every religion is a human creation, subject to the conditions of time and place, and not the eternal truth itself.” If this is true, then the prophets were not messengers of eternity but actors in history. Their claims to universality dissolve into particularity. Their revelations are not gifts to mankind but constructions of circumstance. Pfleiderer confirms in scholarly tones what The Three Impostors declared with blasphemous brevity: prophets are impostors, their religions impostures, their universality fraudulent.

The result of centuries of imposture is that Europe, even when rebelling, credited its chains. The Renaissance revived Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Vitruvius, yet it draped its rediscoveries in Christian language. The Enlightenment dethroned revelation, yet still tolerated the myth that Christianity had prepared the way. The Industrial Revolution was born of coal and steam, yet pious commentators insisted it was providential. In each case, prophets were given credit for what they resisted. The jailers were thanked for the strength prisoners developed by breaking free. This is the core of the fraud.

The Renaissance itself is proof that Europe’s genius was European. Petrarch did not weep over the ruins of Rome because they reminded him of prophets; he wept because they reminded him of Europe’s own forgotten greatness. Michelangelo’s David, hailed as a biblical hero, is in truth a Greek athlete clothed in biblical disguise, his musculature sculpted from classical models. Botticelli’s Venus was a pagan goddess resurrected despite the disapproval of theologians. The so-called Christian Renaissance was, in reality, the rebirth of pagan antiquity, barely disguised by biblical subjects. The prophets provided fig leaves; the fruit was entirely European.

The Enlightenment drove the point home with ruthless clarity. Voltaire ridiculed the Old Testament as a record of barbarism. Hume dismantled the possibility of miracles with logic. Diderot compiled an encyclopedia to arm reason against superstition. Montesquieu looked not to Galilee but to Rome when he theorized separation of powers. Kant, in his call to “dare to think,” explicitly opposed the passivity demanded by revelation. None of this was born of prophets. It was born of philosophers who rebelled against them. To call the Enlightenment a Christian flowering is to invert reality: it was Europe’s revolt against Christianity, the revolt of reason against revelation.

The Industrial Revolution made the irrelevance of prophets undeniable. Steam engines, spinning jennies, railroads, and telegraphs transformed Europe without a single contribution from Sinai or Mecca. James Watt refined the steam engine not by prayer but by observation and experiment. Faraday discovered electromagnetism not by reading scripture but by testing coils and currents. Darwin uncovered natural selection not by parable but by years of empirical study. Pasteur revolutionized medicine not by divine revelation but by inoculation and laboratory proof. The prophets provided no guidance here; their followers, in fact, resisted these discoveries as ungodly. Yet when the history of progress is told, credit still shifts eastward, as though prophets had whispered industrial secrets across millennia.

The defenders of revelation point to the preservation of texts in monasteries as though this were Christianity’s gift to civilization. But this is like praising a jailer for locking books in a dungeon. The preservation was accidental, the access restricted, the use censored. Vast libraries of antiquity were destroyed precisely because they contradicted revelation. Epicurus survived only in fragments, Lucretius only by chance. Galileo had to smuggle his writings to Holland to see them printed. If the Renaissance had not rediscovered Cicero, Aristotle, and Plato, buried and forgotten, the prophets’ monopoly would have remained absolute. Preservation was not a gift; revival was rebellion.

The wars of religion show how costly the imposture became. For centuries, Catholics and Protestants butchered one another, each claiming divine sanction. Whole regions were devastated by famine and fire, not because of philosophy or science, but because of prophets invoked as banners of war. The prophets gave Europe not unity but endless division. While artisans built cathedrals and scholars studied Aristotle, armies marched to slaughter in the name of revelation. To then give prophets credit for civilization is to praise arsonists for the beauty of the cities they burned.

The Crusades were an even greater folly. Europeans marched eastward to reclaim a “Holy Land” they had never seen, wasting generations of energy on deserts while their own cities languished. They were told this was obedience to prophets. What it produced was slaughter, pillage, and centuries of antagonism between civilizations. Meanwhile, Europe’s true progress—the rise of universities, the refinement of law, the birth of humanism—occurred not in Jerusalem but in Bologna, Paris, and Florence. The prophets gave holy wars; Europeans created civilization.

The Inquisition carried the imposture into terror. To defend the prophets’ revelations, inquisitors censored, tortured, and executed. Bruno burned for imagining infinite worlds. Galileo humiliated for observing moons. Spinoza excommunicated for reading scripture critically. Scientists and philosophers were not rewarded but persecuted when they contradicted revelation. To now claim that prophets inspired European science is to invert history. They were the obstacles science had to overcome. The prophets’ names were invoked by the executioners, not by the discoverers.

Even the Reformation, often praised as a renewal, was not liberation from prophets but a new kind of captivity. Luther and Calvin dethroned Rome only to enthrone scripture more rigidly. Wars of religion followed, devastating Europe. Entire populations starved or fled. Once again, prophets provided division, not progress. And yet, through this darkness, European genius persisted: explorers charted oceans, merchants expanded trade, artisans honed craft, thinkers refined law. The prophets’ wars ravaged the continent, but the European will to build continued, almost in defiance of revelation.

This is the central paradox: the greater Europe’s achievements, the more loudly prophets were invoked, and the less they actually contributed. The mason carving stone in Cologne, the organist writing fugues in Leipzig, the scientist observing stars in Florence, the jurist drafting codes in Paris—all of them labored for Europe, yet all were told they worked for Moses or Jesus. Their genius was displaced onto prophets who had no share in it. The imposture was complete: labor below, glory above, Europe’s heritage stolen and redirected.

And yet Europe never entirely believed the imposture. The clandestine survival of De Tribus Impostoribus proves this. For centuries, the rumor of a forbidden book that declared all three prophets impostors haunted the imagination of churchmen. They feared it because it voiced what many already suspected: revelation was fraud, universality a lie, prophets impostors. When the Enlightenment finally published its skepticism openly, it was not inventing a new truth but making explicit an old suspicion. The fraud had always been visible to those who dared to look.

Masuzawa, Kuenen, and Pfleiderer confirm with scholarship what radicals had declared with invective. Masuzawa unmasks the ideological construction of “world religions,” which privileged prophets by definition. Kuenen demonstrates the tribal narrowness of Judaism and the derivative universality of Christianity. Pfleiderer reduces revelation itself to human creation, stripping prophets of divine authority. Their work gives intellectual scaffolding to the radical claim of The Three Impostors: prophets are impostors, and Europe’s genius is its own.

At every step, Europe rose by casting prophets off. The Renaissance rose by rediscovering antiquity. The Enlightenment rose by enthroning reason. The Industrial Revolution rose by trusting experiment. The stronger the revolt against revelation, the greater the progress. To credit prophets for Europe’s genius is to mistake chains for freedom, and obedience for discovery. The prophets were weights; progress came from shedding them.

The imposture is not only historical but psychological. By attributing their greatest works to prophets, Europeans were conditioned to see themselves as tributaries rather than creators. The mason who raised a spire was told he was glorifying God, not exercising his own genius. The philosopher who crafted an argument was told he was defending revelation, not reason. The scientist who uncovered a law of nature was told he was merely reading the handwriting of a prophet’s God. This displacement of credit fostered an inferiority complex, a civilizational neurosis that kept Europe bowed eastward even as it stood tallest in the world.

And yet, despite this displacement, Europe could not help but break through. The Renaissance revealed how much strength remained dormant beneath centuries of suppression. Petrarch’s love of Cicero was not a devotion to prophets but to Europe’s own lost inheritance. Machiavelli, in The Prince, did not cite Moses but Caesar. Michelangelo’s David, clothed in biblical story, was sculpted from the body of a pagan athlete. Raphael’s Madonnas obeyed Church commissions, but their balance and harmony came from Greek aesthetics. Pagan antiquity, not Semitic revelation, provided the foundation. The Renaissance was Europe remembering itself, clothed in the costumes of prophets but animated by the spirit of Athens and Rome.

The Enlightenment drove the knife deeper. Voltaire scorned the Old Testament as a chronicle of barbarism and folly. Hume destroyed the logic of miracles by reducing them to improbable violations of nature. Montesquieu looked to Roman history and Germanic assemblies to construct his theory of liberty. Diderot’s encyclopedia was a defiant act of reason, a declaration that knowledge belonged not to prophets but to humanity. Kant’s call to “dare to think” was the opposite of revelation’s demand to obey. The Enlightenment was not a continuation of Christianity but its refutation, Europe shaking off the imposture of prophets and declaring the sovereignty of reason.

The Industrial Revolution was the final proof. For centuries, prophets had been invoked as guardians of truth. Yet when real progress arrived, it came from engineers, inventors, and scientists. Steam engines, electricity, chemistry, biology—all were fruits of observation and experiment, not revelation. Watt, Faraday, Darwin, and Pasteur did not quote prophets when they worked. Their enemies did. Sermons denounced their discoveries as heresy. Preachers declared their machines ungodly. Yet in the long arc of history, it was they—the empiricists—who transformed the world. The prophets provided resistance; Europeans provided revolution.

The pattern of imposture is relentless. Cathedrals are said to be “for the glory of God,” but they are monuments to masons, glassworkers, and architects. Bach’s fugues are said to honor Christ, but they are monuments to mathematical harmony. Newton is said to have vindicated divine order, but his genius was mathematics and mechanics. Darwin is said to have revealed God’s method of creation, but his theory dismantled creation itself. Everywhere, prophets receive credit for what Europeans achieved against their silence, and often against their commands.

The fraud deepens when one considers that the prophets’ legacy in Europe was most visible in destruction. The Crusades drained resources into deserts, slaughtered thousands, and left Europe poorer. The wars of religion devastated populations, leaving famine and plague. The Inquisition silenced scientists and censored books. Even the Reformation produced not liberty but new dogmas and new wars. Prophets were invoked in all of this. Their revelations sanctified bloodshed, their authority justified persecution. The prophets’ actual contribution to Europe was not progress but carnage. To then drape the mantle of Europe’s genius over their shoulders is to glorify destruction.

But the clandestine tradition of skepticism always resisted. The legend of De Tribus Impostoribus haunted Europe precisely because it expressed what many secretly believed: that Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad were impostors, not guides. When copies finally circulated in the Enlightenment, they did not shock because they were alien, but because they named openly what had long been whispered. Europe’s conscience had never entirely bowed. The imposture was powerful, but never complete. Beneath the surface of obedience, there was always revolt.

Modern scholarship vindicates this revolt. Masuzawa unmasks the very language of “world religions” as a 19th-century construction that privileged Christianity by design. Kuenen strips Judaism and Christianity of universality, exposing their tribalism and their borrowings. Pfleiderer goes further still, dissolving revelation into history, robbing prophets of their divine aura. All three confirm what radicals had long argued: prophets did not give Europe its genius. Europe gave itself its genius, in spite of prophets, against their resistance, by overthrowing their authority.

The imposture endures today in the language of “Judeo-Christian civilization.” This phrase is a modern invention, crafted to place Europe’s legacy under the sign of prophets once more. But “Judeo-Christian civilization” is a fraud. Democracy did not come from Sinai; it came from Athens. Law did not come from Galilee; it came from Rome. Scientific revolution did not come from Mecca; it came from Florence, London, and Paris. The prophets’ civilizations gave obedience; Europe’s gave freedom. To accept the imposture is to surrender the truth.

The time has come to end the imposture. Europe’s cathedrals, its music, its science, its liberty belong to Europe alone. They are the fruit of Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Slavs, and Nordics. They are the achievements of masons, artists, scientists, philosophers, and citizens. They were built in defiance of prophets, not in obedience to them. To continue crediting prophets for them is not humility but betrayal. It is to rob Europe of its inheritance, to honor jailers instead of liberators, to glorify impostors instead of workers.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

The irony is that even when prophets were invoked as protectors of truth, the very institutions built in their names often worked to suppress it. Galileo’s telescope was condemned, Darwin’s theory was vilified, Bruno’s cosmos was burned out of existence by fire. In medicine, prophets offered rules about food and ritual purity, but it was European doctors who discovered circulation of the blood, vaccination, and antisepsis. These discoveries were resisted as blasphemous intrusions into divine providence. When inoculation was first proposed, priests denounced it as interference with God’s will. When Darwin explained natural selection, pulpits thundered with denunciations. Revelation opposed science at every turn, and science triumphed only by defiance. Yet in the strange inversion of history, prophets still receive credit for the very sciences they tried to crush.

The arts tell the same story. Michelangelo may have painted biblical scenes, but his genius was drawn from anatomy, perspective, and the revival of classical sculpture. The Sistine Chapel ceiling is filled with biblical names, but the bodies are Greek. Raphael’s Madonnas echo the balance of pagan art more than the rigidity of Hebrew law. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro was a daring experiment with light and shadow, not a revelation from prophets. Rembrandt’s portraits, though clothed in biblical costume, are studies in human psychology, not exegesis. The prophets gave subject matter; Europe gave style, technique, and genius. To confuse subject with substance is another form of imposture.

Music too is wrapped in the imposture. Gregorian chant may have been fostered by the Church, but polyphony and harmony emerged from experimentation. Bach’s fugues, Mozart’s operas, Beethoven’s symphonies—these are European achievements of mathematics, emotion, and imagination. Bach may have signed Soli Deo Gloria, but the logic of his counterpoint was not from Sinai. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony set Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to music, a hymn not to prophets but to universal human brotherhood. The dedication may have been religious, but the genius was secular. Prophets were invoked as patrons, but the music was European.

The political domain shows the imposture with even greater clarity. Prophets spoke of obedience, submission, chosenness, divine kingship. They offered no word about democracy, checks and balances, or liberty. Europe’s political institutions grew out of Roman law, Germanic assemblies, and Enlightenment revolutions. The Magna Carta was not dictated on Sinai. The American Declaration of Independence did not cite prophets but “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The French Revolution dethroned altars and enthroned reason. Prophets offered no vision of universal suffrage, freedom of press, or separation of powers. These were European creations, born of struggle against revelation, not obedience to it.

The defenders of prophecy point to Christian charity, to monasteries, to hospitals. But charity is not unique to prophets; it is found in every civilization. And even these institutions often served to enforce authority. Monasteries copied texts, but also censored them. Hospitals healed the body but demanded the soul’s submission. Schools educated, but under theology’s yoke. Europe’s true liberation came when these institutions were secularized, when hospitals became places of medicine, not miracles, and when schools became places of science, not catechism. To give prophets credit for Europe’s humanity is to confuse control with compassion.

It is no accident that the phrase “Judeo-Christian civilization” is a modern invention. It was coined in the twentieth century to rewrite Europe’s history in prophetic terms, to present its genius as the fruit of revelation rather than of rebellion. But the phrase is a lie. Europe’s genius came from Athens and Rome, not from Sinai or Galilee. Its science came from observation, not prophecy. Its art came from classical harmony, not revelation. Its liberty came from struggle against priests, not obedience to them. To speak of “Judeo-Christian civilization” is to speak an imposture as old as the cathedrals: to assign prophets the glory of Europeans.

The clandestine book De Tribus Impostoribus remains the most radical statement of the truth. By calling Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad impostors, it named the fraud openly. For centuries, the rumor of the book terrified churchmen because it gave voice to what millions suspected. That it circulated secretly shows the power of the imposture: the truth had to hide. But that it survived at all shows the persistence of revolt: reason refused to be silenced. The Enlightenment finally gave reason its voice. The radical book became the radical age.

Modern scholars like Tomoko Masuzawa, Abraham Kuenen, and Otto Pfleiderer provide the intellectual armature for this revolt. Masuzawa reveals that “world religions” was not a neutral category but an ideological weapon, invented to keep prophets central. Kuenen shows that Judaism was a national cult and Christianity’s universality was borrowed. Pfleiderer insists that all religions are historical fabrications, human inventions, and therefore impostures when they claim eternity. These works give academic confirmation to the radical suspicion: prophets did not build Europe, they burdened it. Europe’s genius lies elsewhere—in the Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, the Celts, the Slavs, the Nordics, and in the countless nameless artisans, scientists, and thinkers who created beauty and truth.

To continue the imposture today is not only historically false but morally offensive. It robs workers of their credit and gives it to men who never lifted a stone in Cologne or tuned a violin in Leipzig. It deprives Europe of its inheritance and makes it bow eastward when it should stand upright. It replaces reason with obedience, science with submission, liberty with law. The prophets are honored for what they opposed; their chains are praised as though they were wings. The fraud is complete.

But the fraud is not invincible. Every revival of Europe has come through revolt. The Renaissance revived pagan antiquity. The Enlightenment enthroned reason. The Industrial Revolution trusted experiment. Every leap forward came by defying prophets, not by following them. The measure of Europe’s vitality is how far it moved from revelation. The imposture weakens with each revolt, and reason grows stronger with each defiance. The future lies not with impostors but with rebels.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

The most revealing evidence of imposture is that the prophets themselves, in their own writings, never imagined the civilization later credited to them. Moses spoke of sacrifices, rituals, dietary laws, and tribal conquest. He said nothing of cathedrals, universities, or parliaments. Jesus preached of the imminent kingdom of God, celibacy, and renunciation of worldly power. He offered no instruction for republics, printing presses, or scientific academies. Muhammad dictated rules for prayer, almsgiving, and warfare, but never envisioned telescopes, symphonies, or constitutional monarchies. Their horizons were narrow, their aims immediate, their visions local. To give them credit for Europe’s universal genius is to mistake provincial prophets for universal architects.

This inversion of reality has consequences. It has made Europeans doubt their own strength and defer to prophets who never knew them. It has led scholars to imagine that liberty was born in Galilee rather than in Athens, that law was perfected on Sinai rather than in Rome, that science was whispered in Mecca rather than demonstrated in Florence. The imposture has rewritten history in favor of revelation and against reason, in favor of prophets and against builders. It has turned Europe into a tributary of deserts, when in truth deserts were tributaries of Europe.

Even today the imposture lingers in how history is taught. Students are told that Christianity “civilized” Europe, when in fact it censored, suppressed, and delayed. They are told that the preservation of texts in monasteries was a blessing, when in fact it was often the suffocation of knowledge. They are told that without prophets there would be no morality, when in fact morality existed in Greece, Rome, India, and China long before revelation. The imposture lives not because it is true, but because it has been repeated, codified, and defended by power.

But truth is stubborn. The cathedrals still reveal their engineering. The fugues still reveal their mathematics. The scientific method still reveals its independence. The revolutions still reveal their defiance. Anyone who looks honestly can see that prophets were invoked but not present, praised but not productive, feared but not fruitful. Europe’s genius was always European, not prophetic.

The wars of religion are perhaps the clearest indictment. For more than a century, Protestants and Catholics slaughtered each other, each invoking prophets. Villages were razed, fields burned, populations decimated. The prophets’ names were shouted by soldiers as they killed their neighbors. Did civilization advance from this? No—it regressed. The prophets’ legacy here was not law or liberty, but fanaticism and famine. Yet in the textbooks, prophets are still called fathers of Europe, as though these wars were birth pangs of greatness rather than evidence of imposture.

The Inquisition shows the same pattern. To defend prophets’ revelations, inquisitors censored books, silenced scientists, and burned dissenters. Bruno was reduced to ashes because he dared to imagine stars as suns with their own worlds. Galileo was humiliated because he dared to follow his telescope. Spinoza was cast out for saying scripture was human. None of these men advanced Europe by obeying prophets. They advanced Europe by defying them. To give prophets credit for their achievements is to give jailers credit for jailbreaks.

Even the Reformation, hailed as liberation, was in truth another captivity. Luther tore down Rome but enthroned scripture. Calvin abolished priests but built theocracy. Wars of religion followed, devastating Europe again. The prophets remained at the center, dividing, dictating, and destroying. Yet Europe still advanced—not because of revelation, but because of resilience. Merchants built markets, explorers mapped oceans, artisans honed craft, scientists observed nature. The prophets thundered, but the people worked. Civilization grew not from prophets’ commands but from Europeans’ labor.

Masuzawa explains how the modern academy reinforced this fraud by inventing the concept of “world religions.” This scheme elevated Christianity to universality and demoted everything else to the periphery. The prophets’ centrality was no longer just theological but scholarly. “The very idea of ‘world religions’… was not a neutral descriptive category but an ideological construction, one that privileged Christianity while relegating others to the margins.” The imposture became academic dogma. Scholars, like priests, ensured prophets received credit for universality, even as evidence showed otherwise.

Kuenen demolishes the myth of universality by pointing out that Judaism was a national cult, and Christianity’s missionary impulse was borrowed: “Judaism was in its essence a national religion; Christianity became universal only by borrowing from other faiths, especially Buddhism, the spirit and method of mission.” If Christianity itself was derivative, then what claim does it have to originality in Europe’s genius? None. It borrowed methods, adapted philosophies, absorbed paganism, and then claimed the fruits of Europe’s labor as its own. That is not universality; it is imposture.

Pfleiderer destroys the illusion of revelation altogether: “Every religion is a human creation, subject to the conditions of time and place, and not the eternal truth itself.” Once this is admitted, prophets lose their divine aura. They become what they always were—men of their time, creating myths, enforcing obedience, and claiming eternity where there was only circumstance. Pfleiderer’s words confirm what radicals always argued: prophets are impostors, their revelations impostures, their claims to universality fraudulent.

The consequence is that Europe’s true line of greatness must be traced differently. It does not pass through Sinai, Galilee, or Mecca. It passes through Athens, Rome, Florence, Paris, and London. It passes through Plato and Aristotle, through Cicero and Seneca, through Dante and Petrarch, through Newton and Darwin. It passes through guilds of masons, orchestras of musicians, laboratories of scientists, parliaments of citizens. The prophets stand outside this line, invoked but irrelevant, praised but powerless. The greatness belongs to Europe itself, to its people and their relentless revolt.

To recognize this is not arrogance but honesty. It does not erase prophets; it places them in proportion. They were not architects of universality but local leaders with local concerns. Their words may inspire rituals, but they did not inspire cathedrals. Their visions may guide tribes, but they did not guide parliaments. Their commandments may order communities, but they did not order republics. To confuse local myths with universal genius is to betray history. To end the imposture is to restore justice to memory.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

The imposture reaches its most grotesque form when destruction itself is rebranded as creation. The Crusades, hailed in sermons as holy ventures, drained Europe of blood and treasure for centuries. Men who might have built bridges, composed music, or explored seas were marched to deserts they had never seen to reclaim a “Holy Land” proclaimed sacred by prophets. What was achieved? Slaughter, pillage, and hatred. Rivers of corpses flowed while prophets’ names were shouted as banners. And yet later histories dared to suggest that these same prophets were the fathers of European civilization. How can one call architects those who inspired massacres and wasted genius? The prophets’ legacy in Europe was not progress but regression. Civilization advanced not because of their commands but in spite of their wars.

The Inquisition sharpened this grotesque logic to terror. To preserve the truth of prophets, inquisitors censored, tortured, and killed. They scoured villages for heresy, spied on scholars, and silenced dissent. The smoke of Bruno’s execution rose as a monument not to revelation but to its cruelty. Galileo was forced to kneel before inquisitors and deny what his telescope showed. Spinoza was cast out, cursed for suggesting scripture was a human artifact. The prophets’ authority was invoked at every turn. To then claim prophets as the inspirers of European science is to praise torturers for the discoveries of their victims. It is to give executioners credit for the progress made by those they sought to kill.

Even when prophets were not invoked for persecution, their revelations were invoked to obstruct. Vaccination was resisted as impious. Printing was denounced as dangerous. Industrial machines were condemned as ungodly. Every innovation faced sermons of resistance, every breakthrough a chorus of denunciation. Yet when these innovations triumphed, prophets were retroactively credited as their guardians. The fraud is breathtaking: prophets opposed progress, and then their names were stamped on its monuments.

Meanwhile, the real work of civilization was done quietly, persistently, relentlessly by Europeans. Artisans experimented with stone and glass until cathedrals stood. Musicians refined harmony until symphonies thundered. Scientists tested, failed, and tested again until laws of nature emerged. Philosophers doubted, argued, and reasoned until liberty was proclaimed. Explorers risked oceans, merchants risked fortunes, citizens risked lives in revolutions. These are the builders of Europe. Their work was tangible, verifiable, and immense. The prophets gave none of this. They gave stories, rituals, commands, and wars. The genius came from Europe, the imposture from elsewhere.

The clandestine voices of Europe knew it. De Tribus Impostoribus captured the essence with shocking simplicity: “The world has been deceived by three impostors.” Its very survival, whispered in libraries, proves that the imposture was always recognized by some. The Enlightenment brought these whispers into daylight. Voltaire, Hume, and Kant were the heirs of this clandestine revolt. They made explicit what had long been implicit: prophets were obstacles, not architects. Revelation was a fraud; reason was liberation. The radical book became the radical century.

Masuzawa shows how the academic world prolonged the fraud by shaping categories. By defining “world religions” in a way that centered Christianity and its kin, scholars ensured prophets remained central in the story of civilization. Their universality was declared rather than proven. “The very idea of ‘world religions’… was not a neutral descriptive category but an ideological construction, one that privileged Christianity while relegating others to the margins.” The imposture was carried forward not only by priests but by professors, not only by sermons but by textbooks.

Kuenen dismantled the theological pretensions by showing that Judaism was a national cult, not a universal faith, and that Christianity’s missionary impulse was borrowed from Asia. “Judaism was in its essence a national religion; Christianity became universal only by borrowing from other faiths, especially Buddhism, the spirit and method of mission.” If universality itself was plagiarized, then the claim of prophets to be architects of Europe collapses entirely. They did not invent universality; they borrowed it. They did not inspire Europe’s genius; they appropriated it.

Pfleiderer stripped away the last veil: “Every religion is a human creation, subject to the conditions of time and place, and not the eternal truth itself.” If this is so, then prophets were not universal messengers but local mythmakers. Their revelations were not gifts to mankind but products of circumstance. To grant them eternal authority is to commit historical fraud. To grant them credit for Europe’s achievements is to compound the fraud. Pfleiderer’s voice confirms what radicals shouted: prophets are impostors, their revelations impostures, their glory undeserved.

The imposture is so entrenched that even revolts against prophets were misattributed to them. The Renaissance, a revival of pagan antiquity, was called a Christian flowering. The Enlightenment, a revolt against revelation, was presented as Christian rationality. The Industrial Revolution, born of mechanics and science, was reframed as providence. Each defiance was rewritten as fulfillment, each rebellion turned into obedience. Jailers were thanked for the strength forged in breaking chains. This is the final twist of the imposture: prophets credited not only for what they opposed, but for what their opposition made necessary.

But Europe’s memory is not so easily erased. The stones of Florence, the music of Leipzig, the laws of Paris, the revolutions of Philadelphia still testify. They speak of Greeks and Romans, of Celts and Teutons, of Slavs and Nordics, of artisans and thinkers, of masons and musicians. They do not speak of prophets. They whisper rebellion, not revelation. They cry reason, not obedience. They proclaim liberty, not law from Sinai. Anyone who listens honestly hears Europe’s true voice: defiance, resilience, and creation.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

If the prophets were truly the architects of Europe, then there ought to be continuity between their revelations and Europe’s later achievements. But history reveals the opposite: the eras most dominated by revelation were also the most stagnant. The centuries called the Dark Ages were not dark because Europeans lacked intelligence but because intelligence was shackled by theology. Inquiry was confined to commentary on scripture, art to sacred symbols, science to dogma. When Aristotle reappeared in translation, it was not thanks to prophets but in defiance of them. When Roman law was revived, it was not because prophets preserved it but because Europeans rediscovered it. Revelation did not sustain progress; it interrupted it.

The so-called preservation of learning in monasteries is often cited as a rebuttal. But preservation is not the same as cultivation. To copy a book and lock it away is not to advance knowledge but to imprison it. What the monasteries saved, they often censored. Epicurus was erased, Lucretius nearly lost, and entire libraries destroyed. The prophets’ followers preserved only what could be bent to their authority. To praise them for this is like praising a thief for guarding stolen goods. Real preservation came with the Renaissance, when humanists broke the locks and revived antiquity.

Christianity’s supposed universality is another illusion. Judaism was never universal; it was tribal, defining itself by exclusion. Christianity’s claim to universality, as Kuenen demonstrated, was achieved by borrowing the missionary method from Buddhism. Its theology leaned heavily on Greek philosophy, its institutions on Roman administration, its art on pagan forms. What was truly original was not universality but appropriation. Christianity absorbed and plagiarized, then declared itself the source. This is the essence of imposture: to borrow from others, then to claim authorship.

Modern defenders of prophets like to argue that Christianity softened Europe’s brutality, that it humanized law, restrained violence, and elevated compassion. But history suggests otherwise. The Roman Empire outlawed infanticide centuries before Christianity triumphed. Stoic philosophers articulated natural law and universal brotherhood before Paul preached to gentiles. Buddhism in Asia developed compassion and nonviolence long before Christianity proclaimed charity. What Christianity often provided was not mercy but monopoly. It declared one truth, one church, one authority—and persecuted all who disagreed. Compassion was preached, but cruelty was practiced. The prophets’ legacy was as much sword as sermon.

The Enlightenment exposed this contradiction most starkly. Philosophers who celebrated liberty were condemned by churches. Writers who mocked revelation were censored, exiled, or threatened. Yet their works endured, and their ideas reshaped the world. Voltaire’s satire, Hume’s skepticism, Kant’s reason—these were not fruits of prophecy but weapons against it. The Enlightenment’s victories were victories of revolt. And yet, in the rewriting of history, these victories are still attributed to prophets. The imposture is so strong that even rebellion is made to appear obedience.

The Industrial Revolution magnified the gap. Prophets had spoken of submission, obedience, and divine order. But the new age required observation, experimentation, and invention. Machines were not built by revelation but by trial and error. Railroads were not prophesied in scripture but engineered by human ingenuity. Medicine was advanced not by prayer but by microscopes and vaccines. The prophets’ revelations offered no guidance for steam engines or electricity. If invoked at all, it was to oppose them. And yet, when the Industrial Revolution triumphed, apologists claimed it as part of divine providence, another chapter in prophets’ legacy. The fraud repeated itself: prophets opposed progress, then absorbed its credit.

Masuzawa unmasks the academic scaffolding of this fraud. By defining “world religions” around prophets, scholars made them appear indispensable. “The very idea of ‘world religions’… was not a neutral descriptive category but an ideological construction, one that privileged Christianity while relegating others to the margins.” This construction explains why even today textbooks speak of prophets as the foundation of Europe. The narrative was rigged from the start. Scholars perpetuated the imposture as effectively as priests.

Kuenen reveals the falsity of universality. Judaism was never more than national; Christianity borrowed its universality; Islam remained expansionist but parochial. None of them conceived the true universality Europe later achieved in science and law. None foresaw human rights, democracy, or equality. These were European creations, not prophetic ones. If prophets spoke of universality, it was universality of submission, not of freedom. The difference is decisive.

Pfleiderer takes away the final veil. “Every religion is a human creation, subject to the conditions of time and place, and not the eternal truth itself.” This means prophets are not timeless voices but temporary ones, their relevance confined to their moment. To make them authors of Europe is to project myths into history. They were not eternal architects but local leaders. Their universality is illusion, their eternity imposture.

To correct this is not to erase prophets but to restore proportion. Moses remains a figure of Jewish law, Jesus of early Christianity, Muhammad of Islam. They belong to their peoples, their times, their landscapes. But they do not belong to the cathedrals of Europe, the science of Galileo, the music of Bach, or the revolutions of Paris. They did not design arches, calculate orbits, compose counterpoint, or declare rights. They were invoked, but they did not inspire. They were praised, but they did not produce. Europe’s genius belongs to Europe, and to assign it elsewhere is theft.

To accept this truth is to liberate memory. It allows Europeans to see themselves not as tributaries of prophets but as heirs of Greece and Rome, as creators of reason, as authors of liberty. It frees the world from the illusion that civilization depends on revelation. It reveals that genius is human, not prophetic. And it restores dignity to the nameless millions whose labor raised spires, composed fugues, and tested machines. Their work is their own, and to give it to prophets is to betray them.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

The modern invocation of “Judeo-Christian civilization” shows how persistent the imposture remains. This phrase, popularized in the twentieth century, pretends that Europe’s genius flowed from prophets rather than from its own ancestors. It masks Athens and Rome behind Sinai and Galilee. It presents liberty, science, and democracy as offspring of revelation when in fact they were children of rebellion. It is a phrase designed not to describe but to deceive, to make prophets indispensable where they were irrelevant, to preserve their credit long after their authority has crumbled.

But history itself resists this distortion. When we trace the genealogy of European greatness honestly, we find Greeks theorizing democracy, Romans codifying law, Celts and Teutons sustaining traditions of assembly and freedom, Slavs and Nordics shaping resilience and endurance. We find Renaissance humanists rediscovering Cicero, Petrarch weeping over Rome, artists resurrecting Venus, scientists questioning Aristotle, philosophers defying priests. We find revolutions declaring rights, engineers building machines, explorers crossing oceans. None of these depended on revelation. None of them began in Sinai, Galilee, or Mecca. They began in Europe, with Europeans, through the patient work of hands, minds, and courage.

The imposture is reinforced by ritual language. Cathedrals are said to be “for the glory of God.” Symphonies are said to honor Christ. Parliaments open with prayers. Revolutions cite providence. Even when the work is secular, even when the genius is human, the credit is shifted to prophets. This is not faith but theft. It robs the mason of his cathedral, the composer of his music, the scientist of his discovery, the citizen of his revolution. It transfers human labor to divine impostors. It is a crime against memory.

Darwin’s story exemplifies this theft. When On the Origin of Species appeared, pulpits thundered against it. The theory of natural selection was denounced as godless, dangerous, and absurd. Schools refused to teach it, churches excommunicated it, whole nations mocked it. And yet today, apologists claim Darwin as part of a prophetic legacy, as though prophets had anticipated evolution. This is grotesque. Darwin discovered what prophets denied. He triumphed because he trusted evidence over revelation. To credit prophets for Darwin is to credit jailers for escapes.

The same can be said of political revolutions. The American Declaration of Independence grounded rights in nature, not revelation. The French Revolution toppled altars and enthroned reason. Even the revolutions of 1848, though short-lived, spoke of constitutions, parliaments, and universal rights—not prophets. These revolutions were condemned by churches, opposed by priests, resisted by theology. Yet in retrospect, prophets are claimed as their inspiration. This inversion is the heart of the imposture: prophets opposed progress, then absorbed its credit once it succeeded.

Masuzawa explains why the fraud persists. By constructing “world religions” around prophets, scholars ensured that prophets remained central in the narrative of civilization. “The very idea of ‘world religions’… was not a neutral descriptive category but an ideological construction, one that privileged Christianity while relegating others to the margins.” This framework silenced Europe’s pagan past, erased its polytheistic traditions, and minimized its secular revolutions. By this construction, prophets were placed at the center, and Europe’s true heritage was hidden.

Kuenen reveals that even Christianity’s claim to universality is false. Its missionary method was borrowed, its theology adapted, its institutions inherited. Its originality lay not in creation but in appropriation. “Judaism was in its essence a national religion; Christianity became universal only by borrowing from other faiths, especially Buddhism, the spirit and method of mission.” This is the essence of imposture: to borrow from others, then to claim authorship. Christianity borrowed, absorbed, and plagiarized, then demanded credit for Europe’s genius.

Pfleiderer cuts through the last illusion: “Every religion is a human creation, subject to the conditions of time and place, and not the eternal truth itself.” Prophets were not eternal voices but local figures, speaking to their tribes, confined to their moments. Their revelations were not universals but contingencies. To make them authors of Europe is to stretch parochial myths across a continent they never knew. It is to confuse local commands with universal reason. It is to enshrine imposture as history.

This imposture is not merely a matter of misattribution; it is a theft that continues to shape the world. By presenting prophets as the architects of civilization, entire cultures are taught to look to deserts for their models instead of to their own ancestors. Non-European nations are told to seek universality in prophets rather than in their own traditions. Humanity is trained to imagine that revelation is the source of genius, when in fact it has been its greatest enemy. The imposture robs not only Europe but the world.

The correction is urgent. Europe must be given back to itself, not out of arrogance but out of honesty. The cathedrals are the work of masons, the symphonies of musicians, the revolutions of citizens, the laws of jurists, the discoveries of scientists. To give their credit to prophets is to dishonor them. To correct the record is to honor them. To dethrone prophets is not to erase them but to place them in proportion: as men of their time, creators of myths, leaders of tribes, but not architects of universality.

To accept this correction is to liberate humanity as a whole. It allows every civilization to see its own genius without bowing to impostors. It allows reason to claim its victories without disguise. It allows art, science, and liberty to shine without being dimmed by alien shadows. It ends the fraud and restores dignity. The prophets may remain revered by their followers, but they should not remain enthroned as universal architects. That place belongs to reason, to labor, to humanity itself.

Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

To give Europe back to itself requires a deliberate act of honesty, because the imposture has been repeated so often that it feels natural. For centuries, the mason who set stone upon stone was told his labor glorified God, not his own craft. The scientist who discovered a law of motion was told he had read the handwriting of a prophet’s deity, not written a new chapter in human knowledge. The composer who layered voices into harmony was told he sang for heaven, not for humanity. This displacement is so ingrained that even when Europe stands tallest, it is made to bow. But the bowing is unnecessary. The truth is clear: prophets never built, never discovered, never composed. Europeans did.

The prophets’ actual legacy in Europe is written not in cathedrals but in crusades, not in symphonies but in sectarian wars, not in constitutions but in inquisitions. They divided Christians against Christians, Catholics against Protestants, neighbors against neighbors. They sanctified holy wars that spilled blood for centuries. They presided over censorship that smothered books, over tribunals that burned heretics, over edicts that silenced philosophers. This is their record. It is destruction, not construction; regression, not progress. To praise them as fathers of Europe is to call poison nourishment and chains liberty.

Yet even in the midst of this oppression, Europe’s real genius persisted. Artisans perfected techniques that prophets never imagined. Musicians created harmonies unknown to scripture. Scientists uncovered truths indifferent to revelation. Citizens built institutions that prophets would not have recognized. The continuity of Europe’s genius is not from prophets to modernity, but from Greece to Rome to Florence to Paris, with prophets interrupting rather than inspiring. The prophets are interludes of obstruction in a symphony of reason.

The clandestine voices of resistance never ceased. The legend of De Tribus Impostoribus lived because people knew, deep down, that they had been deceived. Its survival proves that Europe’s conscience never fully submitted. The Enlightenment vindicated this conscience. Voltaire laughed prophets to scorn, Hume dismantled their miracles, Kant exhorted independence of thought, Diderot armed reason with encyclopedic force. The Enlightenment was a public declaration of what had long been privately known: prophets were impostors, revelation a fraud, reason the true guide.

Modern scholarship has caught up with what radicals always suspected. Masuzawa has shown how the very framework of “world religions” was designed to keep prophets enthroned. Kuenen has exposed Judaism’s parochialism and Christianity’s derivative universality. Pfleiderer has stripped revelation of eternity and placed it squarely in history. Together, they confirm the radical suspicion with academic rigor: prophets were not the architects of civilization but beneficiaries of imposture.

The persistence of the imposture is a measure of its political usefulness. By crediting prophets for civilization, authority is maintained. People are trained to bow to myths rather than to honor their own labor. Citizens are taught that liberty comes from revelation rather than from revolution. Students are told that science and faith are allies, when in truth faith persecuted science at every step. The imposture is power disguised as history, obedience disguised as truth. To expose it is dangerous, but necessary.

The correction is not merely historical but liberating. Once Europe reclaims its own genius, it is free to honor its true ancestors. The Greeks who invented philosophy, the Romans who built law, the Celts who sustained myth and imagination, the Teutons who preserved freedom in assemblies, the Slavs and Nordics who endured and enriched—these are the roots of Europe. The artisans who cut stone, the musicians who tuned strings, the scientists who turned telescopes to the stars, the citizens who declared rights—these are the authors of its greatness. To them belongs the glory. To give their credit to prophets is betrayal.

The critics will call this arrogance, but arrogance lies with those who attribute others’ labor to their own gods. They will call it hatred, but hatred was theirs, in wars of religion, in inquisitions, in crusades. They will call it blasphemy, but the true blasphemy is against humanity itself, when human genius is erased in favor of impostors. The charge of arrogance is a projection. The truth is humility: humility before the actual builders, the actual thinkers, the actual creators.

The future depends on ending the imposture. If prophets remain enthroned as universal architects, humanity remains chained to myths. If Europe continues to bow to deserts, it will continue to forget its own strength. But if the imposture is ended, then Europe can inspire the world not with false universality but with true reason. Other civilizations, too, will reclaim their own geniuses—from India, from China, from Africa, from the Americas—without surrendering them to prophets who never knew them. Humanity will see that genius is universal, not prophetic.

The lesson is clear: revelation divides, reason unites. Prophets command, but science discovers. Prophets demand obedience, but philosophy questions. Prophets sanctify war, but liberty proclaims peace. The opposition could not be sharper. To continue giving prophets credit is to perpetuate the lie. To strip them of it is to restore truth.Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

To end the imposture once and for all requires both courage and clarity. Courage, because the prophets still command loyalty, and their defenders still wield influence. Clarity, because history has been rewritten so many times that truth is obscured beneath layers of sanctity. Yet the task is simple at its core: to say openly what is already evident. Moses did not build Europe. Jesus did not compose Europe. Muhammad did not govern Europe. The prophets neither foresaw nor inspired the cathedrals, the symphonies, the universities, the revolutions, or the machines. Europe did these things. To continue assigning them to prophets is not reverence but fraud.

The truth is not hatred but proportion. Prophets may remain figures of reverence within their own traditions, but they do not belong at the center of European history. They belong to the margins, alongside countless other religious figures whose influence was local, temporary, and limited. Moses belongs to the nomadic tribes of Sinai, Jesus to the Jewish sects of Roman Palestine, Muhammad to the Arabian tribes of the seventh century. Their words may have shaped their followers, but they did not shape the arches of Cologne or the theories of Newton. To claim otherwise is to mistake parable for proof, myth for monument, revelation for reason.

What Europe actually achieved is more astonishing once freed from imposture. The cathedrals, when seen as the product of masons and architects, are monuments to human ingenuity. The symphonies, when credited to composers, are monuments to human harmony. The scientific method, when recognized as the product of philosophers and experimenters, is a monument to human persistence. The revolutions, when seen as the work of citizens, are monuments to human courage. The glory is greater, not lesser, when it belongs to those who earned it. The prophets diminish it by absorbing what they never produced.

The radical tradition understood this long ago. De Tribus Impostoribus dared to name the fraud: the world deceived by three impostors. The Enlightenment spread this truth, often veiled in satire, philosophy, and critique. Voltaire mocked, Hume dismantled, Kant exhorted, Diderot compiled. Their successors in modern scholarship—Masuzawa, Kuenen, Pfleiderer—provided the intellectual structure. Masuzawa revealed how “world religions” was invented to privilege prophets. Kuenen exposed the narrowness of Judaism and the borrowed universality of Christianity. Pfleiderer stripped revelation of divinity, showing it to be human fabrication. Together, they prove what radicals proclaimed: prophets are impostors, their universality false, their credit stolen.

The critics will continue to cry blasphemy. But what is truly blasphemous is to rob humanity of its genius, to erase the names of builders and replace them with prophets. What is truly arrogant is to claim that three desert figures authored the whole of Europe. What is truly hateful is to burn, torture, and silence in the name of revelation. To strip prophets of stolen credit is not blasphemy but justice. It restores dignity to those who labored, thought, and created. It honors the true authors of civilization.

The lesson of Europe is not that revelation builds, but that reason rebels. Progress comes from revolt, not obedience. Every renaissance has been a rebellion: the Renaissance against medieval dogma, the Enlightenment against theology, the Industrial Revolution against superstition. Europe advanced as it defied prophets. Its vitality was measured by its distance from revelation. The imposture persists only because myths are useful to power, but history itself testifies otherwise.

And so the final verdict is simple, blunt, and incendiary. The prophets did not build Europe. They did not inspire its cathedrals, compose its music, guide its revolutions, or invent its machines. They were invoked in wars, inquisitions, and persecutions, but they were absent in progress. The greatness of Europe belongs to its own people: Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Slavs, Nordics, and the countless artisans, scientists, philosophers, and citizens who created beauty and truth. The prophets were impostors. The glory is European. The fraud must end.Europe did the work. The prophets did not.

• Anonymous. De Tribus Impostoribus [The Three Impostors]. Clandestine Enlightenment text, 1719 edition.
• Kuenen, Abraham. National Religions and Universal Religions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1882.
• Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Pfleiderer, Otto. Religion and Historic Faiths. London: Williams and Norgate, 1888.