divine history mystically revealed." (p. 117) He attempted to show that the study of the Apocalypse (Revelation of John) and of the non-Pauline epistles confirmed the conclusions drawn from the Pauline epistles. Only the testimony of Paul of Tarsus is valid. The docetic form of Christianity should be the orthodox one, if Paul is defined as the true founder of Christianity. No ordinary man becoming deified As a first step, Couchoud argued that it is impossible to assume that Jews would have deified a mere man. The methodology followed by contemporary historians, from Ernest Renan to Alfred Loisy, in trying to understand the figure of Jesus and the origins of Christianity, faced two major obstacles: One cannot accept that after one generation or even less, an ordinary man could be deified, and, second, that Jesus's life could have escaped the attention of historians: there is no documentation of it. Couchoud believes that the entire "Testimonium Flavianum" (the famous passage in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, III, iii, 3 which mentions of Jesus "He was the Christ") is an interpolation. Everything in the Talmud concerning Jesus is derived from Christian sources . Of the three Roman "witnesses" (Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and Tacitus) Suetonius only mentions a Jewish agitator named Chrestos. Couchoud considers the Christ mention in the Tacitus passage genuine. But these Roman "witnesses" only testify to the existence of a Christian movement, and concerning the origin of this movement, they only repeated Christian beliefs. Couchoud and the French rationalists Couchoud's Mystery of Jesus was a slim volume, not impressive by scholarly standards, but, in the France of 1924, it packed a lot of weight. Couchoud became de facto the leader of French rationalists on the subject of religion from 1924 to 1939. He was chief editor for a series of publications on religion and free thinking: "Christianity" (which lasted ten years, 1923–1932, publishing 42 works), "Judaism", and "Myths and Religions", amounting to some 100 works. Couchoud was made editor of a new section, "Chronicle of Ideas" in the magazine "Europe" (Jan. 1927). The magazine published various articles popularizing Couchoud's thesis that Jesus was not a historic figure — to the objection of the French writer Romain Rolland. But after 1928, the Couchoud faction lost some of its influence with the publisher. Europe published Couchoud's last article, "Le problème de Jésus", in June 1934. Jésus, Le Dieu fait homme (1937),