"According to Harpur's sources, their propaganda included selectively editing the scriptures and inserting false passages about Jesus into the text of the Jewish historian Josephus.Asking the question, "can we say with any authority that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed as historical person", he concludes, "I have a very grave doubts we can," adding that his gradual realization that Jesus was a "mythical copy of many preceding saviours" was difficult to accept himself.