I am copying the following excerpt from a longer, quickly-buried post in another thread, because I think it's a real smoking gun that deserves to be examined.
I came across the title page of a book that shows, indisputably, that we cannot trust the dates written in these books. I like to go to Google Books, set the date range from 1500-1600, and search for random words like "Moses". Then, when I find a book that looks juicy, I like to scroll through it, just seeing if my eyes land on anything interesting. To my great regret, I do not read Latin. It's amazing how many books were printed in the early 1500's. Who read all these books?
Anyway, I landed on a book entitled "Iosue", written by Nicolai Serarii of the Societatis Iesu Theologi (the Jesuits), listed as having been published in 1509.
Nicolai Serarii Societatis Iesu Theologi Iosue, ab vtero ad ipsum usque tumulum, è Moysis Exodo, Leuitico, Numeris, Deuteronomio; & è proprio ipsius libro toto ac Paralipomenis, libris quinque explanatus: ... tomus prior [-posterior] ..
Here is the title page:
So, we've seen this before: this must have been the original form of the M, one forwards C and one backwards C with an I in the middle. You can even see how this three-letter combination might have evolved into the straight M we know -- look at some of the round M's that occasionally appear. D is also nothing but an I next to a backwards C.
("Moguntia" is the Latin name for the city of Mainz.)
We have a first problem. This title page would suggest that for some reason publishers in Mainz went back to using early forms of the numeral M after over a thousand years for no good reason.
But we have an even bigger problem. The Jesuit order was founded in 1534. The book also refers to...Joseph Scaliger, who was born in 1540 and died in 1609. So there is absolutely no way this book was published in 1509. But how then to interpret the date written on the title page? Were 1509 and 1609 once the same?
Again, think about it. We have a huge contradiction here, one that cannot be resolved. Either:
- the printer was such an idiot that he got the date wrong by 100 years, then went ahead and released the book anyway (highly improbable).
OR
- the date we see actually refers to the year 1609 and not 1509, which calls into question our entire dating system (highly improbable).
OR
- there was some tampering at some point (also highly improbable).
This object exists and was circulated. I can usually imagine how mainstream historians explain away the myriad inconsistencies and anomalies we focus on here, but in this case I see absolutely no way out other than a perplexed shrug.
I did ctrl+F searches in the text for any possible references to years. For example, I searched for the numbers 15 and 14 (presuming I would find dates behind them like 1503 or whatever that might orient me). But I found nothing but page and index numbers. Maybe someone else wants to check more thoroughly, but I think there are no dates at all in this long book, which is very strange.
Remember, all it takes is one outlier like this to prove that something is completely off. There is no way to explain this publication date within any received framework we have.
This reminds me of all those books in which Columbus discovered the New World in 1592, not 1492. All I did was go to Google Books and search for "Columbus 1592". I found several, very easily (I also found a 1488). One might be a typo, but not five.