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there is no way to demonstrate that a text was originally written before Christ only because it does not contain Christian ideas.
Proofs through external evidences tell us that a document is a fake if the external facts reported by it could not have been known at the time of its production. But there is no way to demonstrate that a text which reports events that happened at the time of its alleged production isfor that sole reasonoriginal.
Thus a semiotic approach to fakes shows how theoretically weak are our criteria for deciding about authenticity.
Despite this, even though no single criterion is one-hundred-percent satisfactory, we usually rely on reasonable conjectures on the grounds of some balanced evaluation of the various tests. Thus we cast in doubt the socially accepted authenticity of an object only when some contrary evidence comes to trouble our established beliefs. Otherwise, one should test the Mona Lisa every time one goes to the Louvre, since without such an authenticity test there will be no proof that the Mona Lisa seen today is indiscernibly identical with the one seen last week.
But such a test would be necessary for every judgment of identity. As a matter of fact, there is no ontological guarantee that the John I meet today is the same as the John I met yesterday. John undergoes physical (biological) changes much more so than a painting or a statue. Moreover, John can intentionally disguise himself in order to look like Tom.
However, in order to recognize John, our parents, husbands, wives, and sons every day (as well as in order to decide that the Trump Tower I see today is the same as the one I saw last year) we rely on certain instinctive procedures mainly based on social agreement. They prove to be reliable because by using them our species has succeeded in surviving for millions of years and we are world-adapted beings. We never cast in doubt these procedures because it is very rare for a human being or a building to be forged (the rare exceptions to this rule are interesting subject matter only for detective stories or science fiction). But, in principle, John is no more difficult to forge than the Mona Lisa; on the contrary, it is easier to disguise successfully a person than to copy successfully the Mona Lisa.
Objects, documents, bank notes, and works of art are frequently forged, not because they are particularly easy to forge, but for mere economic reasons. However, the fact that they are so frequently forged obliges us to ask so much about the requirements an original should meet in order to be defined as suchwhile we do not usually reflect on all other cases of identification.
The reflection on these most commonly forged objects should, how

 
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