Smith begins Period Six by making the lawsuit that the keep score of a magician is, "sin que non", a allure act and that, based upon the writings of Justin and Celsus, the given name "son of god" was cast-off in fashionable tiny bit as an remedy description to marker a "prodigy man." This, he states, is why the given name "son of god" is in the opposite direction ad infinitum cast-off in the synoptic gospels in relevance with prodigy stories. An extraction of one such prodigy worker/magician whose claims to god was well forward in vogue the time of the character of John's gospel was, according to our inventor, Simon Magus from Samaria. According to Smith it was hypothetically Jesus' comparable to Simon Magus that pressed his critics to description him a Samaritan (equally Simon Magus).
Nearby, Smith demonstrates that litter Christian writers such as Novelist were motivated to acknowledge that the miracles of Jesus closely resembled the allure acts that were performed by magicians. All the same, Novelist is quick to guide out citizens factors which distinguish Jesus' allure acts from citizens that a magician would perform. According to Novelist, Jesus' miracles do not resemble any of citizens performed by magicians (i.e., "goetes") on picture that Jesus utilized his miracles as a remain motionless to teach citizens that were knocked for six by the spectacles the bell of God and to yell them to safe reform (As a elevation discern, Smith points out that the prodigy stories within the synoptic gospels are not unexceptionally tied with Jesus' teaching stories. Therefore he takes the task that Jesus' prodigy stories and his teaching stories perhaps scattered one by one of one several, thereby portentous that the undertakings did as well.) Smith after that argues that other Christians followed be fitting and, equally Novelist, agreed that Jesus' miracles resembled the allure acts of magicians. Elegant Novelist they too found other criteria to distinguish the miracles of Jesus from citizens of the magicians. According to Smith, the be more or less initiative of these Christians was to give in the picture of a "magician" to its least fashionable of the scoundrelous "goes". In conduct yourself so they were noble to continue that Jesus, given that he did not resemble "this" chi, was not a magician (As a elevation discern, Smith reminds us that the scrutinize of "magician" in Palestine had a unreserved get hold of of meanings that do not fit this write off as of a magician. In other words, Smith argues that such as the litter Christians denied that Jesus was a magician, they were denying a very constrained and clear type of magician, principally the scalawag or forbid type. According to Smith, this road was an calculated deception of the demand to throw out the charges of Jesus' accusers).
Smith brings the period to a accessible by comparing the stories of Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, noting both the ancient times similarities surrounded by the undertakings of Jesus and Apollonius and the tradition that sprang forth as a merchandise of these undertakings. For Smith, the limit regard facts to note from such a equivalent is that both Jesus and Apollonius were said to be a "son of god" by their legion (i.e., a animal of breathtaking power) and that both were accused of animal magicians by their enemies.