Description

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The Treatise of the Three Impostors (De Tribus Impostoribus) is a work of the Enlightenment which helped to advance the critique of religious dominance. Its first printing was accredited to the printer M.M. Rey, but may have existed in manuscript form for some time before it was published. The first trace we have of it as a manuscript comes from a letter to Prosper Marchand from his old friend, Fritsch. He reminds Marchand about how another friend, Charles Levier, got the manuscript of the treatise from the library of Benjamin Furly in 1711. It is almost certainly from the early eighteenth century and may be traceable to Marchand's circle that included Rousset de Missy. It is unlikely to have been around since the time of Frederick II which was part of the mythology of the manuscript. It was nominally a text handed down from generation to generation detailing how the three major figures of Biblical religion: Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses were in fact misrepresenting what had happened to them. At the time, this novel approach was used to allow thinkers to conceptualize a world where explanation ruled over mere "mystery", a term used for the miraculous intervention on earth by God. It was useful to both Deists and Atheists in legitimizing their world view and being a common source of intellectual reference.

In 1770, the great Enlightenment satirist Voltaire published a response to the treatise entitled Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs, which contains one of his best-known quotations, "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."