Couchoud dismissed the external evidence of Jewish and Roman witnesses (Josephus, Talmud, Tacitus, and Suetonius). Couchoud also dismissed the romantic exaggerations and vagueness of Ernest Renan, but praised Alfred Loisy as a great modern critic. Couchoud's fundamental idea is that the figure of Jesus Christ was conceived originally in Jewish consciousness as a purely 'heavenly Man' announcing a cosmic transformation, and amplified and diffused through the mystery books ("apocalypses"). "It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood the Gospels on paper. Thus Christ was created", as a "literary creation".