“If the alleged founder of the Christian religion is now, after the lapse of nineteen centuries, preached – more or less unsuccessfully however – in every corner of the globe, we are at liberty to think that the doctrines attributed to him would astonish and dismay him more than anyone else. A system of deliberate falsification was adopted from the first. How determined Irenaeus was to crush truth and build up a Church of his own on the mangled remains of the seven primitive churches mentioned in the Revelation, may be inferred from his quarrel with Ptolemaeus. And this is again a case of evidence against which no blind faith can prevail.
Ecclesiastical history assures us that Christ’s ministry was but of three years’ duration. There is a decided discrepancy on this point between the first three synoptics and the fourth gospel; but it was left for Irenaeus to show to Christian posterity that so early as A.D. 180 – the probable time when this Father wrote his works against heresies – even such pillars of the Church as himself either knew nothing certain about it, or deliberately lied and falsified dates to support their own views. So anxious was the worthy Father to meet every possible objection against his plans, that no falsehood, no sophistry, was too much for him. How are we to understand the following, and who is the falsifier in this case?
The argument of Ptolemaeus was that Jesus was too young to have taught anything of much importance; adding that “Christ preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month.” In this Ptolemaeus was very little at variance with the gospels. But Irenaeus, carried by his object far beyond the limits of prudence, from a mere discrepancy between one and three years, makes it ten and even twenty years! “Destroying his (Christ’s) whole work and robbing him of that age which is both necessary and more honorable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also, as a teacher, he excelled all others.” And then, having no certain data to furnish, he throws himself back on tradition, and claims that Christ had preached for over TEN years! (book ii., chapter 22, pages 4 and 5). In another place he makes Jesus fifty years old.
But we must proceed in our work of showing the various origins of Christianity, as also the sources from which Jesus derived his own ideas of God and humanity.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 