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Other NT Writings

The Close Connections of James and Paul

I continue here my comparison of the wording of the book of James to the writing of Paul, in order to establish the point that whoever wrote James, it was someone who was directly responding to the letters of Paul (because he imitates Paul’s wording while refuting his views.) This will lead then to my argument – not yet made – that the author of James is in fact writing a “counter-forgery” – that is he is writing a forgery in order to counter later writings forged in the name of Paul. (I know this can be confusing: but I’m not saying he’s writing directly against Paul. He may *think* he is, but my argument is that he will be opposed to later writings claiming to be Paul; that argument will start in my next post.) Here now is the second example of the borrowing of Pauline writings: ************************************************** James 2:24 and Gal. 2:16 and Rohhhm. 3:28 James 2:24: You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone Gal. 2:16: [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-12T12:12:54-04:00August 2nd, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Is James Responding to Paul?

I now begin to explain why someone might have wanted to (falsely) claim to be James the brother of Jesus when writing the letter attributed to him in the NT. My basic argument is that the letter is being written to oppose the writings of Paul (at least as they were being *interpreted*: whether Paul himself would have agreed with the interpretation of his views that they oppose is a completely different question), and the author needed someone of the stature of James in order to make the refutation convincing, both because James was the head of the Jerusalem church and because it was widely thought that he was at loggerheads with Paul. I have taken this again from my book Forgery and Counterforgery. It’s written for scholars, but I’ve tried to make it accessible by explaining the terms I use and translating the Greek. This will take a few posts, so here’s the start, where I lay the groundwork: the letter of James does seem to be responding to the writings of Paul. ************************************************************** [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-04T13:11:34-04:00July 31st, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Does James (the Book) Have the Same Concerns as James (the Man)? Part 2

This will be my last post mounting the case that the brother of Jesus, James, did not write the letter of James. Here I get into some of the most substantive issues: what does this author consider to be the most important aspects of his Christian faith, and how does this stack up against what we know otherwise of James of Jerusalem? And are there indications that in fact he is addressing issues that simply do not appear relevant to Christianity in its earliest stages? ***************************************************** In light of the previous post, it is interesting to notice which sins and failures occupy the author of the letter of James (given the dominant interest of James of Jerusalem, so far as we can know, on the importance of strict Torah observance). They are by and large not explicit violations of the Torah but moral shortcomings such as showing favoritism, not controlling one’s speech, and failing to help those in need. So too, what is “true religion” for this author? It has little to do with specific [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T17:03:11-04:00July 28th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity|

Does the Book of James Have the Same Concerns as the Historical James?

I continue now with my discussion of whether the book of James was actually written, as it implicitly claims, by the historical James, the brother of Jesus. The issue is much bigger than whether James could write (a topic I discussed in my earlier posts). Are the issues/concerns/interests of this book at all consonant with what we know about James himself? The question is rarely asked, but it's absolutely key. Here is what I say in my book about it: ********************************************************************* Other arguments support the claim that James the brother of Jesus almost certainly did not write the letter. Of key importance is the fact that precisely what we know about James of Jerusalem otherwise is what we do not find in this letter. The earliest accounts of James – one of them from a contemporary – indicate that he was especially known as an advocate for the view that Jewish followers of Jesus should maintain their Jewish identity by following the Jewish Law. This seems to be the clear indication of Gal. 2:12 in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-02T23:27:41-04:00July 26th, 2019|Catholic Epistles|

The Brother of Jesus and the Book of James

Finally I get to explaining reasons why the brother of Jesus, in my judgment, almost certainly did not write the book of James. The explanation will come in two parts, or possibly three. In this one I build on my last post, by arguing that it seems completely implausible that James *could* have written the letter. (For those of you inclined to think he used a "secretary" to do it for him -- I've posted on this a bunch in the past, to show why that didn't happen; just search for "secretary" on the blog). In my next post or two I'll give additional reasons, for those of you not completely enthralled with questions of who could read and write in antiquity. Both discussions are edited versions of what I say in my book Forgery and Counterforgery. *********************************************************** There are solid reasons for thinking that whoever wrote this letter, it was not James, the brother of Jesus. The first, as already mentioned, is that James of Nazareth could almost certainly not write. Whoever produced this [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-29T17:32:24-04:00July 24th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Reader’s Questions|

Could Most People Write in Antiquity?

I am ready now to discuss in a couple of posts the issue of whether Jesus' brother James actually wrote the book of James, or if it was someone else wanting his readers to *think* it was him. To make sense of what I want to say about it at the outset (it will take a couple of posts), I've decided I need to re-post an old post on a broader and even more interesting question: who actually *could* write back then? Today most anyone can (just, well, check out the Internet!). But who could in, say, first-century Palestine. It seems so counter-intuitive that many people simply, without looking at any of the evidence, intuitively don't believe it. But the answer is, very, very few people indeed. A tiny slice of a minority. Here is what I said about the matter in the original post (devoted specifically to the question of whether Jesus' disciple Peter could have written 1 Peter). ************************************************************************************* In his now-classic study of ancient literacy, William Harris gave compelling reasons for thinking [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-20T00:46:20-05:00July 22nd, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Reflections and Ruminations|

Did James Write James?

In two previous posts I gave an overview of the letter of James, one of the real gems hidden away in the New Testament (it takes 15 minutes to read it, max. Try it! Great little book.) Now I want to devote several posts to address the question I was originally asked about it. Was it really written by James, the brother of Jesus, as traditionally claimed? I deal with that question at some length in my book Forgery and Counterforgery. I think the discussion is accessible to the non-expert. Here is how I begin (some of this has been edited to make it slightly more user-friendly). It ends up being an important issue: do we have a writing from Jesus’ own brother? Now *that* would be interesting! But, alas, I think not. *************************************************** The letter of James begins simply enough: “James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings” (1:1). A number of persons are named James in the New Testament, including the father [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T12:07:31-04:00July 21st, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions|

Is the Book of James Attacking the Teachings of Paul?

Yesterday I began answering a question about the New Testament book of James. The most interesting thing about the book, for most readers, is that it *seems* at least to be attacking a view vigorously espoused by the apostle Paul. Are these authors at odds with each other? Here is where I pick up on that discussion in my book Forged. My sense is that a lot of readers of the blog will not anticipate where I stand on the issue. ************************************************************************** There is one issue that the author is particularly concerned with, however. It is an issue that reflects a bone of contention with other Christians. There are some Christians who are evidently saying that to be right with God, all one needs is faith; for them, doing “good works” is irrelevant to salvation, so long as you believe. James thinks this is precisely wrong, that if you do not do good deeds, then you obviously don’t have faith. What use is it, my brothers, if a person says he has faith but has [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-02T23:28:31-04:00July 14th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Letters|

One of My Favorite Letters in the New Testament: The Book of James

Sometimes the questions I get from readers are short and to the point, but require long answers over a number of posts. Here’s one of the recent ones: QUESTION: Could you write a blog on the book of James and why it is considered a forgery? RESPONSE: I think this question deserves an entire thread of responses. I haven’t talked much about the letter of James on the blog (at least so far as I can remember and tell!). So why not? It’s a short “book” – just five brief chapters. You can read it in fifteen minutes. Go ahead! What I say about it will then make better sense. The best known feature of the letter is that it *seems* to be opposing the writings and teachings of Paul. But does it? Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, thought so. He included the book only as an appendix to the New Testament. I talk about the letter, and the reasons I don’t think it was actually written by James, the brother of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-29T17:03:20-04:00July 12th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions|

How Would an Early Christian “Know” Which Books Peter Wrote?

So if there were lots of books in circulation that claimed to be written by the apostle Peter, why did some of them (1 and 2 Peter) come to be accepted both as his and as canonical scripture, and others come to be deemed forgeries and excluded from the canon? The first point to stress is that Christians in the second, third, and fourth centuries had no real way of knowing which, if any, of these books Peter wrote. They were living many decades or even centuries after the books had first been put in circulation. The books were passed around from one church to the other before *anyone* on record claimed that they really were or really were not written by Peter. And how would they know? They almost certainly didn’t have any “insider information.” Where would their information have come from? Simply from other people who said so, one way or the other. And 99.9% of these people accepting, or rejecting, this book or another were not specialists trained in sophisticated modes of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T00:19:20-04:00December 18th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Christian Apocrypha|

The Books of Peter

I return now to the thread I had been working on before devoting the last few posts to the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. If you recall, some time ago I indicated that I had become a bit obsessed with a rather interesting if largely unasked question, of why the Apocalypse of Peter did not make it into the New Testament but the book of 2 Peter did. When I started on that thread, I thought it would take three or four posts, but as I got into it I realized that more and more background information was needed – and it turned into a rather longish thread, not only about what the Apocalypse of Peter is about (the first Christian account we have of a guided tour of heaven and hell, given to the apostle Peter himself, where he sees the glories of heaven for the saints and, in far more graphic detail, the torments of hell for the sinners) – but also about how we got the New Testament at all, that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T11:39:09-04:00December 17th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity|

Could Peter Have “Written” 1 and 2 Peter Some Other Way?

Here is the last of my three posts digging down deeper into the question of whether Peter would have, or could have, written the books we now call 1 and 2 Peter, composed in highly literate Greek by someone skilled in Greek composition. ****************************** It should come as no surprise that Peter could not write Greek (or Aramaic, for that matter). As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level. According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi , a Greek word that literally means “unlettered,” that is, “illiterate.” And so, is it possible that Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter? We have seen good reasons for him not writing 2 Peter, and some reason for thinking he didn’t write 1 Peter. But it is highly probable that in fact he could not write at all. I should point out that the book of 1 Peter is written by a highly educated, Greek-speaking Christian who is intimately familiar with the Jewish Scriptures in their [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-01T13:25:31-05:00November 30th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity|

Seriously. How Many People in Antiquity Could Write?

I have received some push-back from readers who object to my view that Simon Peter, Jesus’ disciple, a fisherman from rural Galilee whose native language was Aramaic, living among lower-class people who spoke Aramaic, almost certainly could not have written a highly stylized and sophisticated Greek treatise such as we find in the book of 1 Peter. My sense is that I will never convince anyone who thinks that it is simply “common sense” that of course he could learn to write Greek if he wanted to and did so at the end of his life. But I’m bound and determined to try! (It used to be “common sense” that the sun revolved around the earth, after all…. Just because it’s something we’ve always heard and thought doesn’t make it true!) I’ve dealt with literacy issues on the blog before, but I think I need to give a fuller explanation of my views. The fullest is in my book Forgery and Counterforgery, but I”ve decided not to go there, since it is not really written [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-01T13:29:47-05:00November 27th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Wrote 1 Peter?

This post is to close out my discussion of 1 Peter, from the New Testament. Who actually wrote it? Spoiler alert: we don’t know, but it probably wasn’t Peter. On several occasions on the blog I’ve talked about the issue, most recently at length in a repost earlier this year: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-peter-use-a-secretary-for-his-writings-a-blast-from-the-past/ That’s where I give the fuller story. For now I give just the simple side of things, as I lay it out in my undergraduate textbook on the New Testament. Following this post I will start talking about how and why the books assigned to Peter did or did not make it into the New Testament. If you recall, the whole reason I got into this thread in the first place (which I foolishly thought would take 2-3 posts) is that I became intrigued by the question of why 2 Peter made it into the New Testament but the Apocalypse of Peter did not. As I will explain in the next post, I have far fewer questions about 1 Peter (which, like the other [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-27T16:08:53-04:00November 26th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity|

The Situation Behind the (“Forged”) Book of 1 Peter

I am in the midst of talking about works attributed to Peter, the chief disciple, which have come down to us from the early church. I should be clear, I think each and every one of these writings was “forged.” I don’t think Peter himself wrote any of them – 1 Peter, 2 Peter, the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, or any of the other Petrine works that we now have. Each was written by a different author, but each author claimed to be Peter, Jesus’ right hand man. The book most widely accepted in the early church as having actually come from Peter is the book we call 1 Peter, from the New Testament. Yesterday I started talking about what is in it. Today I follow up on that discussion by explaining its apparent historical context and the approach the pseudonymous author takes in dealing with the problems he (and his ostensible audience) are confronting. Again, this is taken from my textbook on the NT. ***************************************************** The Context of Persecution Those [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-12T12:51:30-04:00November 25th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity|

The So-Called First Letter of Peter

I am nearly at the end of my discussion of “Petrine” works in early Christianity, the books that some early Christian or another had been written by Peter, the closest disciple to Jesus in the New Testament. There are other books connected with Peter that I have chosen not to talk about, at least at this point, including legendary accounts of his missionary activities, some of which are really interesting and were, at one point, highly influential. At this stage, though, I’m talking only about books that we know were thought to be legitimate parts of the New Testament in one circle or another: 2 Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Gospel of Peter. And it has occurred to me (just this morning!) that I haven’t said anything yet about the one book connected with Peter that almost *everyone* we know of (who said anything about the matter) thought was part of canonical Scripture: the book of 1 Peter. I will want to say a few things about this book before getting back to [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T00:48:55-04:00November 23rd, 2018|Catholic Epistles|

Introducing the Book of 2 Peter

To make sense of the difficulty I’ve been having in figuring out what they Apocalypse of Peter did not make it into the NT, but the book of 2 Peter did, I need to say a bit about the latter – and probably about *other* Petrine books that did or did not make It (which also claim to be written by Peter even though the author was someone else). Here is a brief introduction to the book of 2 Peter, taken from my textbook on the New Testament. ******************************************************************* 2 PETER For a variety of reasons, there is less debate about the authorship of 2 Peter than any other pseudepigraphon in the New Testament. The vast majority of critical scholars agree that whoever wrote the book, it was not Jesus’ disciple Simon Peter. As was the case with 1 Peter, this author is a relatively sophisticated and literate Greek-speaking Christian, not an Aramaic-speaking Jewish peasant. At the same time, the writing style of the book is so radically different from that of 1 Peter that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T13:29:47-04:00November 13th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity|

Did Peter Use a Secretary for his Writings? A Blast from the Past

Looking through some posts of blogs-past I came across this interesting one from six years ago now! I think it's an intriguing question, and the answer is not what most people would probably think. QUESTION: What do you make of the author's reference to a Silvanus in 1 Peter 5:12? Could it be that this really is Peter saying he used a secretary to write this letter? I know you said there is little to no evidence that people used secretaries, but what do you make of this reference to a Silvanus? RESPONSE: Yes, this is a question that I deal with in my book Forged, and that I deal with at yet greater length in the book coming out in the fall, Forgery and Counterforgery. Several points are important to make about the question, but first a bit of background. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, JOIN!! Background. Scholars have long noted that the book of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T13:04:01-04:00July 26th, 2018|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions|

Can (or Should) We Change the Canon of Scripture? A Blast from the Past

Digging around in posts from five years ago now, I came across this one --as interesting to me now as it was then! Hope you think so too. It's a response to a penetrating question. QUESTION: Given the criteria used to determine what would go on to constitute the New Testament canon, how is it that Hebrews and the book of Revelation remain part of the canon? I understand that Christians came to believe that they were authored by the apostles which is why they made it into the canon, but we now know that they weren't authored by Paul or John..so why are they still in the NT? RESPONSE: Interesting idea! I sometimes get asked what I would exclude from the canon if given the choice, and I almost always say 1 Timothy (because of what it says about women in 2:11-15, and how the passage has been used for such horrible purposes over the years). But, well, it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t get a vote. And that’s the problem with Hebrews [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:14:34-04:00June 8th, 2017|Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

My Work Habits the Letter allegedly by Jesus’ Own Brother: Mailbag 2/12/2017

I will be addressing two quite disparate questions in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag: one about my work habits and one about the New Testament epistle of James: how do we know that the author expected his readers to think (or know) that he was actually the brother of Jesus himself? If you have questions you’d like me to address in a future Mailbag, send them along! QUESTION: I notice you seem to get quite a bit done in a day (more than most people I know,) and that you have been doing that from a fairly young age (at one point you even experimented with decreasing your sleeping hours, If memory serves). The biggest hindrance to productivity for me is procrastination (like right now for example). How do you deal with it? You must feel it too sometimes. Did you always have an easier time concentrating than other folks? Did you learn it early in life (maybe by watching your parents)? If so, what techniques do you employ to deal with it? RESPONSE: [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-29T17:08:34-04:00February 12th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

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