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Loading...In my previous post I tried to show that the disciples of Jesus were almost certainly not literate. Yet we have books allegedly written by them. Is it possible that people like Peter, John, James, and Jude used a secretary to write their books for them? So that the apostles in the ultimate sense were the “author” but someone else composed the writing for them?
To answer the question with something other than common sense (that is, common guessing), we need to know about secretarial practices in antiquity. As it turns out, we do know some things, as I’ll explain in this post and the next.
Again, this is taken, in slightly edited form, from my book Forgery and Counterforgery, which goes into a great bit of detail about what we know about writing practices in the ancient world.
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The notion that early Christian authors used secretaries …. is so widespread as to be virtually ubiquitous. There is no need here to cite references; one need only consult the commentaries, not only on the Pauline corpus but on 1 and 2 Peter as well. At the same time, almost no one who invokes the secretary hypothesis sees any reason to adduce any evidence for it. Instead, it is simply widely assumed that since authors used secretaries – as Paul, at least, certainly did (Rom. 16:22; Cor. 16:21; Gal. 6:11) — these otherwise unknown persons contributed not only to correct or improve the style of a writing of a document but also to provide contents (that is, to compose the work). There is a good reason that commentators who propose the hypothesis so rarely cite any evidence to support it. The ancient evidence is very thin, to the point of being non-existent.
The fullest study is by E. Randolph Richards, who is to be commended for combing all the literary sources and papyri remains in order to uncover everything that can reasonably be said about secretaries and their functions in the Roman world during our period. (The Secretary in the Letters of Paul WUNT 2.42 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991]). He explores every reference and allusion in the key authors: Cicero, Pliny, Plutarch, Suetonius, and so on; he plows through all the relevant material remains from Oxyrhynchus and elsewhere. It is a full and useful study, valuable for its earnest attempt to provide the fullest accounting of evidence possible. Somewhat less commendable are the conclusions that Richards draws, at times independently of this evidence.
Richards maintains that
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You said that good. It was more better than, say…wait – I’m going to use my secretary.
You were very eloquent in your book “Forgery and Counterforgery”. I highly commend you for your depth and unbiased approach to the subject.
Well. I’m glad you looked it.
I *feel* like your latest posts on how we know these epistles are forgeries are your more refined posts and I have to thank you for the patience in dealing with Christian critics-theyve forced you to make really info dense blog posts with all the details that tackle the underlying suppositions they make in attempt to defend the authenticity of those epistles.
I have just read an irritating Christian response on Amazon which, to his credit the reviewer was clearly trying to tackle your arguments (the whole thing amounted to BUT COULDNT IT HAVE BEEN LIKE A GENIUS LITERATE SECRETARY WHO KNEW GREEK SCRIPTURE ETC ETC) and reading this is such a relief. Maybe in 5 years the latest posts you have on how we know the forged docs of the NT are forged will be somehow even more refined.
I admit dismay it seems like critical Islamic scholars haven’t really matured in the way critical biblical scholars have. They seem to think a bunch of random rock inscriptions in safaiatic and arabic or Syrian lettering for merchant prices are somehow proof Arabs were widely literate in Muhammad’s (AS) era, something pretty much all early records fail to show.
At the dawn of the 20th Century, the literacy rate among Indian men living under British colonization was approximately 10%. Jayant Pandurang Nayaka; Syed Nurullah (1974), “A students’ history of education in India (1800–1973)” (6 ed.). Macmillan Press. Fluency in English was much lower than 10%. Because of this, we can safely say that Srinivasa Ramanujan did not actually speak English nor comprehend higher levels of mathematics, requiring English literacy. Correspondence and works claiming to be from Ramanujan were clearly forgeries.
From the previous post “Josephus himself indicates that he could not write literary Greek without assistance from Greek speakers (Contra Apionem 1.9).”
Doesn’t the reference just say he had assistance in learning Greek?
“I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue; and by these means I composed the history of those transactions”
If he didn’t get assistance in composing literary Greek wouldn’t that mean the NT writers could also have received assistance in learning literary Greek?
They could have if they were among the top 1% of the socio-economic class as Josphus was.
Hi Bart, You suggest that only the top 1% of the socio-economic class in first-century Rome would have a secretary.
1. Does that mean that Paul was among the top 1% of the socio-economic class?
2. Or did Paul have a wealthy benefactor who helped to pay for a secretary?
Sorry — I was referring to Aramaic-speaking Jews in the land of Israel. And I was not referring to secretaries but to Greek tutors who could train an otherwise literate person to write fluent Greek.
I see that I missed the distinction between an ad hoc secretary and a long-term tutor, my bad.
Srinivasa Ramanujan wasn’t part of the top 1% of the socio-economic class, and yet he was able to learn and publish in English. Aren’t we overstating the socio-economic importance of the author, as compared to who might be willing to assist that author?
I think you need to consider seriously the time and the place. In *theory* of course most anything is possible, but we have to look seriously into what we know about educational systems in antiquity as opposed to modern British colonies. A good place to start is with the work of Rafael Cribbiore; I think I’ve already mentioned the classic by William Harris and the importance of teh analysis in Catherine Hezser.
There should be a fifth hypothesis about “secretaries:” the writings were done by early Roman fiction writers who were interested in the Jewish experience (see Robyn Faith Walsh).
Maybe you’ve covered this in other posts (about the formation of canon?) but on what basis did church leaders at the time conclude that the Pauline letters now determined to be inauthentic were in fact authentic? To start with, many people must have thought, over an extended period of time, that Paul was the actual author. But did church leaders consider all letters previously attributed to Paul to be authentic? Weren’t many such leaders highly educated and able to to discern big differences in content and style between the letters? I’m guessing the inauthentic ones had been hallowed by long tradition and broad usage—and that they were not terribly bizarre in their own right.
As a follow on, were there ancient, orthodox Christian leaders who critically questioned —before the canon’s formation — the authenticity of some of the letters long attributed to Paul? And did so primarily on the basis of grammar, style, and content-in comparison with the ones they thought authentic-for reasons similar to those of modern critical scholars? Who were some of them?
The 13 that became canonical were pretty well accepted everywhere in orthodox circles whenever they were mentioned.
The natural assumption (then as now) was (is) that if a book claims to be written by an author, that was probably the author — UNLESS there are compelling reasons to think otherwise. The early Christian readers of, say, Ephesians, saw no compelling reasons to think otherwise. They DID think there were compelling reasons for thinking otherwise with 3 Corinthians, however. Modern scholars have developed far more sophisticated methods of literary analysis that allow them to come to other judgments — not just with respect to the alleged writings of Paul but also the alleged writings of, say, Homer, Plato, Lucian of Samosata, Justin, Tertullian, and and and….
Hi Bart, I imagine that understanding debates about New Testament authorship depend on understanding the classifications of New Testament era languages. For example, I understand that the Galilean disciples (not the Zealots) spoke some dialect of Aramaic. Could you please answer the following related questions:
1. When Scripture was read in a Galilean temple, what was the language?
2. When Scripture was read in a Jerusalem temple, what was the language?
3. When the Gospel of John refers to the Hebrew language in 5:2, 19:13, 19:17, 19:20, and 20:16, what language is that?
4. When Acts refers to the Hebrew language in 21:40, 22:2, and 26:14, what language is that?
Please pardon four questions in one post 🙂
1. THere weren’t any temples in Galilee, just the one temple in Jerusalem. If Scriptures were read in synagogues, though, it would have been in Hebrew. 2. Hebrew. 3 and 4. Usually Aramaic (ancients sometimes called Aramaic Hebrew — both are Semitic)
Thank you, Bart. You picked up that I meant to refer to synagogues instead of my erroneous reference to the Temple. I’m asking these questions to better understand the linguistic landscape that is the background to debates about New Testament authorship.
So in Jerusalem and Galilee, all the Jews spoke Aramaic while all the readings in the synagogues were in Hebrew.
1. Were most the of Jews in Galilee and Jerusalem bilingual, that is, Hebrew and Aramaic Hebrew?
2. Or what percent of the Jews could understand the Hebrew Scriptures that were read in the synagogues and the Temple?
3. When the Galilean apostles preached, did they speak in Aramaic Hebrew and sometimes quote Scriptures in Hebrew? or how did that work?
1. We don’t know. Eventually the Targumim were developed, where the Hebrew text was translated into Aramaic for those who didn’t know Hebrew. I’m not sure we know if most Jews could understand written Hebrew, but they rarely would have spoken it. 2. We don’t know. 3. They presumably spoke their spoken language, Aramaic. We don’t know if/how they quoted Scripture.
Dictating in one language and writing in another presents additional hurtles to be overcome.
Once complete, the results wouldn’t be verifiable by the author. A second translation in the read back might raise interesting surprises along the way.
It seems that beyond the scholarly examinations of content, style, similarities between alleged authors, there is the ultimate question: why would Peter, James, and other genuine observers of the life of Jesus care to write or dictate anything at all, and if so, what would have been their primary message, or telling? I would think that rather than writing letters of encouragement to fellow christians, they would have written- or dictated- something closer to gospels, that is, testify to what they observed and experienced. It is such a shame that we have no witness testimonies from those Apostles who knew Jesus. Do I make sense? So the elimination process would be as much a “would Peter have written this rather than that” question no less than all the other parameters.
On a related issue, it would appear that Jesus could read, according to Luke. Finding his place in a scroll with no vowels or punctuation requires a reader. Mistakes could not be made. It had to be perfect. Another question is how the synagogue in nameless Nazareth could have acquired an Isaiah scroll. They likely would only have had the Pentateuch. Or perhaps Jesus was reading in a more prominent synagogue.
It appears they did not restrict themselves to letters. We have lots of Gospels that are forged as well. But there are reasons to write letters — not to express views about Jesus’ words and deeds but to direct Christian actions, beliefs, and views in the name of an authority. And yes, Luke 4 is almost certainly a legendary narrative, for these reasons and others. (Check out the attempted execution scene, foiled as usual…)
Dr. Ehrman,
Most scholars say that 1 Cor. 11:23ff is part of handed down tradition, but I saw an interview with someone who was saying that the language of
“For I received FROM THE LORD what I also passed on to you” indicates that Paul got it in a vision. However, could it be said that as a practical matter 1 Cor. 11:23ff refers to something earthly leading up to the historical crucifixion of Jesus, so it would not make sense as something seen in a vision, what do you make of this passage?
If it was in a vision, it would have been a revelation from Jesus to Paul after the event happened. jesus would have explained what it was all about, possibly at the time of Paul’s conversion. I”m not sure that’s the best explanation, but it’s certainly a possibility.
Dr. Ehrman,
So you would say the best explaination of 1 Cor. 11:23ff would be that it is traditional material?… Could “from the Lord” simply mean that it was a handed down tradition about Jesus?
That’s my guess.