Loading...Do modern scholars ever produce “ancient” forgeries? In particular, have experts in the New Testament and early Christianity ever gone out on a limb and forged a Gospel, claiming to have discovered it, and tried then to convince others that it is ancient and authentic? Yup.
I’ve discussed some examples in earlier posts on the blog – e.g., just last year: https://ehrmanblog.org/teeth-will-be-provided/ But I don’t believe I have ever devoted any attention to the most famous instance, a “discovery” of an ancient text by a renowned scholar, a text that some other scholars claim he himself forged. Others very much think it really is authentic. The debate focuses on a brilliant academic named Morton Smith, and his alleged (or real) discovery of “The Secret Gospel of Mark.”
I devoted an entire discussion to Smith and the Secret Gospel twenty years ago in my book Lost Christianities; the book is about different kinds of early Christianity (Gnostics, Marcionites, Jewish Christians, etc.), and is particularly interested in the kinds of books they claimed provided “apostolic” support for their views. I won’t reproduce the whole chapter on the Secret Gospel here, but I will give the opening bits, hopefully to spark a bit of interest. It really is an extraordinarily intriguing issue, even though most lay folk don’t know about it.
My chapter
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Hi Dr Ehrman – I have a question regarding Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration.
What types of bodies would Jewish readers assume they had or what did the author intend their bodies were? I’ve heard you mention Jews believed in the body and soul being one, so if Moses and Elijah appear, are they in new, resurrected bodies? And is this supposed to signal that the resurrection has begun before Jesus’ resurrection?
Thanks
Good question. I don’t really know. I’m assuming that they are like “Samuel” who appears to Saul in the story of the Witch of Endor, come back from the dead in the bodies and clothes they had before. … But since it’s clearly a symbolic narrative — showing that Jesus was proclaimed by the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) — I’m not sure Mark has a literal understanding of their bodies in mind in any sense.
Interesting. I’ll have to look into the Samuel example. Thank you for taking the time to respond.
Today, what’s your opinion on this matter? Do you think it is fake?
I’ll be getting to that. But yes, that’s what I suspect.
Wow! reading this chapter 4 of ‘Lost Christianity’ and comparing it with other writings concerning the ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’ from the Internet, this controversy has all the mystery and intrigue of the JFK assassination and a Dan Brown novel: documents that are discovered, photographed and then go missing (secret service itinerary from 11/22/63 ‘s seen by several people that go missing along with Oswald’s intelligent files;) different scholars lining up on either side of the issue (Mark Lane, Josiah Thompson, Henry Hirt VS John McAdam, Gerald Posner;) accusations of forgery, personal justification of homosexuality by scholars supportive and opposed to Morton Smith.
for Dr. Bart: you wrote about this in your book first published in 2003. In that book, you don’t seem to have a strong opinion. With so much that has been written since 2003, have you any more definite an opinion since then?
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I’ll be getting to that, but I’m more strongly of the opinion that Smith forged it now.
Fascinating. This is is the academic equivalent of the (well documented) Phenomenon of firefighters who go around setting fires.
Slightly OT: Was the author of the gospel of John Jewish? (I seem to remember you wrote about it, but I can’t find it my collection of your writings – which is incomplete, I admit).
It’s debated (hotly). I tend to think not. He refers to “the Jews” as Jesus’ enemies and speaks to them of “your law” — sounds like an outsider to me.
Hi Bart. Unrelated question. The KJV translation of John 1:1 is ‘and the Word was God’. However, I noted that in the Greek, the word ‘theos’ occurs without the definite article. Therefore, doesn’t ‘theos’ mean a god, that is, the singular of ‘theoi’ in John 10:34? In that case, the translation would be ‘and the word was a god’. Is it permissible to treat ‘theos’ as an adjective? In that case, the translation would be ‘and godly was the word’. What do you think?
Ah, right, it’s a complicated issue. The rule most translators follow is that in a simple copulative sentence in Greek — x is y — where both x and y are substantives, the subject must have the article to make it definite, and because of the “to be” verb, the predicate is understood to be definite as well, without the article. So: The Word was God as opposed to The Word was a god. (In the Greek the predicate appears first)
I read recently that the New World Translation translates John 1 as ‘a god’.
Yup.
That translation has been heavily criticised.
Ah, right, it’s a complicated issue. The rule most translators follow is that in a simple copulative sentence in Greek — x is y — where both x and y are substantives, the subject must have the article to make it definite, and because of the “to be” verb, the predicate is understood to be definite as well, without the article. So: The Word was God as opposed to The Word was a god. (In the Greek the predicate appears first)
Thanks Bart, that’s interesting. But I’m still a bit confused. Is it grammatically correct to write ‘ho theos en ho logos’, and wouldn’t that be an unambiguous expression of ‘the word was God’? And if you wanted to say ‘the word was a god’ as opposed to ‘the word was God’, how would you express that in Greek?
Yes, you could express it a number of ways. The author’s expression is not very ambiguous, if you understand the grammatical rule. To say “a god” you likely would use the adjective THEION (the Word was a divine being) I suppose.
Yeah, I don’t think the KJV translation is convincing. Theos is not an ordinary noun because when it is accompanied by the definite article it becomes a proper noun. It is similar to ilah in Arabic, which means ‘a god’, but al-ilah, which is truncated to al-lah, means ‘God’. Under no circumstances can ilah mean God, and I suspect John used theos in the same way.
I don’t think the KJV translation makes sense contextually either. John is very clear throughout his account that Jesus is subordinate to God, the Father. According to John, Jesus is divine in the sense that he executes the will of God, for example he speaks that which God wants him to speak. In effect, he is God’s spokesperson on Earth. Moses fulfilled the same role and is referred to as ‘a god’ in Exodus 7:1-2.
Do you think the Christian doctrine that Jesus is God has influenced the KJV translation of John 1:1?
I don’t really pay attentipon to the KJV when thinking about how to translate the Greek. Since the subject of the copulative verb has an article the predicate is understood to be predicate too in most cases.
Dr. Ehrman:
Following up on your note, in your recent debate with Justin Bass, he raised a few points that you didn’t get to address meaningfully, given the interruptions and argument that often ensued. One of his comments was that people worldwide throughout history have dreamt of or seen Jesus (which purportedly doesn’t happen with other religious figures/contexts), including people who’ve never heard of him (you stated that people who don’t know about Jesus don’t dream of him, and Justin countered with Muslims in the Middle East knowing nothing about Jesus but dreaming of him as a “man in white”), and that people in other faiths, like Jewish historian/theologian Pinchas Lapide, have found the resurrection compelling as an historical event, so that’s further support for its veracity, since this again doesn’t happen with figures in other religions.
Justin made a few more points, which I’ll post and hope you can kindly comment on also, but what do you think of the above, to start? Thanks very much.
I think it’s completely bogus. He’s basing that on hearsay. I’ve never seen any documented evidence of anyone seeing jesus without ever having heard of him. (When I was a fundamentalist like Justin we used to hear all sorts of things we repeated, of all sorts of miracles for example — Christians multiplying jugs of koolaid at picnics; people with missing limbs having them grow back; chariots being discovered at the bottom of the Red Sea; the unavoidability of someone converting if they would read the Gospel of John from beginning to end; etc. etc.). As to someone being convinced by ther eligious claims of other religions — it happens all the time, obviously.
Dr. Ehrman:
Thanks for your last. Justin also said that there’s nothing in “the literature” where an enemy of Christianity converts to the faith (citing Dale Allison), and discounted instances like the Baal Shem Tov because no enemies of his converted following some associated experience, and so that highly unusual and unique-to-Christianity aspect is further evidence that Jesus was resurrected.
What do you think of this?
I think Justin as a rule should do more homework. I can’t remember the context in which he’s saying this or for what purpose, but there have been lots and lots of hard-core atheists who have converted to Xty, e.g. (Is that what he’s talking about? I don’t remember). Or what about, if we want a different religion, Sabbatai Zvi?
Dr. Ehrman:
He was saying that it’s unprecedented where an enemy of the faith converts, especially no one notable like Paul, and that this is a line of evidence supporting the reality of the resurrection, because the vision must have been genuine if a persecutor of the faith becomes its apostle.
His last argument was that Asclepius and Moroni and the like are not appearing to people, but cross-culturally, Jesus is appearing to people, and that this dovetails with Jesus’s claim that his gospel should go to all the world, and so that’s fulfillment of a specific claim, which is unique to Christianity.
What do you think of this? And finally, what do you think about his “logic trap” that since you conceded that if Mary appears to all those people, that would be strong evidence for the resurrected Jesus, so you need to concede that too?
Depends what you mean by enemy. Most atheists are “enemies” of Christianity and many Christians are “enemies” of atheism. And many of those who were once enemies convert in both directions, all the time. I was an enemy of atheists for many years, but I converted to join their rans. Does that prove God was behind it?