Loading...Last week I tried to show the contrast between my trade books for general audiences and my academic books for scholars, by posting the very beginning of my book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, a tradebook, 2020) and the beginning of my book Jouneys to Heaven and Hell in the Early Christian Tradition (Yale University, due out April 5 2022; a scholarly book). The general topics are similar, as you can see by the titles, but they are not actually about the same thing. And the level of discourse is different.
So too with my books on forgery — I wrote one for a general audience (Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible Authors are Not Who We Think They Are Harper San Francisco, 2011) and the other for academics (Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in the Early Christian Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2013). In this case the differences are more obvious, I think, from both the titles and the openings.
Here is how the popular one begins, starting with a couple of human interest stories
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Whenever I teach about forgery, I think back to my first lecture on the subject, twenty-five years ago now, at Rutgers University. As odd as this might seem, forgery was on everyone’s mind at the time. Only a few months earlier forgery had been front page news for weeks in major newspapers around the world. The diaries of Adolf Hitler had been discovered, authenticated by one of the world’s leading experts on the Führer, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. The diaries had been purchased for millions of dollars, first by Stern magazine in Germany, then by Rupert Murdoch for English publishing rights. But just as they started to appear, they had been shown to be worthless forgeries.[1]
The forger of the diaries was a West German named Konrad Kujau. Ironically, even before he perpetuated the biggest con job of modern times, his friends called him Connie. Kujau had grown up as a poor working class fellow; at an early age he discovered an artistic ability that led him to a career of forgery. He spent some time in jail as a young adult, having been caught forging lunch vouchers. But he had a number of aliases and the people to whom he sold the Hitler diaries were not assiduous in making a background check.
The Hitler Diaries consisted of
The other anecdotes in this Intro are pretty interesting. I’ve posted a good deal on forgery in early Christianity, dealing with the obvious question of whether there are any in the NT. Want to read about it? Join the blog! Click here for membership options
Is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist considered historical?
Very much so. It’s independently attested in numerous sources in various ways and … and there are other things. I talk about in my book Jesus: Apcalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. for a quick discussoin of another reason, see https://ehrmanblog.org/the-criterion-of-dissimilarity-in-practice/
Dr bart which additional verse in NT that were in general public bible before scholars found they were fake and erase it and when that fake verse were added, for example like johannine comma, mark ending, adulterous woman and many small detail , how long they were in bible before bible criticism being established ,were they in every general bible like as if we read our bible now?
Scholars started realizing problems like this in the early 16th century when they needed to decide which manuscripts to use when producing a printed edition of the Bible: the manuscripts differed in key ways.
So you said before the printing edition the bible among people were different? And have fake verse like mark ending, johannine comma, adultorous woman, and all that well known fake verse that we know today after scholarship? And folks dont know they were fake ? Also literally variant reading everywhere without aparatus correction? Right?
Yes, before and after printing different Bibles are/were different and most people don’t/didn’t know.
Dr bART whether the DSS more incline to masoratic or to the septuagint, and what part in septuagint that were corrupted ?
Mostly the masoretic text, though the text of Jeremiah, e.g., is more like the Septuagint.
Why christian cannot uttilize septuagint only instead they keep using masoratic in today bible? Didnt the apostle use swptuagint? Why is that ? what so unreliable about today septuagint? And do you know the comparison how many times the NT quoting to masoratic compare to septuagint? The percentage maybe?
With the Protestant Reformation there came an interest in getting back to the original languages, and so the emphasis shifted from the Latin Vulgate to the Greek and Hebrew.
Dr Bart; It has been noted by encyclopedias and the NAB itself, that there is a second hand writing in John’s Gospel. Some of us have been able to recognize them. Are these too, considered to be forgery implants in the forth Gospel?
A “forgery” in the way I use it is a writing that was not really written by the person the author claims to be. (E.g., the author of 1 Timothy claims to be Paul but almost certainly wasn’t). If a writing is anonymous, by my definition it cannot be a forgery.
Important to be aware of.
Thank you for a good post !
I realize you don’t have time to fool with this sort of thing but it may amuse you that Christian apologists are still worrying over Abiathar and Ahimelek. The gist here is that they go the route of translating Mark 2:26 to say “In the days of Abiathar…” to elide the issue (as does the NIV). Problem solved!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-qfix6XcLU
Yup, that’s what I used to argue as a conservative evnagelical
Dear Dr Ehrman,
Have you ever heard the allegation that Codex Sinaiticus is really a XIX century forgery of a guy called Simonides? I first heard it by “Dr” David Sorenson, who is associated with a group called King James Research Council.
What can I read or what can you say that would refute such idea? Or do you think it has some more to it?
(Sorry about my bad English)
Yes, it’s a pretty funnny story; Simonides was as notorious forger. I’ve read some accounts of his story over the years but offhand can’t remember where. I thinik if you google his name you’ll see some options. There’s not a textual scholar on the planet who thinks he forged it — the whole story was thoroughly debunked. And certainly the monks at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai don’t think he did. THey are still very aggravated about the removal of the manuscript (and they discovered some new pages of it in the 1970s; the pages are still there, in the monastery) (I’ve seen them!)
I have been reading that there is some debate as to who said the words of John 3:16 – whether it was Jesus or the writer of the gospel as narrator. I understand that since there was no punctuation in the original text it is hard to determine but I should be grateful for your opinion.
I think the “quotation” from Jesus ends at v. 15. But it’s a judgment call based on the content of what follows.
As a general rule, not necessarily limited to John 3, when was punctuation added to the texts?
As an aside, the quotation does not end at verse 15 in the NRSV, but it does end there in the NIV. Do you know why?
I think I’ll post on chapters, verses, and punctuation!
The NRSV editors judged that Jesus stopped talking at v. 15, NIV editors thought not. It’s almost impossible to be confident one way or the other.
Yes, please do a post on chapters, verses, and punctuation. And please give some examples of where those editorial decisions actually affect meaning in a significant way.
Has anyone done a psychological study of Christians who created pious frauds? Of course we will be limited in our ability to study the ones in ancient times but what about more recent pious frauds? How do they justify their fraud?
I’m not a psychologist obviously, but I devote an entire chapter to just that question in my book Forgery and Counterfortery.
“What he is most famous for in the annals of history, however, is a ruse that he pulled on a fellow literary scholar, his former teacher but eventual opponent, Heraclides of Pontus.”
I wrote a song once that mentions Heraclides in the lyrics, as a passing nod to his astronomy. I never wrote a song about Dionysius…