Robert said

godspell said
Of course I realize that.  That was my precise point.  Again, everything not Greek is Greek to you.  😉

… I think the correct term to use–but so much less snazzy on a book cover–is pseudoepigraphy, which people deplored in those times as Bart has made clear–but which wasn’t an actionable felony, as forgery is now. …

But do not pass over that point so quickly such that you miss my point. The gospels were later attributed to specific authors, but the anonymous authors themselves did nothing at all to suggest or encourage these false attributions. This is very different from the author(s) of the book of Daniel, who did quite a bit to suggest that Daniel was the person who prophesied these ex eventu prophecies centuries ago.

Thus it makes a great deal of sense to differentiate between falsely attributed gospels, after the fact, from those that are indeed literary frauds or pseudepigraphical, based on false claims of their actual authors, and we have more than a few apocryphal gospels that explicitly pseudepigraphical.

Pseudepigraphy does not mean something essentially different than literary forgery. It’s just a technical term based in Latin that therefor does not have the same impact for the average reader that does not know Latin. So is it really a better term? Certainly it is for those who are not so comfortable with the underlying reality. But the underlying reality is the same, yet Bart and others have developed more distinctions to describe various kinds of literary fraud.

godspell said

… The gospel of John has extensive first person passages from Jesus, almost certainly composed by the author of that gospel (who isn’t John the Apostle, no matter what Bauckham thinks).  And again, the gospels contain incidents of Jesus prophesying events that took place decades after his death, but which were contemporary events for the gospel authors.  The difference being largely one of time elapsed. 

Suppose there actually was a text that might have been written by Daniel (nobody would know, of course).  And someone added to that text he believed was legitimate for purposes of his own, assuming Daniel would be on his side.  How is that different from the gospel authors–or their sources, same difference–adding sayings and events to the actual record of Jesus’ life and teachings?  Didn’t they have points of their own to get across as well?  Weren’t they trying to win arguments by putting words in the mouth of their master? 

Well, first of all, surely you do not seriously think it is more historically plausible that Daniel in the late 7th/early 6th century BCE did in fact dream the dreams recounted and interpreted in the book of Daniel in 164-ish BCE. While that may be theoretically possible, it is much more likely that these prophetic dreams and their divine interpretations that so closely match the events of the later time were written in that later time.

But, for the sake of discussion, let’s entertain your proposed scenario. Daniel really did write down his dreams in Babylon and four centuries later someone added on to them, thinking he was faithfully representing Daniel’s spirit of wisdom and interpretation for his modern day readers. How would this be different from what the writers of the gospels did? As you yourself note, there is a difference of degree (‘the difference being largely one of time elapsed’). Personally, I am not at all opposed to considering the differences as not always or necessarily a difference in kind, but sometimes a difference of degree: 40 to 70 years later for the gospel writers vs over four centuries later for the final author(s) of the book of Daniel.

One may also apply the difference of degree to the issue of the evangelists or the authors of the book of Daniel putting prophecies and their interpretation on the lips of Jesus or into the prophetic and symbolic dreams of Daniel. For Jesus, this is essentially one major vaticinium ex eventu (the destruction of the temple in 70 CE). For Daniel it is the whole history of international politics prophesied and interpreted. These are rather large differences in degree, some would consider large enough to be a difference in kind, but I would not press this point.

But what is for some definitely a difference in kind is that some, eg, Bart and other scholars, consider the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple to be independently attested and therefore more likely based in actual history and thus not really a vaticinium ex eventu. Those of us who are not convinced of John’s total independence of the synoptic tradition may be more inclined to accept this to as a (rather large) difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. Maybe Mark or someone in the pre-Markan tradition invented the idea that Jesus had already predicted the destruction of the temple. Thus Bart might be less inclined than others to merely see the differences as merely a difference in degree.

But let’s return to the most crucial difference. Did the anonymous authors of the gospels do anything at all to suggest or encourage the later false attributions of apostolic authorship?

‘John’ tends most toward a claim of quasi-authorial reliability for his gospel. If John genuinely believed that his local community’s traditions were ultimately vouchsafed by an actual disciple especially beloved by Jesus, he is not perpetrating a literary fraud, but if he were perhaps creating a theological portrait of an ideal believer and yet nevertheless wanted some of his readers to consider his narrative and theological musings to be especially reliable because of the place of this beloved disciple as a guarantor of his literary creation, then we are indeed pretty darn close to what we should call a literary fraud, theological fiction parading as fact. He is not quite claiming a reliable authorial identity for himself (the later tradition would do this), but he is claiming such for one of the earlier members of his community. Whether or not this is true must be assessed by historians.

Not in his gospel, but Luke may cross this line in his sequel, inserting himself in his use of a first-person plural into his otherwise predominantly 3rd-person narrative. Was he really a travelling companion of Paul? Should a historian just give these or other authors the benefit of the doubt? Always find every (canonical) author as ‘not guilty’ because their works were powerful enough to survive the test of time? Surely that’s not the historical method you learned at SUNY, right?  

I don’t believe you are suggesting that the three unconnected authors of Daniel worked together across several generations to create the illusion of a work composed by a prophet (who for no comprehensible reason uses a third person narrator), so I won’t suggest that is the case.  🙂

And when did I tell you I went to SUNY?  Do you mean CUNY Graduate Center?  There are no SUNY colleges in New York City.  

(I hope this will finally cure you of your endless quest to correct people for simple understandable slips of memory.  But I doubt it.)

You have not, to my way of thinking, made any substantive points here that have not been already made.  We need to know if the original audience(s) understood any part of Daniel to be written by Daniel, because one or several of the original (and unconnected) authors wanted it that way.  Or whether that was a misunderstanding that came about later.  Could be a bit of both.

Do you believe Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Temple? (I don’t believe any such thing–I wish I didn’t feel the need to say that here, but just to make sure.) If not, why is that prophesy not forged?  If it’s not forged, how can we be sure equivalent prophesies in Daniel are forged?  Maybe the person writing the genuinely believed them.  Daniel wasn’t written in a vacuum.  They had oral traditions then too.  

I think the term gives rise to misunderstandings about how books like these are written.