We have Jewish texts from the 2nd T. period allegedly detailing the visions of legendary (and long dead) figures from Jewish history like, for example, Enoch. No contemporary name is attached to these documents; and nearly every scholar disbelieves that the legendary figure is the author of the document.
The question is, why would someone in the 2nd T. period write a work ostensibly by a legendary figure from the remote past?
One answer given is to bolster the authority of his work. I believe this is Dr. Ehrman’s explanation (I believe he cites Enoch as an example of deliberate forgery in one of his two books “Forgeries”, and in another book of his on the afterlife, he concludes from a very late text describing hell and attributed to Peter, that the author wanted everyone to think Peter wrote it.
The implication is that the real authors knew their own names carried no weight, but they thought their message so necessary (and apparently unrepresented) that they hijacked ancient or famous names in the hope that their readers (who lived centuries after Enoch and before Peter) were so stupid that they had no problem accepting that suddenly a book by these long dead heroes “just turned up”.
I, for one, am already incredulous. The attribution of such dumb naivety to anyone in the ancient world can only come from “chronological snobbery”. I also have difficulty in reconstructing a plausible scene in which these documents get from the original author (who, according to the forgery theory, must wish to remain anonymous, lest his involvement spoil the conspiracy) to the first readers. What does he say? Hey guys, I found this while digging?
I can add the fact that books like the so called Enoch never made it into Jewish canon; but Jewish canon was, according to many scholars, still somewhat loose. If Jews actually believed they possessed a book by the Enoch, surely we would we would have evidence of at least a discussion of its canonical value.
I propose scholars abandon the theory of blatant deceit and look for other reasons one might write pseudonymously so egregiously.
Question for Debate: should scholars abandon blatant deceit, and what other reasons might there be to write under the names of legendary figures.
Well, we know that some ancient forgeries were blatant and deliberate deceit. So no, I don’t think it should be abandoned entirely.
Though it is possible that some pseudoepigraphal writing may have been less deceit and more akin to fanfic.
As to how a forger could get his work into circulation, well, look at the recent case of Secret Mark (assuming it was, in fact, forged) and how that was brought into circulation. There are a lot of variations on the found text plot that could work.
Porphyry said
Well, we know that some ancient forgeries were blatant and deliberate deceit. So no, I don’t think it should be abandoned entirely.
Though it is possible that some pseudoepigraphal writing may have been less deceit and more akin to fanfic.
As to how a forger could get his work into circulation, well, look at the recent case of Secret Mark (assuming it was, in fact, forged) and how that was brought into circulation. There are a lot of variations on the found text plot that could work.
Yes, assuming sincerity in all cases is shaky, but responding to that by assuming insincerity in all cases may be going overboard. In particular, a student of the famous personage writing after the famous person’s death, in the person’s name, may sincerely believe this is how their teacher would have responded to this issue, and hypothetically at the time could well be, “well, obviously he didn’t actually compose it, he is no longer with us!” Or, indeed, “well, obviously he didn’t actually compose it, as we all know, he was not this fluent in Greek.” A clear understanding along those lines at the time of the autograph can easily be lost in the following decades.
Robert said
I’ve always imagined that the original author(s) of Qoheleth or Jonah would show the work to one or more readers and that some of these books in the Hebrew scriptures would have first circulated within a small elite group of authors and readers who were all aware of the fact that said works were not actually written by Solomon or was not a factual account of the life of a prophet named Jonah. I don’t think this kind of literary scenario fits very well the deutero-Pauline letters or Catholic epistles.
Well, if the Marcionite priority of the Pauline epistles are taken seriously, there is a big difference between the deutero Pauline epistles and the Pastoral epistles in terms of age, with the three earlier pre-canonical version of the deutero Pauline epistles appearing at the end of Marcion’s NT, as if from a distinct collection, before the early catholic redactor(s) expanded upon them and mixed them amongst the first seven appearing in the Apostolos, while the Pastoral epistles would appear to be post-Aposotolos in composition, and could well be done by the catholic redactors of the seven Pauline epistles and the early three deutero Pauline epistles.
A c. 60 CE composition of the three deutero Pauline epistles would leave plenty of time for the fact that it was composed by a student of Paul (albeit in the Marcionite reconstructions, the only student of Paul we would know by name would be Titus) to be lost in the acts of transmission of the collection.
Mind, being sincere is no guarantee that the putative author is being accurately represented. A student can write what they sincerely believe to be representative of what their teacher “would have said”, and fail to hit the mark. And some texts may be either heavily redacted or written from scratch by someone with no earthly acquaintance to the putative author, but is rather writing what they sincerely believe to have been inspired by the Spirit as “properly” representing the beliefs of the putative author, where a historical approach would not take that as even an indirect witness of the beliefs of the putative author.
>> being sincere is no guarantee that the putative author is being accurately represented. A student can write what they sincerely believe to be representative of what their teacher “would have said”, and fail to hit the mark
I think you are being too charitable. Even if they were authored by a student who sincerely meant to express Paul’s views, they go to lengths to impersonate Paul; even asking for his cloak to be returned and drawing attention to his own, wet-ink signature.
Porphyry said
>> being sincere is no guarantee that the putative author is being accurately represented. A student can write what they sincerely believe to be representative of what their teacher “would have said”, and fail to hit the mark
I think you are being too charitable. Even if they were authored by a student who sincerely meant to express Paul’s views, they go to lengths to impersonate Paul; even asking for his cloak to be returned and drawing attention to his own, wet-ink signature.
The Marcion scholars would say that the “wet-ink signature” verse is from the proto-orthodox redaction of Paul’s epistle, so “going above and beyond” to impersonate Paul would be a second century addition, and definitely part of “the text we have is better than the text you have” campaign.
Porphyry said
Well, we know that some ancient forgeries were blatant and deliberate deceit. So no, I don’t think it should be abandoned entirely.
Though it is possible that some pseudoepigraphal writing may have been less deceit and more akin to fanfic.
As to how a forger could get his work into circulation, well, look at the recent case of Secret Mark (assuming it was, in fact, forged) and how that was brought into circulation. There are a lot of variations on the found text plot that could work.
AS for the ancient forgeries that we know were blatant and deliberate, please provide the names and the reasons “we know”. This is not a challenge, but a humble request.
As for the Secret Mark scandal: you are paralleling a “recent case” with “antiquity”. That is, a case occurring after modernity and “objectivity” and the fact that we know who “discovered” discovered the Secret Mark Gospel and…dear god, I don’t even know what else to list as non-parallels with an ancient writing? At any rate, the violations of anachronism in your example are legion.
As for, “there are a lot of variations on the found text plot that could work”, you seem to be implying that so long as you can “come up” with “some” scenario, well then, the theory holds true. This is, frankly, bad history. I invite you to review Occam’s Razor, or, in popular terminology, “ad hocinism”. The only value of “possible scenarios” is that they are “possible”. The question is, are they plausible. And these are different. Possible means merely this: no contradiction is involved. Plausible means this, the theory fits in well with all our available knowledge. Our available knowledge is that, we have no written documents from readers of the pseudepigrapha indicating they believed anything contained in the latter was written by the long dead. We have multiple works that focus on the deeds of dead men which are written from an immediate perspective: Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno etc.
It seems the only plausible theory is that the pseudipigraphic literature was never intended to deceive, and no one was deceived.
(there still remains the question of, why then write as they did?)
Robert said
BruceRMcF said
Well, if the Marcionite priority of the Pauline epistles are taken seriously, there is a big difference between the deutero Pauline epistles and the Pastoral epistles in terms of age, with the three earlier pre-canonical version of the deutero Pauline epistles appearing at the end of Marcion’s NT, as if from a distinct collection, before the early catholic redactor(s) expanded upon them and mixed them amongst the first seven appearing in the Apostolos, while the Pastoral epistles would appear to be post-Aposotolos in composition, and could well be done by the catholic redactors of the seven Pauline epistles and the early three deutero Pauline epistles.I’m having difficulty following your line of reasoning here. How does Macionite priority increase the length of time from the original Pauline letters and the later deutero-Pauline letters? …
Between the three deutero Paulines and the remaining pseudo Paulines.
The common position from the proto-orthodox heresiologists is that Marcion redacted the actual epistles, which are in the canon. If, rather, Marcion collected existing texts which were redacted by some proto-orthodox in response to his NT, that pushes the dissemination of the three deutoro Paulines to some period prior to being collected. And of course at least some of them argue the pseudoepigraphical Pauline epistles were part of the same redaction project.
AS for the ancient forgeries that we know were blatant and deliberate, please provide the names and the reasons “we know”. This is not a challenge, but a humble request.
I’ve already recommended Prof Ehrman’s scholarly tome Forgery and CounterForgery. His popular work Forged has a more streamlined, less detailed discussion. Both books have bibliographies, F&CF most substantial unsurprisingly.
Connor, just because we don’t all the details on the tips of our tongues means nothing. (But I note that when one of us does you accuse him of “showing off”.) If you’re truly interested, you’ll have to do the work. There’s a substantial literature as you will find out if you inquire after it.
The common position from the proto-orthodox heresiologists is that Marcion redacted the actual epistles, which are in the canon. If, rather, Marcion collected existing texts which were redacted by some proto-orthodox in response to his NT, that pushes the dissemination of the three deutoro Paulines to some period prior to being collected. And of course at least some of them argue the pseudoepigraphical Pauline epistles were part of the same redaction project.
Since all that survives of Marcion is what has been filtered through his detractors I think references to him often cloud the issue, his influence overstated. It’s likely he had an earlier proto-Luke, adoptionist in flavor, closely following Mark. Scholars suggest that Marcion had a more primitive collection of Paul’s letters. Many of Marcion’s so-called “edits” seem to serve no specific theological agenda. It’s just as likely that later “orthodox” editors added material rather than Marcion deleted it. Marcion lacks the Pastorals but rather than deleting them, it is much more likely he didn’t know them because they didn’t yet exist. The modern consensus is that they were late forgeries.
The Pauline forgeries presuppose a time when Paul was already well-known and considered enough of an authority to be mimicked. That took some time.
>> AS for the ancient forgeries that we know were blatant and deliberate, please provide the names and the reasons “we know”. This is not a challenge, but a humble request.
Well, Tertullian records that a presbyter forged the Acts of Paul, was discovered, confessed, and was removed from office for the offense. That certainly suggest he was understood not to be engaging in an accepted practice, but in deceit.
Add to that the case of Salvian’s Timothei ad Ecclesiam–where after being called out for his forgery, he defended the practice by (self-contradictorily) claiming ideas–not authorship–matter, but also, no one would take the work seriously unless it bore the name of a famous person.
Finally, Galen wrote an entire work against forgers, who wrote under his name, and says they did so to deceive.
>> As for the Secret Mark scandal: you are paralleling a “recent case” with “antiquity”. That is, a case occurring after modernity and “objectivity” and the fact that we know who “discovered” discovered the Secret Mark Gospel and…dear god, I don’t even know what else to list as non-parallels with an ancient writing? At any rate, the violations of anachronism in your example are legion.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the problem. My task was to show a plausible way of introducing a forged text to the public; Here is what you asked:
“I also have difficulty in reconstructing a plausible scene in which these documents get from the original author (who, according to the forgery theory, must wish to remain anonymous, lest his involvement spoil the conspiracy) to the first readers. What does he say? Hey guys, I found this while digging?”
I gave you an example of how that could happen. The fact that Secret Mark spread to the public in our age–when we have international journals and departments with full time scholars studying this stuff–only makes it more plausible that something like that could have happened in antiquity.
Stephen said
… Since all that survives of Marcion is what has been filtered through his detractors I think references to him often cloud the issue, his influence overstated. …
There would seem to be, however, two different kind of “references” to him. A heresiologist saying his NT says one thing and does not say another seems less likely to have that biased by his frame of reference, because he’s aiming to persuade the audience why they should reject that version as a corrupted form of scripture. A heresiologist summarizing what content is in the Marcion NT based on their account of what the Marcionites believe would be mess less useful evidence, far more likely to be biased by the heresiologist’s frame of reference.
I find that a perfectly good reason to not accept the “pre-critical” reconstructions which use agreement or disagreement with Marcion’s reported ideology to sort through unattested passages from canonical Luke to convert the fragmentary minimal reconstruction into a complete work.
But also, even if the Marcionite NT provoked proto-catholic redactions of Luke and epistles of Paul, that would be just one of multiple heresies that the composer(s) of that/those edition(s) would be reacting to. Including, for someone with the theory of what Jesus’s crucifixion accomplished, the heresy of the Mark/Mathew approach that Jesus’s crucifixion was an atonement for sin.
It’s likely he had an earlier proto-Luke, adoptionist in flavor, closely following Mark. Scholars suggest that Marcion had a more primitive collection of Paul’s letters. Many of Marcion’s so-called “edits” seem to serve no specific theological agenda. It’s just as likely that later “orthodox” editors added material rather than Marcion deleted it. Marcion lacks the Pastorals but rather than deleting them, it is much more likely he didn’t know them because they didn’t yet exist. The modern consensus is that they were late forgeries.
The Pauline forgeries presuppose a time when Paul was already well-known and considered enough of an authority to be mimicked. That took some time.
This is part of where the “student” hypothesis is advanced, because the student may feel that his teacher is important even if there are not as many others in agreement with that as he would like, so has greater likelihood of being in the generation immediately following the author than the deliberate deception.
But that means that it is necessary to exercise great care with that alternate hypothesis, because it’s the hypothesis that is most convenient for someone who wants to argue, apologetically, that the work from the pen of another is even so still representative of the thought of the putative author. I am surely no scholar of the field, so it might be out there somewhere, but I have not yet encountered what I would consider to be a particularly strong argument for the “student” hypothesis in a specific case.
There would seem to be, however, two different kind of “references” to him…
Well I don’t really disagree. I’m primarily reacting to the folks who seize on Marcion as some kind of instigator. That he actually wrote a gospel or even in the extreme case that he “invented” Paul. Scholars would dearly love to see a copy of whatever texts Marcion had in his possession. It is a commonsense viewpoint that various versions of all these texts existed over time and what we have now are the particular versions that happened to survive. But there are textual reasons to suppose that Luke and Paul have been redacted. Everybody who inherited these texts, not just Marcion, bent them to their own use.
This is part of where the “student” hypothesis is advanced…
Yes, agreed. What mitigates against the benign view of “forgery” for me is to look at Ephesians. Here is someone advocating views that directly contradict Paul’s stated views and reflect a social situation that only occurred much later than Paul’s day. The calculation seems to have been, if I sign this sucker Billy Bob no one will take it seriously but if I sign it Paul, it will go to the head of the line. The forger could have been seriously intending to address a situation in the church of his own day but that doesn’t justify his methods. Prof Ehrman’s point is that even the ancients were actually pissed off at this kind of thing, not dismissive of it. Of course for the modern “inspired, inerrant” fundamentalist the idea of one of the sacred texts being a forgery is a bridge waaay too far. For the mainstream believer, they’ll admit it maybe but claim the ancient forger “meant well”. Maybe they did but what’s being condemned is not the motive but the tactic itself.
Stephen said
… Yes, agreed. What mitigates against the benign view of “forgery” for me is to look at Ephesians. Here is someone advocating views that directly contradict Paul’s stated views and reflect a social situation that only occurred much later than Paul’s day. …
Yes, Ephesians is one where I have to find some time to sit down with a critique on those points and see how much of the critique still has purchase against reconstructions of Laodiceans. I have a vague impression that the reflection of the 2nd century social situation may fall away, but I have not a clue whether the same might be true about the variance with Paul’s views as expressed in the seeming first and third collections in the Apostolos (the Vinzent/Bilby krewe attempt at reconstructing the Apsotolikon), Galatians to 1 Thessolonians before the three pseudo/deutero Pauline epistles and Philippians and Philemon after.
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