pseudepigrapha Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Why Did We Get a New Testament?

In my past couple of posts I’ve talked about how the canon of the Hebrew Bible was formed. That raises the obvious corollary of how the canon of the New Testament was formed. Who decided we should have the twenty-seven books we do? Why these books and not others? Why were any books chosen at all? When were these decisions made? And what criteria were used to make the decisions? To my surprise, I haven’t talked much about the process on the blog over the years. So here I will devote two posts to the issue. I have written at greater length about the matter in several of my books, especially Lost Christianities. Here is the most direct and to the point discussion that I provide in my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ********************************************************** THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT We are much better informed about the formation of the canon of the New Testament, in no small part because we have the writings of later church fathers who explicitly discuss the [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-23T01:57:32-05:00January 5th, 2017|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Public Forum|

Did Ancient Secretaries Actually Compose Writings? A Blast from the Past

Here is the third (and last) post on the use of secretaries in the ancient world, in which I discuss the issue of whether illiterate people (like Simon Peter, or John the son of Zebedee) could have had someone else write their books for them – so that 1 Peter *could* in some sense actually be by Peter if he couldn’t write, or the Revelation of John be by John. These three posts are all blasts from the past, reruns from exactly four years ago on the blog. Here is what I said back then about secretaries. ********************************************************************************** THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY PREVIOUS POST ON SECRETARIES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, DRAWN FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY. IN THE EARLIER POST I TALKED ABOUT THE USE OF SECRETARIES IN TAKING DICTATION AND DOING LIGHT COPY-EDITING, BASED ON THE FINDINGS OF THE FULL STUDY OF RANDALL RICHARDS. THE DISCUSSION IS RELEVANT TO THE WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: COULD 1 PETER, OR EPHESIANS, OR ANY OF THE OTHER PSEUDEPIGRAPHICAL WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T17:36:45-04:00August 8th, 2016|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reflections and Ruminations|

How Did Ancient Writers Use Secretaries? A Blast from the Past

Here is the second of a series of three blasts from the past -- from four years ago when I was dealing with how secretaries were and, especially, were not used in the ancient world by authors when producing their work. Did authors (such as John for the book of Revelation, or Peter for either 1 or 2 Peter) use a secretary to write their books 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. This is what I said four years ago now: ****************************************************************************** I have received some comments and emails about my claims about Silvanus as a secretary (or rather, NOT as a secretary) for the book of 1 Peter, and realized it would help if I could give some more detail about what we know about secretaries in the ancient world. The following is from an excursus in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-27T16:51:57-04:00August 5th, 2016|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

On Falsification and Forgery

On Friday I will be giving a talk at a symposium at York University in Toronto that will be focusing on the use of forgery in the early Christian apocrypha, sponsored by Tony Burke of York U. and Brent Landau at the University of Texas. Website is here: http://tonyburke.ca/conference/ I thought it might be interesting to excerpt a portion of my talk here, as it covers some ground that I recently have gone over on the blog, but from a different perspective. (More on the bloody sweat! But in relation to early Christian practices of literary deception.) In any event. Here is a portion of what I’m planning to say. *************************************************** I first became interested in the field of apocrypha and early Christian literary forgery about 25 years ago, when I was principally obsessed with New Testament textual criticism. Almost everyone else at the time who was also obsessed with the manuscript tradition of the New Testament was principally obsessed with one question only: how do we establish the original text of the New [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T15:55:44-04:00September 22nd, 2015|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts|

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Why Did We Get a New Testament?

Did Ancient Secretaries Actually Compose Writings? A Blast from the Past

How Did Ancient Writers Use Secretaries? A Blast from the Past

On Falsification and Forgery