A Forger Who Was Caught. The Case of Salvian, Part 2
THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY PREVIOUS POST ON SALVIAN, THE ONE CHRISTIAN FORGER THAT WE KNOW WAS CAUGHT IN THE ACT. I INCLUDE THE TAIL END OF THE PREVIOUS POST AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS ONE FOR CONTEXT, BUT YOU MAY WANT TO REREAD THE WHOLE THING ITSELF. THIS, AGAIN, IS DRAWN FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY. ************************************************************************************************************************ Given this confession of motivation, what Salvian claims next may seem a bit surprising, if not down-right duplicitous. Why did he choose the name Timothy in particular? Readers naturally took the name to refer to Paul’s Pastoral companion, hence Salonius’s distraught reaction. But in clear tension with his earlier assertion that an unknown person would not be accepted as an authoritative source, Salvian claims that he chose the name purely for of its symbolic associations. Just as the evangelist Luke wrote to “Theophilus” because he wrote “for the love of God,” so too the author of this treatise wrote as “Timothy,” that is, “for the honor of God.” In other words, he chose the [...]