Loading...In my previous post I cited the box in the new edition of my textbook that explained how Christian authors may have justified themselves in writing “literary deceits,” that is, books that claimed to be written by someone else, for example, a famous apostle such as Peter and Paul (as is almost certainly true of Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and 1 and 2 Peter, e.g.). Several readers have asked me, though, why a Christian author would *do* such a thing as commit forgery. It’s one thing to indicate how an author would justify such a deceit (the point of my last post); but why would he engage in the deceit in the first place?
In my books on forgery(both the trade book Forged and the scholarly monography Forgery and Counterforgery) I indicate a number of motives that ancient authors (for example, Jews and pagans) had for producing their forgeries: some did it to make money, some did it to attack a personal enemy, some did it to authorize a philosophical or religious institution, and so on – I give a bunch of attested motives. The one motive that seems to apply to nearly all the Christian forgeries, in particular – both those in the NT and those outside of it – is that authors wanted people to read their books and to accept their views as apostolic and, therefore, authoritative. Below is how I phrase the matter in Forgery and Counterforgery. First comes a quotation from my chapter 5; then comes the final two paragraphs of the book.
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FROM CHAPTER 5:
There is one factor that ties together most of the motivations discussed so far, and I give it here as a final category even though in fact it appears to have broad application.
Forgers typically produced writings in the name of others in order to…
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“Small wonder, then, that forgers wrote so many Gospels, epistles, apocalypses, and other works in the names of apostles.” Dr Bart
“And if the standard dating of his Gospel – and Matthew’s – is correct, they were writing about 50 years or more after Jesus’ death. John’s Gospel was even later.”
Why would forgers try to cull authority in the names of dead men?
You clearly need to read my books.
This makes sense. Poor Jesus, the things that have been said and done in his name are just atrocious. Personally, I think it is abhorrent to do that and totally unfair. It is misleading, untrue, and a lie. A lie for the good of all is one thing but this pile of lies is just morally wrong and has led to religious disaster.
Dear Bart,
Great scholars it appears in the antiquity are often back up by forgers. Have you yet come accross any one amongst the “fundamentalist” forging in your name to change people perceptions on your scholarly views?
Ha!! That would be a good one!!
IF it was widely practice, then those reading must have also known that possibly the text at hand was the work of a forger. Did the culture itself accept forgeries under the guise you’ve described?
No, the reality is that most people were taken in by forgeries (though not always). One of the key points of my books is that when forgery *was* detected in the ancient world, and when it was talked about, it was always condemned. (Contrary to what we all learned in graduate school! But I give the ancient evidence.)
I think you’ve explicated clearly the motives of writers who wished their works to be seen as authentic. But what about the other side of the equation? Why should these works be so readily accepted as authentic? Surely it took more than simply putting Paul’s name in a letter!
Thanks
In my book I talk about the ploys used by forgers to make their books believable: for example, trying to imitate the writing style of an author, including off-the-cuff comments to provide verisimilitude, and so on….
I’ve always wondered about this.
This answers all my curiosities in the matter.
🙂
Hi Bart,
Speaking of forgeries, I have often wondered if the initial Christians were nothing more than a group of people, acting on behalf of perhaps the Roman government or some other group, with the sole purpose of creating problems within the Jewish community.
An example of what I’m talking about here was mentioned today in a news article in the Huffington Post.
This news article is titled, “The Dalai Lama Gives New Yorkers a Lesson on Wisdom as Opponents Protest Outside”.
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com
In this article, the Dalai Lama was commenting about a new breakaway group called NKT that was protesting his talk. In this article, it says,
“The Buddhist leader has cautioned that the NKT may be spiritually misguided and politically divisive, and his supporters have accused the Shugden following of acting on behalf of the Chinese government to create schisms within the Tibetan community in exile.”
I’m sure that this is not the first time that this type of thing has happened.
Any thoughts?
John
It seems hard to think that the Roman government was behind the Christian movement when they were so intent on persecuting it!
Dr. Ehrman, No were in the NT. there is mention of a Roman persecution of the Christians, but there is plenty of mention of the Jews doing that, and steering the pagans to do the same. Paul lived in Rome preaching the gospel unhindered even to the emperor’s household. It appears that hollywood has the power to rewrite history.
It’s usually thought that 1 Peter and Revelation are clear instances of Roman persecutions….
In a curious way it is analogous to modern day believers admitting that much of the Bible can’t possibly be literally “true,” but that deeper truths can be gleaned from such prevarications.
I have to wonder whether sometimes an author produced an anonymous work, and then later copyists added an attribution to some well-known authority. Maybe it was the copyists themselves who sometimes wanted a work to get wider attention.
yes, it did happen. With Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for example!
Might that be the case, then, with some of the epistles attributed to Paul? Maybe the original authors of those epistles had no intention of passing themselves off as Paul, and the attribution to him came later.
No, there it is different. Unlike the Gospels, the Pauline letters all explicitly claim to be written by Paul.
I’ve always thought 1st Peter was a forgery with a difference. James and the Pastorals could be thought of as writers who feel like they are passing on James and Paul’s teachings and have used their name to lend authority. But 1st Peter seems to be a writer who is intentionally changing Peter’s teachings to make it similar to Paul’s to show they were all teaching the same things about Jesus. This is similar to Acts whose purpose seems to be to make it natural to think of Paul’s teachings as a legitimate extension of the Apostles and the Jerusalem Church rather than a drastic change from a list of sayings of Jesus. When it comes to forgeries, is that a distinction you make?
Yes, pretty much. I have a long discussion of it in Forgery and Counterforgery.
I find that many fundamentalist Christians base much of their belief/theology on Biblical so-called prophecies. Do you believe that New Testament authors wrote in such a way to promote views that Old Testament “prophecies” (such as Isaiah, Malachi, and Daniel) had been, were being, or would be fulfilled? And/or do you believe that Christians and/or Jews later came to such beliefs?
Yes, I think the early Christians told their stories about Jesus with these texts in mind, so that Jesus was thought of and shown, by the stories they told, to have fulfilled prophecy.
Thank you, Bart.
Since asking you that question one week ago, I have read in it’s entirety your book “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium”. Considering that I have to read covertly on my computer, that has been quite a feat for me.