Forged (36 page)

Chapter 3: Forgeries in the Name of Paul

1. For an English translation, see J. K. Elliot,
   The Apocryphal New Testament
   (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 350–89; and Wilhelm Schneemelcher,
   New Testament Apocrypha,
   trans. R. McL. Wilson, from the sixth German edition, 2 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991–92), 2:213–70.
   
2. For a full account of the Thecla traditions, see Stephen Davis,
   The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
   
3. Tertullian
   On Baptism
   17.
   
4. The classic study of Marcion, which is still worth reading today, was published by the great German scholar Adolf von Harnack in 1924; it has been partially translated into English by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma as
   Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God
   (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990). The most recent overview is Heikki Raïsänen, “Marcion,” in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, eds.,
   A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics”
   (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 100–124.
   
5. For an English translation, see Bruce M. Metzger,
   The Canon of the New Testament
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 305–07. Some scholars date the Muratorian Canon to the fourth century, but this view has not proved convincing to most.
   
6. For an English translation, see Elliott,
   Apocryphal New Testament,
   pp. 380–82; and Schneemelcher,
   New Testament Apocrypha,
   2:254–57.
   
7. Benjamin White, “Reclaiming Paul? Reconfiguration as Reclamation in 3 Corinthians,”
   Journal of Early Christian Studies
   17 (2009): 497–523.
   
8. For an English translation, see Elliott,
   Apocryphal New Testament,
   pp. 547–52; and Schneemelcher,
   New Testament Apocrypha,
   2:46–52. My quotations here follow Schneemelcher's translation.
   
9. For a fuller description of Gnosticism, see Chapter 6.
   
10. The scholarly literature on the pastoral letters is so massive that it is difficult to know where to refer interested readers who want to see the basic arguments about their authenticity. Possibly it is best to start with Jerome D. Quinn, “Timothy and Titus, Epistles to,”
    Anchor Bible Dictionary,
    ed. David Noel Friedman (New
    York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:560–71. As is true of everything I talk about in this book—as is true, in fact, for virtually anything any biblical scholar talks about—there are differences of opinion even here. For a representative of the minority view that Paul actually was the author of the pastoral letters, see the lively discussion in the introduction in Luke Timothy Johnson,
    The First and Second Letters to Timothy
    (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
    
11. For example, Michael Prior,
    Paul the Letter Writer in the Second Letter to Timothy
    (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1989).
    
12. Among other things, this means that if any one of these letters is forged, they're all forged.
    
13. A. N. Harrison,
    The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles
    (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921).
    
14. This is the case even with scholars who want to argue that Paul did write the letters. One of the most recent studies is Armin Baum, “Semantic Variation Within the
    Corpus Paulinum:
    Linguistic Considerations Concerning the Richer Vocabulary of the Pastoral Epistles,”
    Tyndale Bulletin
    59 (2008): 271–92. Baum points out that in the other letters of Paul, the fewer total number of words that can be found in a letter means that there are fewer
    different
    words used. But not with the pastoral letters, which have fewer words than many of Paul's letters, but more
    different
    words. Baum still wants to think that these books are written by Paul, however, and so comes up with an explanation that sounds perhaps like a case of special pleading. In his view, Paul took more consideration and time with these letters than his others, since he was composing them in writing rather than orally. That seems highly unlikely to me. Paul certainly put a lot of time and effort into composing letters like Romans and Galatians. Moreover, Baum doesn't cite any evidence to suggest that the Pastorals were composed in writing by Paul rather than dictated, by Paul or anyone else.
    
15. Unfortunately, the article is available only in German: Norbert Brox, “Zu den persönlichen Notizen der Pastoralbriefe,”
    Biblische Zeitschrift
    13 (1969): 76–94.
    
16. Dennis Ronald MacDonald,
    The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon
    (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983).
    
17. Once again, the scholarship on this question is voluminous. A good place to start is Edgar Krenz, “Thessalonians, First and Second Epistles to the,”
    Anchor Bible Dictionary
    (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:515–23.
    
18. F. F. Bruce,
    Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
    (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).
    
19. J. Christiaan Beker,
    Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought
    (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).
    
20. See J. Christiaan Beker,
    Heirs of Paul: Paul's Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today
    (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).
    
21. See Victor Paul Furnish, “Ephesians, Epistle to,”
    Anchor Bible Dictionary
    (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2:535–42.
    
22. See Victor Paul Furnish, “Colossians, Epistle to the,”
    Anchor Bible Dictionary,
    1:1090–96.
    
23. Unfortunately, the book has never been translated into English: Walter Bujard,
    Stilanalytische Untersuchungen zum Kolosserbrief: Als Beitrag zur Methodik von Sprachvergleichen
    (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973).
    

Chapter 4: Alternatives to Lies and Deceptions

1. It didn't occur to me at the time that the author of 2 Timothy would have been speaking only about the Scriptures he knew, the “Old Testament,” and that his doctrine of inspiration may not have coincided with my own view that the Bible was com
   pletely without error, a view that in fact came into existence only in modern times.
   
2. A partial exception may be the view of evangelical scholar Donald Guthrie, who tries to argue on historical, rather than dogmatic, grounds that there can be no forgeries in the New Testament; see his “The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudipigrapha in New Testament Criticism,”
   Vox Evangelica
   1 (1962): 43–59.
   
3. These views of Daniel and Ecclesiastes are almost universally held by critical scholars today. For an introductory discussion, see two of the leading textbooks on the Hebrew Bible in use throughout American universities today: John J. Collins,
   Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
   (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); and Michael Coogan,
   The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
   
4. Another approach is to acknowledge that false authorial claims do indeed constitute forgery—lies with the intent to deceive—but to insist that the Bible
   should
   not have such books in it. This is the claim of one of the most recent scholars of forgery who has come out of Germany, Armin Baum, who thinks that if it can be shown that a book really is forged, it should be removed from the New Testament (implied in his book
   Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im frühen Christentum
   [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001] and confirmed by private correspondence). As you might imagine, given such a view, Baum is reluctant to consider too many of the books of the New Testament forgeries. But he is willing to concede, for example, along with the vast majority of scholars, that 2 Peter is.
   
5. A. N. Harrison,
   The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles
   (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 12.
   
6. A. W. Argyle, “The Greek of Luke and Acts,”
   New Testament Studies
   20 (1974): 445.
   
7. M. J. J. Menken,
   2 Thessalonians
   (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 40.
   
8. Andrew Lincoln,
   Ephesians
   (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990), p. lxx.
   
9. R. McL. Wilson,
   Colossians and Philemon
   (London: Clark, 2005), p. 31.
   
10. For an assessment of how certain books came to be considered part of the canon of Scripture, see my study
    Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). A fuller discussion can be found in Harry Gamble,
    The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning
    (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).
    
11. Bruce M. Metzger, “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha,”
    Journal of Biblical Literature
    91 (1972): 15–16.
    
12. Norbert Brox,
    Falsche Verfasserangabe: Zur Erklärung der frühchristlichen Pseudepigraphie
    (Stuttgart: KBW, 1975), p. 81; translation mine.
    
13. Wolfgang Speyer,
    Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum
    (Munich: Beck, 1971), p. 3; translation mine.
    
14. Kurt Aland, “The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries,”
    Journal of Biblical Literature
    12 (1961): 39–49.
    
15. James Dunn, “The Problem of Pseudonymity,” in
    The Living Word
    (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 65–85.
    
16. David Meade,
    Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition
    (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986).
    
17. Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke,
    Colossians
    (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 123.
    
18. Margaret Y. MacDonald,
    Colossians and Ephesians
    (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), p. 8.
    
19. Two additional sources come from centuries later still and are of almost no historical worth, as I argue below.
    
20. The passage is discussed at some length, for example, in Baum,
    Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung,
    pp. 53–55.
    
21. Ibn Abi Usaybi'a,
    Kitab ‘uyun al-anba 'fi tabaqat al-atibba',
    ed. ‘Amir al-Najjar, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Hay'a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma lil-Kitab, 2001), 1:244–45.
    
22. Iamblichus
    Life of Pythagoras
    31.
    
23. See Leonid Zhmud,
    Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frühen Pythagoreismus
    (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), p. 91.
    
24. See, for example, Holger Thesleff,
    Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period
    (Åbo: Åcademi, 1961).
    
25. Two later Neoplatonic philosophers, Olympiodorus and Elias, living some two and a half centuries after Iamblichus, make roughly similar comments (Olympiodorus
    Prolegomenon
    13.4–14.4; Elias
    In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias Commentaria
    128.1–22). But they are so long after the fact that they cannot help us know what was happening in the time of the New Testament, half a millennium earlier (any more than the editorial practices in vogue today can tell us what was happening in the 1500s). Moreover, the comments of Olympiodorus and Elias may ultimately derive from the tradition starting with Iamblichus, some two hundred fifty years earlier.
    
26. E. Randolph Richards,
    The Secretary in the Letters of Paul
    (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991).
    
27. Richards,
    Secretary,
    p. 108.
    
28. Richards,
    Secretary,
    pp. 110–11.
    

Chapter 5: Forgeries in Conflicts with Jews and Pagans

1. See John J. Collins,
   The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature
   (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
   
2. For an English translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus, see Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations
   (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
   
3. For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels.
   
4. For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels.
   
5. For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels.
   
6. Tertullian
   Apology
   21.24; Eusebius
   Church History
   2.2.
   
7. For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels
   .
   
8. Tertullian
   Apology
   21.24.
   
9. For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese,
   Apocryphal Gospels
   .
   
10. For a fuller discussion, see my
    Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
    (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2005), pp. 63–65.
    
11. In the history of the interpretation of the passage the question has always been, “What was he writing?” Some have thought that he must have been writing out the sins of the woman's accusers. Or a particularly apt quotation of scripture. Or a declaration of condemnation of unjust judges. Or something else!
    
12. Chris Keith,
    The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus
    (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
    
13. Augustine
    On the Harmony of the Gospels
    1.10.
    
14. Other writings allegedly written by Jesus are referred to in several church fathers, such as Augustine (
    Against Faustus
    28.4) and Leo the Great (
    Sermon
    34.4).
    
15. My reasoning in this case is that it is not a letter that existed outside of its fictional context, a piece of correspondence that circulated independently as a writing of Jesus.
    
16. For English translations of both letters, see Ehrman and Plese,
    Apocryphal Gospels
    .
    
17. An English translation of excerpts of Egeria's diary is provided by Andrew Jacobs in Bart Ehrman and Andrew Jacobs,
    Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450
    CE
    : A Reader
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 333–46.
    
18. Tertullian
    Apology
    40; trans. S. Thelwell, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds.,
    The Ante-Nicene Fathers
    (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
    
19. Minucius Felix
    Octavius
    9.6–7; in G. W. Clarke, ed.,
    The Octavius of Minucius Felix
    (Mahway, NJ: Paulist, 1974).
    
20. Minucius Felix
    Octavius
    9.5.
    
21. For English translations of a range of accounts, see Herbert Musurillo,
    Acts of the Christian Martyrs
    (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).
    
22. Eusebius
    Church History
    9.5.
    
23. Ovid
    Metamorphoses
    14.136–46.
    
24. For an excellent study of the Sibyl and her oracles, see H. W. Parke,
    Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity,
    ed. B. C. McGin (London: Routledge, 1988).
    
25. For a full analysis and translation of the surviving oracles, see John J. Collins,
    Sibylline Oracles,
    in James Charlesworth, ed.,
    Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,
    2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983–85), 1:317–472.
    
26. All translations are by Collins, in Charlesworth, ed.,
    Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
    
27. Justin
    First Apology
    20.
    
28. For example, the pagan critic Celsus around 177
    CE
    , as quoted by the church father Origen in his book
    Against Celsus
    (5.61.615; 7.53.732; 7.56.734); also see a Latin oration attributed to the (Christian) emperor Constantine found in Eusebius's
    Life of Constantine,
    in which the emperor claims that the pagan charges of forgery are false.