5 April 2024
Forged
Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Bart D. Ehrman
HarperOne, 2011. 307pp. Includes excellent in-text footnotes, Index, but, oddly, no Bibliography. (see problems at end)
I should note that I’m a big fan of Prof. Ehrman and personally own 9 of his books but I still read him critically.
This is an excellent account of biblical forgeries—and note that Ehrman doesn’t mince words about that term though he does go into great detail as to the various types.
First off, there are the “rightly named” writings (“orthonymous”) – not a forgery, something that really is written by the person who claims to be writing it.
And now the others. ( detailed on pp 23-25)
Homonymous – “same named”; written by someone who happens to have the same name. In the ancient world, most people did not have last names and many had the same first names: e.g., John, James, Jude, Jesus. Mary (or Maryam)
Anonymous – “having no name”; books by authors who never identify themselves. About 1/3 of N.T. books and none of the gospels tell us the name of the author. Later Christians (or others) added names to book titles
Pseudonymous – “falsely named”; a little more slippery. Two kinds: 1) “pen names” (Mark Twain; George Eliot) not trying to deceive readers; 2) a book circulated under the name of someone else, usually some authority figure presumed to be well known to the audience, known as “pseudoepigraphy.” But there are two kinds of these: a) a writing published anonymously but for which later readers claimed the author was someone known (e.g. Gospel of “Matthew”) – known as “false ascription.” and (b) true forgery: a writing that claims to be written by someone (a known figure) who did not in fact write it
- Book of Daniel — Ehrman notes that one of the most common forms of forgery in Jewish writings was the “apocalypse,” meant to inspire hope in readers (30, 131) and Daniel happens to be one of my favorites because it’s so easy to prove that it couldn’t have been written in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian Captivity. (Likely assembled about 160 BCE following the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV). But the Jehovas Witnesses base practically their entire Kingdom of Heaven timeline on this false timeline.
- NT forgeries: Epistles of Peter (1 Peter, 2 Peter), Gospel of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter; Epistles of Paul: 3 Corinthians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus (i.e., the “Pastorals,” 93); 2 Thessalonians (105), Ephesians (108), Colossians (112, 185); Hebrews (229). Also, Gospel of Nicodemus (150), and, sorry to report, Acts of the Apostles–probably written by Luke but not written by one of Paul’s traveling companions (202 208). Re Tim: “Whoever wrote 1 Timothy knew full well that he wasn’t really the apostle Paul. He made that part up” (232).
- Very few forgers in the ancient world were actually caught red-handed (33), but Ehrman is very clear throughout this book that forgery, when detected or surmised, was not at all tolerated. They were consistently condemned (141)
- “Verisimilitude” – technique of making a book look similar to what you’d expect from a given author (34). Forgers would often include verses warning against fakes and forgeries in order to give their own works some credibility. (e.g. 2 Thess, p35)
- The “Secretary Hypothesis” debunked (133-39). Whole books have been devoted to this question. We know that Paul, Cicero and others did use secretaries on occasion, but did the secretaries contribute to the contents? (135). Authors often dictated letters but did the scribe use shorthand (which could create errors), or correct grammar, possibly contribute his own ideas? (see also , 2005)
- Followers of Jesus claimed that he was the long-awaited messiah and scoured Scripture to find passages that could feasibly refer to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as well as sayings and miracles. (147-48). [As it happens, along with Bishop Spong, Robin Fox and others, this is what I call the concept of the “assembled Jesus” — that is, a figure concocted from undoubtedly real personages (healers, miracle workers, magicians, e.g. Simon the Magician – 190) of the first century but whose words and deeds were basically assembled from Hebrew Scriptures, to “fulfill a Scripture.” And in fact, I’ve listened to Christians who can name 50 references to Jesus in, say, Isaiah, but when examined simply refer to a hoped-for unnamed messiah that is then back-formed to become Jesus]
- Diversity of Christian beliefs in the first four centuries (182). All the Xtian groups claimed to be not only right but uniquely right. And thus the NT emerged from these conflicts (183) [In my view, this casts credibility issues on the biblical “canon” which seems to change decade-by-decade, until a group finally called “Enough already!”]¹
- Gnostic forgeries, e.g. Gospel of Thomas (212) [at right]
- False Attributions (220) and Misattributions by Mistake (221)
- Excellent summation of Gospel history (224-228)
- The “autographs” – Ehrman nicely points out that we don’t have any original copies of any NT book (241), a point so often neglected when even scholars refer to “the original.”
- Jesus seminar (246) see below
- Ancient novels (45) – I was ready to jump on Ehrman’s statement that ancient people had “novels” but he seems to be using the term correctly. So I’ll shut up on that one.
- Christian “love feasts” – disparaging rumors by pagans about the nocturnal, private home meetings of early Christians who “greeted each other with a kiss” and “ate the flesh of the Son of God and drank his blood” (167).
- “Elisha and the she-bears” (2 Kings 2). Ehrman references this in regard to Marcion’s doctrine of “two Gods” (85-86) but this happens to be one of my own favorite stories elucidating the history of the northern and southern Hebrew cultures. (See “Never Taunt a Bald Guy Who Has God’s Ear“)
Problems?
Although the TOC does give helpful chapter titles, none of these are used in the book itself on the right-hand pages. This means that the reader can’t scroll pages forward to see where the next chapter begins. This may seem like a trifling publishing issue and does not actually hamper reading but for the person not reading the entire book in one session, we like to see how far we have to go before taking a “chapter break.”
Book shops in 2nd century? There were certainly book sellers (presumably ‘codices’)² and great libraries in antiquity going back to 300s BCE, but we read here that the 2nd century Roman physician Galen was walking down a street one day and, passing by a bookseller’s shop, looked through the window where he saw two guys arguing. Maybe this is accurate but it sounds a bit contemporary and it would be nice to have a citation for the incident. Ehrman does cite a book by Galen but it apparently goes by different titles and is not accessible in a Google search; and since there’s no biblio, it’s hard to know how credible the incident is.
“gospel” – In Ch. 6, Ehrman refers several times to this term with reference to Paul—not as a “gospel forgery” but as a common term, as in “Christians thought he preached a false gospel,” and some claimed “he perverted the true gospel message of Jesus and his apostles,” and “he advocated a gospel that led to an immoral lifestyle.” While Ehrman could simply be referring to an original common usage meaning “the Christian message” which later became what we now call the Gospels or “good news,” it’s confusing because no one these days ever really uses the term generically when referring to early religion and since this is a book about forgeries, it sounds like the author is referring to “gospel forgeries.”
Jesus Seminar – There are certainly criticisms of this long-standing project with many distinguished scholars (and unfairly criticized for being populated by a supposedly small crew of elite university representatives). And Ehrman’s critique of the Seminar’s 1993 book The First Gospels, could well be valid. But now we have an epistemological conundrum. He says, “In my opinion, the members of the Jesus Seminar typically got precisely wrong what Jesus actually said” (246). Now, Ehrman is actually just complaining that the Seminar claimed that plagiarism was unknown—which he firmly believes is untrue—but to say anything about what the historical Jesus (if there was one) “actually said” is to totally ignore the fact that no one anywhere knows what Jesus actually said or didn’t. All we really know, and not very well at that, is what the unknown gospel writers say he said.
¹According Ehrman’s blog, “In fact, the canon never was “officially” decided at all – at least until long after it was a fait accompli. Apart from some minor church synods early on, no decisions were officially rendered until the counter-Reformation Council of Trent. How did the church scrape by for all those centuries before? Not by formal process but by informal consensus. By the fifth century or so, nearly everyone in the orthodox communities simply agreed and did not debate the matter much more.”
Books In Action 