Forged

by Bart D. Ehrman

  Just consider the motivations that drove authors to claim to be someone else. Some forgers did it to see if they could get away with it. Well, if no one was deceived, then how would they get away with it? Some did it to make money. But if no one was fooled, who would pay the money? Others used forgery to cast aspersions on the character of another, the person who allegedly wrote the text. But if readers knew that the alleged author wasn’t the real author, how could this tactic possibly work? Some authors forged documents for military or political ends, to convince people in the name of an authority to engage in some kind of violent action or coup. But what would be convincing if the authority turned out not to be the person he claimed to be? Other forgers, probably the majority among Christians, produced their work in the name of someone else in order to make sure that their views would get a wide circulation. But if it was known that the alleged author didn’t actually write the book—if it wasn’t really written by Plato or Peter or Paul—why would anyone bother to read the book?

  You can go through all the motivations I have documented from the ancient sources. None of them makes sense if the forgery didn’t “work,” that is, if no one was fooled. And as I’ve said, the fact that people were fooled can explain the negative and sometimes violent reactions by readers who realized they had been fooled.

  This is why there is another set of scholars who talk about forgery and call it what it is—an intentional deceit. These other scholars have actually read what ancient sources say about the practice. My own teacher, Bruce M. Metzger, who knew the ancient sources like the back of his hand, asked the rhetorical question of the first group of scholars I mentioned: “How can it be so confidently known that such productions ‘would deceive no one’? Indeed, if nobody was taken in by the device of pseudepigraphy, it is difficult to see why it was adopted at all.”11

  One of the finest German scholars to discuss forgery in the ancient world, Norbert Brox, after having surveyed all the ancient discussions, states explicitly: “Contemporary scholarship on forgery shows beyond any doubt that literary forgery even at that time raised the question of its own morality and was not at all tolerated as a common, purely routine and acceptable practice.”12 And the leading authority of forgery in modern times, the Austrian scholar Wolfgang Speyer, indicates plainly at the very beginning of his massive study of the phenomenon: “Every kind of forgery misrepresents the facts of the case, and to that extent forgery belongs in the realm of lying and deception.”13

  Pseudepigraphy as an Accepted Practice

  OTHER SCHOLARS WHO DO not want their readers to think badly about forgeries (especially the ones in the Bible) do more than simply make blanket statements that forgers were not being deceitful. These other scholars, instead, give reasons and special circumstances under which the use of a false name was an acceptable practice in antiquity. Scholars who do so can be grouped into three major schools of thought.

  PSEUDEPIGRAPHY IN THE SPIRIT

  One view that was popular among scholars for years was that when an early Christian author wrote a book in someone else’s name, it was because he had been inspired to do so by the Spirit of God. When stated baldly, this sounds very much like a theological claim (and possibly not a very good one); but it is not necessarily that. You do not have to think that the Holy Spirit literally inspired a person to write this way; you could simply think that the person believed he was moved by the Spirit to write in the name of an early Christian authority. For this person who believed he was inspired, the words he wrote came from an impeccable authority (e.g., an apostle).

  One of the chief proponents of this view was the German scholar Kurt Aland, who claimed that the earliest Christian “prophets” believed they were inspired by the Spirit and so spoke forth a kind of “prophetic word” whose authority was not themselves, but the Holy Spirit. Eventually Christian “authorities” began writing down these prophetic words. But an author could not write in his own name, as if his personal authority could back up an idea or words provided by the Spirit. The author, instead, was a kind of tool used by the Spirit (in the author’s belief) to convey its own message. Aland claimed:

  Not only was the tool [i.e., the human author] by which the message was given irrelevant, but…it would have amounted to a falsification even to name this tool, because…it was not the author of the writing who really spoke, but only the authentic witness, the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the apostles.

  As a result:

  When pseudonymous writings of the NT claimed the authorship of the most prominent apostles only, this was not a skillful trick of the so-called fakers, in order to guarantee the highest possible reputation and the widest possible circulation for their work, but the logical conclusion of the presupposition that the Spirit himself was the author.14

  Despite the one-time popularity of this view among some scholars, it has never really caught on widely. For one thing, it doesn’t make sense to say that in the earliest Christian tradition authors refused to use their names, because it was the Spirit who was speaking through them. Our very first author was Paul, and he uses his own name.

  Second, if authors wanted to claim that it was the Spirit speaking through them, that is, that they were not grounding their message on their own authority, why wouldn’t they simply say, “Thus says the Lord,” or “Thus says the Spirit”? Why would they claim to be some other human—Peter, or Paul, or James—knowing full well that was not who they were? That is to say, this view can explain early anonymous writings, but it doesn’t explain the one thing that it is trying to explain: early pseudonymous writings. In particular, it doesn’t explain why an author would falsely claim one name instead of another for himself. If it was the Spirit that inspired the writer, why would he call himself Peter? Why not John, or Paul, or James? Or, as I suggested, why not give no name at all? As a result, this explanation, although interesting, is simply not convincing.

  REACTUALIZING THE TRADITION

  The next explanation of how pseudepigraphal authorship could be seen as an acceptable practice is a bit more complicated. In a nutshell, it argues that if an author understood himself to be a later representative of points of view held by a famous earlier author (who since had died, for example), he could write a document in that person’s name. The purpose was not to claim that he really was that person, but to suggest that the views represented in the document were those of this older authority. Or at least they would be that authority’s views, if he were still living to deal with the new situation that had arisen since his death.

  A technical term for this kind of procedure is “reactualizing the tradition.” A “tradition” is any point of view, teaching, or story that is passed down in writing or by word of mouth. A tradition is “reactualized” when it is made actively relevant (reactuated) to a new situation.

  Suppose a highly influential author in 1917 condemned Christians who drank alcohol, on the grounds that doing so made them leave their senses and behave irresponsibly. Fifty years later, a different problem has arisen—people have started using hallucinogenic drugs. A new author wants to tell Christians that they are not to do any such thing. The new author, living in 1967, writes an essay claiming to be the famous and respected author from 1917, condemning not just alcohol consumption, but also the use of drugs. This new author stands in the tradition of the older author and makes the tradition applicable to the “actual” situation he is addressing. In other words, he has “reactualized” the tradition. By claiming the name of the author from 1917, he is not so much claiming to be that person as to be continuing the tradition of that person.

  That at least is the theory, and it has been applied by some scholars to the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy in the New Testament. As one British scholar has argued, pseudonymity was “an acceptable practice, not intended to deceive,” because a pseudepigraphal author continuing an older author’s tradition “could present his message as the message of the originator of that stream of tradition, because in his eyes that is what it was…. Ther
e was no intention to deceive, and almost certainly the final readers were not in fact deceived.”15

  You can probably see one of the key problems with this view. If the people who forged the New Testament letters of, say, Peter and Paul had no “intention to deceive” and did “not in fact” deceive anyone, we again are left with the problem of why everyone (for many, many centuries) was in fact deceived. For seventeen hundred years, everyone who read these letters thought that Peter and Paul wrote them. And here again we’re left with the question: What is the evidence that “reactualizing the tradition” by assuming a false name was a widely followed and acceptable practice?

  The chief proponent of this view is the American scholar David Meade, who published his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic.16 Meade argues that the evidence for this practice comes from the Hebrew Bible. It was customary, he says, for writings of various authors to be passed along under the name of the person who started the tradition that they saw themselves belonging to. For example, Hebrew Bible scholars for over a century have maintained that the book of Isaiah was not composed completely by the famous Isaiah of Jerusalem in the eighth century BCE. Chapters 40–55, for example, were almost certainly written by someone else living a hundred and fifty years later, during the time when the nation of Judah was in captivity in Babylon.

  As Meade notes, Isaiah 40–55 was transmitted as part of the book of Isaiah. But, in Meade’s view, the author of these chapters was not trying to deceive anyone into thinking he was really Isaiah of Jerusalem, from a century and a half earlier. Meade argues that he was simply claiming to belong to the same prophetic tradition as Isaiah of Jerusalem. So too the final eleven chapters of Isaiah, which were written by yet a third author, living even later. As Meade puts it, by calling these later authors “Isaiah” Jews were not making a claim about the “literary origins” of their writing (i.e., about who originally penned their books), but about their “authoritative tradition” (i.e., about which tradition—Isaiah’s—they were continuing on for the new day.)

  Meade finds this kind of tradition in other parts of the Hebrew Bible as well and so concludes that, when it comes to the New Testament, authors are doing something very similar. The author of 2 Peter, who was not really Peter, claims to be Peter not because he wants people to think he is Peter. He is not meaning to lie about it. He is indicating which tradition—Peter’s—he sees himself belonging to.

  A number of scholars have been attracted to this theory, since it can explain how authors could make false claims about themselves without lying about it, and it seems to fit into the ancient Jewish tradition of authorship. But there are very big problems with the theory.

  For one thing, most of the evidence doesn’t actually work. We’re not sure who wrote Isaiah 40–55, other than to say that, first, it was not Isaiah of Jerusalem and, second, it was probably an Israelite living during the Babylonian captivity. We don’t know if he himself physically added his own writings to the writings of Isaiah of Jerusalem (e.g., on the same scroll) or if he simply wrote his book using many of the ideas of his predecessor. That is to say, it may be that it was someone else who put the two bits of writing together, so that the author of what is now Isaiah 40–55 wasn’t making any authorial claim at all, but was simply writing anonymously. Moreover, nowhere does the author of Isaiah 40–55 ever claim to be Isaiah. This is in stark contrast with, say, the author of 2 Peter, who claims to be Peter, or with the author of Ephesians, who claims to be Paul.

  But even more problematic is the fact that writers of the first century, when the New Testament books were being written, did not know that Isaiah 40–55 was not written by Isaiah of Jerusalem. Quite the contrary, it was widely assumed that Isaiah wrote all of Isaiah! This notion that later authors were reactualizing the tradition is based on twentieth-century views of authorship of the Hebrew Bible that no one in the ancient world knew about. There is no record of anyone from the ancient world ever acknowledging this view, speaking about this view, reflecting on this view, embracing this view, supporting this view, or promoting this view. No ancient author even mentions this view. How would a first-century person such as the author of Colossians have any idea what had happened with the writings of Isaiah five hundred years earlier? He was living in a different country and speaking a different language; he was not a Jew himself; he read Isaiah in Greek rather than Hebrew; and for him all of Isaiah was written by Isaiah.

  There is a yet another problem with this view. Even if it were true that the author of 2 Peter understood himself to be continuing the tradition of Peter, would that justify his claim to be Peter? What is the logic of claiming actually to be the person whose views you accept? One of the reasons this logic is faulty is that there were lots of Christians representing lots of points of view, many of which were at odds with one another. How would proponents of a tradition have reacted toward others who claimed to be from that same tradition, yet had something different to say? Just think of the author of the Pastorals, who claimed to be Paul even though he wasn’t, and the author of the Acts of Paul, who claimed to be representing Paul’s proclamation even though he wasn’t. They have just the opposite views of women and their roles in the church. Should we think, then, that early Christians who accepted the view of the Pastorals would find it acceptable for the author of the Acts of Paul to put words into Paul’s mouth that he didn’t speak? Of course not. Would the author of the Acts of Paul find it acceptable for the author of the Pastorals actually to claim to be Paul, when he wasn’t? Absolutely not. What would each of these authors have called the other? They would have called the other author a liar. And they would have labeled the other author’s books pseuda (falsehoods, lies) and notha (bastards).

  PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS

  One other reason Meade’s explanation of forgery fails is that most of the authors of the New Testament were not part of the Jewish tradition. They were Gentiles. So other scholars have tried to find grounds for legitimizing pseudepigraphal writings in the pagan tradition, where these authors have their roots. Such scholars sometimes claim that it was common for disciples of a philosopher to write treatises and not sign their own name, but the name of their teacher. This, it is alleged, was done as an act of humility, that authors felt that their ideas were not actually theirs, but had been given to them by the leader of their philosophical school. So, to give credit where credit was due, they attached their master’s name to their own writings.

  New Testament scholars often claim that this can explain why someone claimed to be Paul when writing Colossians, Ephesians, or the pastoral letters. In one of the standard commentaries on Colossians, for example, we read the following: “Pseudonymous documents, especially letters with philosophical content, were set in circulation because disciples of a great man intended to express, by imitation, their adoration of their revered master and to secure or to promote his influence upon a later generation under changed circumstances.”17 A more recent commentator on Colossians and Ephesians states something similar: “Viewing Colossians (or Ephesians) as deutero-Pauline should not be mistakenly understood as meaning that these documents are simply examples of forgery. For example, to write in the name of a philosopher who was one’s patron could be seen as a sign of honor bestowed upon that person.”18

  I should point out that, as happens so often, neither of these commentators actually provides any evidence that this was a common practice in philosophical schools. They state it as a fact. And why do they think it’s a fact? For most New Testament scholars it is thought to be a fact because, well, so many New Testament scholars have said so! But ask someone who makes this claim what her ancient source of information is or what ancient philosopher actually states that this was a common practice. More often than not you’ll be met with a blank stare.

  The scholars who do mention ancient evidence for this alleged practice typically point to two major sources.19 But one of the two says no such thing. This is the third-century Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry, who is alleged to have s
aid that in the school of the ancient philosopher Pythagoras (who lived eight hundred years earlier) it was a common practice for disciples to write books and sign their master’s name to them.20 This statement by Porphyry is a little hard to track down, because it is not in his surviving Greek writings; it is only in an Arabic translation of one of his works from the thirteenth century.21

  I doubt if any of the New Testament scholars who refer to this statement of Porphyry’s has actually read it, since it is, after all, in Arabic, and most New Testament scholars don’t read Arabic. I don’t either. But I have a colleague who does, Carl Ernst, an expert in medieval Islam. I asked Professor Ernst to translate the passage for me. As it turns out, Porphyry doesn’t say anything about followers of Pythagoras writing books and then signing his name to them. Instead, he says that Pythagoras himself wrote eighty books, two hundred books were written by his followers, and twelve books were “forged” in the name of Pythagoras. The twelve books are condemned for using Pythagoras’s name when he didn’t write them. The forgers are called “shameless people” who “fabricated” “false books.” The two hundred books are not said to have been written by Pythagoras’s followers in his name; they were simply books written by Pythagoras’s followers.

  This, then, is one of the two ancient references sometimes cited by scholars to indicate that the practice of writing in a master’s name was “common.” I should point out that, in Porphyry’s other writings as well as in this passage, he shows a keen interest in knowing which books are authentic and which are forged, and he condemns the forgeries, including the Old Testament book of Daniel, which he thinks could not have been written by an Israelite in the sixth century BCE.

  The other reference to a tradition in the philosophical schools does say what scholars have said it says. This one is in the writings of Iamblichus, another Neoplatonic philosopher from about the same time as Porphyry. In his account of Pythagoras’s life, Iamblichus says the following: “This also is a beautiful circumstance, that they [i.e., Pythagoras’s followers] referred everything to Pythagoras, and called it by his name, and that they did not ascribe to themselves the glory of their own inventions, except very rarely. For there are very few whose works are acknowledged to be their own.”22