Forged

by Bart D. Ehrman

  The overarching message of this book is quite clear and not altogether subtle: if you want to enjoy the amazing blessings of paradise and avoid the horrific torments of hell, don’t sin! This message conveys a reliable and incontrovertible truth: those who fail to follow God’s will face eternal torture. How do we know? Because someone who has observed the realms of the damned has told us, Jesus’s right-hand man, Peter himself. In order to get his point across, the author writes in the first person—not in his own name, but in the name of the chief disciple. Here again we have a forgery in the name of Peter.

  “Petrine” Writings in the New Testament

  THE BOOKS I HAVE talked about here at some length—the Acts of Peter, the Gospel of Peter, the Pseudo-Clementine Writings, the Epistle of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter—are not the only fabrications about Peter and forgeries allegedly written by Peter from the early church. There were others: other “Acts” of Peter, a collection called the “Preaching” of Peter, two other apocalypses of Peter. And these are just the ones that we still have today. No one knows how many once existed. Producing books in the name of Peter was a virtual cottage industry in the early church.

  Is it possible, in light of this extensive use of Peter’s name to authorize others’ views, that any forgeries in the name of Peter made it into the New Testament? As it turns out, two books bear Peter’s name there as well, the letters of 1 Peter and 2 Peter. Both claim to be written by Peter, but there are solid reasons for thinking that Peter did not write either one.

  1 PETER

  The book of 1 Peter is allegedly written by “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,” to Christians whom he calls “exiles” in five provinces in the western part of what is now Turkey.17 There is no doubt that the author is claiming to be Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter. “Peter” was not a personal name before Peter was given it as a nickname by Jesus himself. According to the Gospels, this disciple’s real name was Simon. But Jesus indicated that he would be the “rock” (Greek petros) on whom the church would be founded. So he called him “Rocky,” or “Peter” (see Matt. 16:13–18).18 So far as we know, there were no other persons named Peter until later times when Christians started naming their children after the great apostle. So the author of 1 Peter is certainly claiming to be “that” Peter. This is borne out by his comment in 5:1, that he was personally a “witness of the sufferings of Christ.”19

  This matter of suffering is the key theme of the book. In fact, the word “suffering” occurs more often in this short five-chapter letter than in any other book of the entire New Testament, including the Gospels, which are much, much longer. The author assumes that his readers themselves are undergoing persecution and that they will be experiencing yet more in the future. “Now for a little while,” he tells them, they “have had to suffer various trials.” But that is all to the good, because through being “tested” their faith will be refined and become “more precious than gold that is…tested by fire” (1:6–7). They should not therefore be “surprised at the fiery ordeal that is coming…, as if something strange were happening,” but they are to “rejoice,” because they “share in the sufferings of Christ” (4:12–13).

  Scholars have long debated what kind of suffering the author has in mind. The older view was that the author was dealing with official state persecutions, such as happened when the emperor Nero imprisoned and then executed Christians in the city of Rome in 64 CE, blaming them for starting the horrible fire that destroyed much of the city, a fire that his own arsonists may have set. But over the past twenty years or so scholars have begun to stress that the book of 1 Peter never says much about “official” persecution, where Christians are arrested, put on trial for their faith, and martyred. Instead, the opposition seems to come from former friends and neighbors who do not understand or appreciate the Christians’ new lifestyle, which is removed from the joyful celebrations of pagan religions (4:1–5). That is to say, Christians stopped attending pagan festivals to form their own secret societies, and pagans became upset, suspicious, and hateful, leading to local opposition to Christians that could at times turn nasty.

  If this is the case, it makes sense that the author stresses to his readers that it is important for them to be obedient to the government and governing officials (2:13–15), to show good conduct among outsiders (2:12), to be devoted slaves, wives, and husbands (2:18–3:7), to do nothing to warrant any opposition, but to suffer only for doing what is right (2:20). A good deal of the exhortation and encouragement to his readers is based on a sophisticated interpretation of key passages in the Old Testament, quoted, of course, in Greek, the so-called Septuagint (the legendary origins of which are described in the forged Letter of Aristeas discussed in Chapter 1), as can be seen, for example, in 1:24–25; 2:3, 6–9, 22, 24–25; 3:10–12.

  The author ends his exhortation to be steadfast in the face of adversity by indicating that he has written his letter “through Silvanus, a faithful brother” (i.e., a true Christian) and by sending greetings from “she who is in Babylon, who is also chosen” (5:13). Scholars have long realized what this last bit means. Babylon was the city that was seen as the ultimate enemy of God among Jews, since it was Babylon that had defeated Judah and destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in the sixth century BCE. By the end of the first century, Christians and Jews had started using the word “Babylon” as a code word for the city that was the enemy of God in their own day, the city of Rome, which also destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, in the year 70 (see, e.g., Rev. 14:8; 17:5). The author, then, is claiming to be writing from the city of Rome. This makes sense, given the later traditions that associated Peter with the city of Rome, in fact as its first bishop—the first pope.

  But tradition also indicates that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero in 64 CE. Would it make sense that he would be calling Rome “Babylon” before the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70? By the time that catastrophe hit, Peter was long dead. As it turns out there are other, very good grounds for thinking that Peter did not actually write this book. It was written by someone claiming to be Peter. Before explaining some of those grounds, we should first look at the second letter in the New Testament written in Peter’s name.

  2 PETER

  There is less debate among scholars of the New Testament about the authorship of 2 Peter than for any of the other books sometimes considered forgeries. Whoever wrote 2 Peter, it was not Simon Peter.20 The author certainly claims to be Peter, even more explicitly than in the case of 1 Peter. He introduces himself as “Simeon Peter,21 a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ.” But more than that, he claims personally to have been present at the “transfiguration” scene narrated in the Gospels, where Jesus was transformed before the eyes of his disciples Peter, James, and John and began speaking with Moses and Elijah, before a voice came from heaven saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (see Matt. 17:1–8). The author insists that he himself was there to hear these words, brought to him by the “voice…of the majestic glory” (1:17). The author wants there to be no doubt: he is Peter.

  His chief concern is that there are false teachers in the community who have twisted the true message of the gospel. Most of chapter 2 is devoted to maligning these persons, without ever explaining what, exactly, they teach. This highly vituperative attack calls their teachings “destructive heresies” and says that they, the opponents, are licentious, greedy, and exploitative. The author indicates that they will suffer like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and like the inhabitants of the entire world in the days of Noah. That is to say, they too will be destroyed. He calls them ignorant and says they are “blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation, carousing.” He says they have eyes that are “full of adultery, unslakable for sin.” And on and on.

  This assault on his opponents, the “false prophets,” contains numerous verbal similarities to what can be found in the New Testament book of Jude. The parallels are so numerous that scholars are virtually unified in thinking that the aut
hor has taken Jude’s message and simply edited it a bit to incorporate it into his book.

  In addition to the false teachers, “scoffers” have appeared who mock the Christian view that Jesus is soon to return from heaven in judgment on the earth. If he was supposed to come soon, say these skeptics, why hasn’t he come? A lot of time has passed, and everything goes on just the same as before! The author replies that these unbelievers are ignorant and deceived, having forgotten that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day” (3:8). In other words, even if Jesus waits another three thousand years, he still is coming “soon.” Jesus has in fact delayed returning simply to give people a chance to repent before the coming destruction. Paul himself, the author tells us, taught such things in “all his letters, which the ignorant and unstable people twist, as they do with all the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (3:16).

  One of the reasons virtually all scholars agree that Peter did not actually write this letter is that the situation being presupposed appears to be of much later times. When Peter himself died—say, the year 64 under Nero—there was still eager expectation that Jesus would return soon; not even a full generation had passed since the crucifixion. It was only with the passing of time that the Christian claim that all would take place “within this generation” (Mark 13:30) and before the disciples had “tasted death” (9:1) started to ring hollow. By the time 2 Peter was written, Christians were having to defend themselves in the face of opponents who mocked their view that the end was supposed to be imminent. So “Peter” has to explain that even if the end is thousands of years off, it is still right around the corner by God’s calendar; everything is still on schedule.

  Moreover, the author of 2 Peter is writing at a time when there was already a collection of Paul’s letters in circulation, and these letters were being considered on a par with the Old Testament “Scriptures” (3:16). This could not have been during Paul’s lifetime,22 and early church tradition indicates that both Peter and Paul were killed during the reign of Nero.

  These are among the reasons for thinking that 2 Peter almost certainly could not have been written by Peter.23 And there is one more compelling reason. There are excellent grounds for thinking that Peter could not write.

  Simon Peter, Ancient Palestine, and Literacy

  WHAT DO WE KNOW about literacy and the ability to write in the ancient world, especially in rural Palestine, where Simon Peter was born and raised? Scholars of antiquity have been diligent over the past twenty-five years or so in trying to understand every aspect of ancient literacy and education. In what is now the classic study, the 1989 book Ancient Literacy, William Harris, professor of ancient history at Columbia University, shows that modern assumptions about literacy simply are not applicable to ancient times.24 Today, in modern America, we live in a world where nearly every child goes to school and learns to read and write. Just about everyone we know can read the sports page and copy out a page of a novel if they choose. But the phenomenon of massive and widespread literacy is completely modern. Before the industrial revolution, societies had no compelling reasons to invest enormous amounts of money and other resources into creating a literate population. It was only with the development of the industrial world that such a thing became both desirable and feasible.

  Harris argues that in the ancient world, at the very best of times, only about 10 percent of the population was reasonably literate. By the “best of times” he means Athens, a center of learning, at the height of its intellectual power, during the days of Socrates and Plato (fifth–fourth century BCE). Most of these 10 percent were men, as might be expected in a highly patriarchal society. And all of them were in the upper classes, the social and economic elite, who had the leisure and the money (well, their parents had the money) to afford an education. Lower-class people did not learn how to read, let alone write. And the vast majority of people in the ancient world were in the lower classes (to the surprise of many, the “middle class” is another invention of the industrial revolution; in the ancient world virtually everyone was high or low, or very, very low). The only notable exceptions were slaves, who were naturally a very low class indeed, but who were sometimes educated at their masters’ expense, so that they could carry out household duties that required literacy skills, such as taking care of the household finances, helping with correspondence, or teaching the children.

  When I say that few people could read, “let alone write,” I mean to signal something else quite significant about the ancient world. When upper-class people were educated, reading and writing were taught as two different skills.25 Today we learn reading and writing together, and we naturally assume that if people can read, they can also write—not necessarily write a novel, but at least a letter. But that’s because of the way we have set up our educational system. There is nothing inherent in learning to read that can necessarily teach you how to write. I know this full well personally. I can read Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and a range of other languages, but I cannot compose a letter in any of these languages. I learned how to read all of them in graduate school, so I could read ancient documents in their original languages and modern scholarship in the languages of Europe. But I never learned how to write them.

  Most people in the ancient world could not read. And those who could read often could not write. And in this case by “write” I mean that most people—even if they could copy down words—could not compose a sentence, let alone a well-argued treatise. On the contrary, the people who could compose an ethical essay, a learned philosophical discussion, or an involved religious treatise were highly educated and highly exceptional. And that was in the very best of times. Very, very few people indeed were able to perform these skills in a language other than the one they were raised with. I’m not saying that just 1 percent of the population could do such a thing. I’m saying that far fewer than 1 percent of the population could do it.

  It is sometimes thought that Palestine was an exception, that in Palestine Jewish boys all learned to read so that they could study the Hebrew Scriptures, and that since they could read, they could probably write. Moreover, it is often argued that in Palestine most adults were bilingual or even trilingual, able to read Hebrew, speak the local language, Aramaic, and communicate well in the language of the broader empire, Greek. Recent studies of literacy in Palestine, however, have shown convincingly that none of these assertions is true.

  The fullest, most thoroughly researched, and most widely influential study of literacy in Palestine during the period of the Roman Empire is by Catherine Hezser.26 After examining all of the evidence, Hezser concludes that in Roman Palestine the best guestimate is that something like 3 percent of the population could read, and that the majority of these would have been in the cities and larger towns. Most people outside of the urban areas would scarcely ever even see a written text. Some smaller towns and villages may have had a literacy level of around 1 percent. Moreover, these literate people were almost always the elite of the upper classes. Those who learned to read learned how to read Hebrew (not Greek).

  And what is more, once again, far more people could read than could write. The people who knew how to write were primarily men who were priests. In fact, for the entire first century CE (the time of Jesus and Simon Peter), we know for certain of only two authors in Palestine who produced literary works (i.e., educated compositions other than tax documents, land deeds, or marriage certificates, etc.): the Jewish historian Josephus and a man named Justus of Tiberius. We still have Josephus’s writings, but Justus’s don’t survive. Both of these men were in the upper echelons of society, and both were inordinately well educated. We know of no other literary authors for the entire century. Was Peter in Josephus’s and Justus’s class? No, not even close.

  What about Greek education in the land of Peter’s birth and up-bringing? It is sometimes assumed that since Galilee, the northern part of what we think of as Israel, was occasionally called “Galilee of the Gentil
es,” it was overrun by Gentiles in Jesus and Peter’s day. And according to a common kind of logic, if there were lots of Gentiles in Galilee, they would have spoken Greek; so to get along, everyone must have spoken Greek. As it turns out, that’s not true either.

  The most recent thorough studies of Gentiles in Galilee have been undertaken by the American scholar Mark Chancey.27 Chancey has studied every archaeological find from Galilee from around the time of the first century, has read every single piece of writing from the period of any relevance, and draws a decisive conclusion: the Gentiles in Galilee were almost exclusively located in the two major cities, Sepphoris and Tiberias. All the rest of Galilee was predominantly Jewish. And since most of Galilee was rural, not urban, the vast majority of Jews had no encounters with Gentiles. Moreover, Greek was not widely, let alone normally, spoken. The vast majority of Jews spoke Aramaic and had no facility in Greek.

  How do all these findings affect our question of whether Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter or any other books? Was Peter among the very upper echelons of the educated elite of Palestine who could compose letter-essays in Greek? Apart from the legendary accounts I have mentioned, all we know about Peter’s life comes to us from the New Testament. What we principally learn about him is that before he was a follower of Jesus he was a fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee.

  In order to evaluate Peter’s linguistic abilities, the place to begin, then, is with Capernaum. A full summary of what we know about Capernaum from Peter’s day is provided by an American archaeologist of Palestine, Jonathan Reed.28 On the basis of archaeological digs and historical sources, it is clear that Capernaum was a historically insignificant village in rural Galilee. It is never mentioned in any ancient source prior to the Gospels. It is scarcely mentioned by any sources after that. It was discovered by archaeologists in the nineteenth century and has been excavated since then. In the time of Jesus it may have had anywhere between six and fifteen hundred inhabitants, so say a thousand.