Forged

by Bart D. Ehrman

  The negative connotations of the term are appropriate to the ancient phenomenon. Ancient authors called such works falsely inscribed writings, lies, and “illegitimate children.” Multiple attempts by modern scholars to see the practice in a more positive light simply don’t stand up to scrutiny. The most common claims found widely, both among scholars and laypeople, are that this practice was widely accepted in philosophical schools or that the phenomenon can be explained by assuming that an author made use of a secretary who composed the writing himself. Neither explanation has adequate support in the ancient sources.

  It is important to recall that ancient writers who mention the practice of forgery consistently condemn it and indicate that it is deceitful, inappropriate, and wrong. If we are to do so as well probably depends on a number of factors. Modern readers who are religiously committed to the teachings of the New Testament may want to excuse the authors who deceived their readers about their identity, on the grounds, for example, that they were lying in order to achieve a greater good. Other readers may be inclined to acknowledge that the authors violated ancient ethical standards and are best described as I have done so here—as forgers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Forgeries in Conflicts with Jews and Pagans

  IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, JESUS is reputed to have said, “I did not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). Truer words were never spoken. Many Christians in the modern age think of their religion as peace loving, as well it often has been and should be. But anyone with any grasp of history at all knows also just how violent Christians have been over the ages, sponsoring oppression, injustice, wars, crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, holocausts—all in the name of the faith. Maybe all the Christians behind history’s hateful acts were acting in bad faith; maybe they were violating the true principles of their own religion; maybe they were out of touch with the peace-loving teachings of the Good Shepherd of the sheep. And no one should deny the amazing good that has been done in the name of Christ, the countless acts of selfless love, the mind-boggling sacrifices made to help those in need. Even so, few religions in the history of the human race have shown a greater penchant for conflict than the religion founded on the teachings of Jesus, who, true to his word, did indeed bring a sword.

  Some early Christians realized that the religion would be based on conflict. The author of the New Testament book of Ephesians, allegedly Paul, tells his readers to “put on the full armor of God” (6:10–20). Their struggle was not against mortal flesh, but “against authorities, against the cosmic power of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Against these cosmic enemies Christian believers were to put on the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” This was not a battle, then, against human enemies, but against the spiritual powers arrayed against God. But it was a battle nonetheless.

  It is striking that in his instructions about the Christian “armor” the author of Ephesians also tells his readers, “Fasten the belt of truth around your waist” (6:14). Truth was important for this writer. Early on he refers to the gospel as “the word of truth” (1:13). He later indicates that the “truth is in Jesus” and tells his readers to “speak the truth” to their neighbors (4:24–25). He also claims that the “fruit of the light” is found in “truth” (5:9). How ironic, then, that the author has deceived his readers about his own identity. The book was written pseudonymously in the name of Paul by someone who knew full well that he was not Paul. Falsely claiming to be an impeccable Christian authority, this advocate for truth produced a pseudepigraphon, a “falsely inscribed writing.” At least that is what ancient critics would have called it, had they known the author was not Paul. So some Christians went into battle armed not with truth, but with deception. Possibly the author felt justified in lying about his identity. There was, after all, a lot at stake.

  Christians entered into conflict not merely with spiritual forces, but also with human ones. Or, perhaps more accurately from the author’s point of view, the spiritual forces aligned against Christians manifested themselves in the human sphere, and it was on this level that the battles were actually fought. As historians of early Christianity have long known, Christians in the early centuries of the church were in constant conflict and felt under attack from all sides. They were at odds with Jews, who considered their views to be an aberrant and upstart perversion of the ancestral traditions of Israel. They were at odds with pagan peoples and governments, who considered them a secretive and unauthorized religion that posed a danger to the state. And they were most vehemently and virulently at odds with each other, as different Christian teachers and groups argued that they and they alone had a corner on the truth and other Christian teachers and groups flat-out misunderstood the truths that Christ had proclaimed during his time on earth.

  In all these battles, the “full armor of God” included weapons of deceit. Forgery was used by one Christian author or another in order to fend off the attacks of Jews and pagans and to assault the views of other Christians who had alternative, aberrant understandings of the faith. In this chapter I consider the conflicts with outsiders, the Jews and pagans opposed to the Christian faith. In the next chapter I take up the internal conflicts that plagued the Christian church from the beginning.

  The Jewish Reaction to Christian Claims

  MANY CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS today cannot understand why Jews do not accept the claim that Jesus is the messiah. For these Christians it all seems so obvious. The Old Testament predicted what the messiah would be like. Jesus did and experienced the things predicted. So of course he is the messiah. The Old Testament said he would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14), in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2); that he would have to flee as a child to Egypt and then come out from there (Hos. 11:1); and that he would be raised in Nazareth, so that he would be called a Nazarene (Isa. 11:1). It predicted that he would minister in Galilee (Isa. 9:1–2) and would be a great healer (53:4). It predicted his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the acclamations of the crowd (Isa. 62:11; Zech. 9:9), his cleansing of the Temple (Jer. 7:11), and his rejection by the Jewish leaders (Ps. 118:22–23). Most important, it predicted his crucifixion for the sins of others and his glorious resurrection from the dead (Pss. 22; 110; Isa. 53).

  Jesus did everything that was predicted. Why don’t the Jews see this? It is in their own Scriptures! Can’t they read? Are they blind? Are they stupid?

  The truth, of course, is that Jews throughout history have been no more illiterate, blind, or stupid than Christians. The typical response of Jews to the Christian claims that Jesus fulfilled prophecy is that the scriptural passages that Christians cite are either not speaking of a future messiah or are not making predictions at all. And one has to admit, just looking at this set of debates from the outside, the Jewish readers have a point. In the passages allegedly predicting the death and resurrection of Jesus, for example, the term “messiah” in fact never does occur. Many Christians are surprised by this claim, but just read Isaiah 53 for yourself and see.

  Most ancient Jews rejected the messiahship of Jesus for the simple reason that Jesus was not at all like what most Jews expected a messiah to be. I should stress that a lot of Jews in the ancient world were not sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a messiah, any more than most Jews today are. But there were groups of highly religious Jews around the time of Jesus who thought that God would send a messiah figure to deliver them from their very serious troubles. All these groups based their expectations on the Hebrew Bible, of course; but there were different expectations of what this messianic savior would be like.1

  The term “messiah” comes from a Hebrew word that means “anointed one.” It was originally, in the Hebrew Bible, used in reference to the king of Israel, a figure like King Saul, King David, or King Solomon. The king was literally “anointed” with oil on his head during his inauguration ceremony, in order to show tha
t God’s special favor rested upon him in a unique way (see, e.g., Ps. 2). After a time, when there were no more kings over Israel, some Jews thought that God would send a future king, an anointed one like great King David of old, who, like David, would lead Israel’s armies against its enemies and reestablish Israel once again as a sovereign state in the land. This future king, then, was to be the messiah, a completely human being who was a powerful warrior and great ruler of God’s people.

  Other, more cosmically minded Jews thought that this future savior would be a supernatural figure sent from heaven, a kind of cosmic judge of the earth who would engage the enemy with overpowering force before setting up a kingdom here on earth to be ruled by God’s chosen one. Yet other Jews were principally focused on what we might call the “religion” of Israel, as opposed to its political situation. These Jews thought that the future ruler of the people would be a mighty priest who would empower the people of Israel by teaching them the correct interpretation of the Jewish law. He would rule God’s people, then, by enforcing the observance of what God had demanded in Scripture.

  In short, there were a variety of expectations of what a future “anointed” figure, a messiah, would be like. The one thing these conceptions of the future savior had in common was that they all expected him to be a figure of grandeur and might, empowered by God to overthrow the enemies and to rule the people of God with authority.

  The followers of Jesus, on the other hand, claimed that he was the messiah. And who was Jesus? A little known preacher from backwoods Galilee who had offended the ruling authorities and was, as a result, subjected to public humiliation and torture and executed as a low-life criminal on a cross. For most Jews, it would have been hard to imagine anyone less like the expected messiah than Jesus of Nazareth.

  But that is what Christians claimed, that Jesus was the messiah. The earliest Christians became convinced of this claim, because they believed that Jesus was actually, physically, raised by God from the dead. God had shown that Jesus was not just a lowly criminal or a powerless preacher. God had in fact empowered him to conquer the greatest enemy of all, death itself. Jesus had ascended to heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God, and he is waiting to come back to establish his rule over the earth. According to this early Christian view, the Jewish expectations of the messiah were true. The messiah would overthrow the enemies of God in a show of strength. But before doing that he needed to conquer the bigger enemies, the evil powers of sin and death that were aligned against God and his people. Jesus conquered sin at the cross, and he conquered death at his resurrection. He, then, is the messiah. And he is coming back to finish the job.

  For followers of Jesus, therefore, Scripture must have predicted not only the powerful aspects of the messiah’s “second” coming, but also the significant events of his “first” coming. So Christians scoured the texts of Scripture to find passages that could feasibly refer to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Christians were certain that these passages (virgin birth in Bethlehem, triumphal entry, death for the sins of others, and so on) referred to Jesus, because Jesus was the messiah and the Scriptures predicted the messiah. Most Jews were not convinced, however, because none of these passages actually speaks about the messiah, the Hebrew Bible never states that the messiah would come twice, and Jesus’s life was anything but the glorious life of God’s anointed one.

  And so there were deep and difficult conflicts from the beginning. In the early stages, Jews far outnumbered Christians and could easily overwhelm them. But Christians continually struck back and kept arguing. And arguing and arguing and arguing. Among other things, many Christian Jews couldn’t understand why non-Christian Jews didn’t see their point and didn’t accept the “fact” that Jesus was the messiah. The proofs were all there, right in the Scriptures themselves! As battle lines became more firmly drawn and both sides dug in and used harsher tactics, Christians began to argue that Jews who rejected Jesus were just as responsible for Jesus’s death as the Jewish authorities who had originally called for it. Rejecting Jesus was tantamount to killing him.

  And so non-Christian Jews came to be known as people who had killed their own messiah—Christ-killers. They obviously misunderstood their own Scriptures, and they had rejected their own God. As a result, God had rejected them.

  It was in this context that a significant amount of literature was produced by both sides, especially by Christians. Some of this literature we still have today. A letter allegedly by Barnabas, companion of the apostle Paul, claims that Jews have always misunderstood their own religion by interpreting the law of Moses literally instead of figuratively, so that the Old Testament is not a Jewish, but a Christian book. There is a writing by the famous second-century Christian martyr Justin, in which he has a debate with a Jewish rabbi and shows him the errors of his interpretations of his own Scriptures. A sermon by Melito, a Christian bishop of the late second century, claims that Jews have not only rejected their messiah, but in killing him, the Son of God, they are guilty of deicide: they have killed God himself. And so it went.

  Among the works produced by Christians in this back-and-forth were a number of forgeries, books written in the names of authoritative figures of the past intending to show the brilliant truth of Christianity and the horrendous errors of the Jews. In particular there were a number of forgeries that stressed the true character of Jesus: he was a divine being, not a mere mortal, as acknowledged by the Roman authorities. In these writings it was not the Romans, but the Jewish leaders, or even the Jewish people themselves, who were responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion.

  Some Resultant Forgeries

  THE GOSPEL OF PETER

  We have already seen one forgery that was written, at least in part, to set forth this view. The Gospel of Peter (discussed in Chapter 2) emphasizes that “none of the Jews” was willing to wash his hands to show that he was innocent of Jesus’s blood. In this Gospel it is the Jewish king Herod, not Pilate, who orders Jesus’s death. And afterwards the Jewish people show their remorse for killing God’s chosen one and acknowledge that now God will surely judge them and bring destruction to their holy city of Jerusalem, a reference to the Roman war that resulted in the burning of the Temple, the leveling of the walls, and the slaughter of the Jewish opposition in 70 CE.

  The Gospel of Peter is one of the earliest Gospels from after the New Testament period, possibly written around 120 CE or so. Anti-Jewish Gospel forgeries became increasingly popular with time, especially as Christianity grew and was able to assert its power more convincingly.

  THE GOSPEL OF NICODEMUS

  One of the most intriguing Gospels comes near the end of the time period I am considering in this book, the first four Christian centuries. It is a lengthy account of Jesus’s trial, death, and resurrection that falsely claims to be written by none other than Nicodemus, the rabbi well known to Christian readers for his important role in the Gospel of John as a “secret” follower of Jesus (see 3:1–15).2 The Gospel of Nicodemus became an extraordinarily popular and influential book throughout the Middle Ages, as it was widely circulated in the Latin West and was eventually translated and disseminated in nearly all of the languages of western Europe. It was, of course, believed to have been written by Nicodemus himself. But the account was probably composed sometime in the fourth century, three hundred years after Nicodemus’s death (assuming he was a historical figure). It may well be based, however, on stories that had been passed down orally for two centuries before being written down.

  The Gospel begins by indicating that Nicodemus had originally written the narrative in Hebrew. In fact, the account appears to be an original Greek composition. But by claiming that it appeared first in Hebrew the real author, whoever he was, provided it with an air of authenticity, showing both that the narrative was very old and that it was (supposedly) based on eyewitness testimony.

  There is no question that the account is far from historical, as it is rooted in later legends about Jesus’s final hours,
his death, and his resurrection. The narrative is designed to show that Pilate was completely innocent of Jesus’s execution, that the Jewish leaders and people were completely at fault, and that by rejecting Jesus the Jews have rejected God.

  The divine character of Jesus is established at the outset of the narrative in one of its most interesting, and amusing, scenes. Before Jesus’s trial, the Jewish authorities are speaking with Pilate, insisting that Jesus is guilty of crimes and needs to be condemned. Pilate has his courier bring Jesus into the courtroom. Inside the room are two slaves holding “standards” that have—as Roman standards did—an image of the “divine” Caesar on them. As Jesus enters the room, the standard bearers bow down before him, so that the image of Caesar appears to be doing obeisance in his presence.

  The Jewish authorities are incensed and malign the standard bearers, who reply that they had nothing to do with it. The images of Caesar bowed down of their own accord to worship Jesus. Pilate decides to try to get to the bottom of the matter and so tells the Jewish leaders to pick some of their own husky men to hold the standards and to have Jesus go out and enter a second time. The leaders choose twelve muscular Jews, six for each standard, who grasp them with all their might. Jesus reenters the room, and once again the standards bow down before him.

  You might think that everyone would get the point, but that would ruin the story. Pilate becomes terrified and tries to get Jesus off the hook, but to no avail. The Jewish authorities declare that Jesus is an evildoer who deserves to die. Repeatedly throughout the course of the trial they accuse Jesus of wrongdoing and insist that he be judged. And just as repeatedly Pilate insists that he is innocent of all charges, expresses puzzlement about why the Jews are so intent on seeing him killed, and urges the Jewish leaders to allow him to release Jesus. But they refuse, wanting him dead. Three times they express their willingness to assume responsibility by speaking the words of Matthew 27:25, “His blood be upon us and our children.”