Forged

by Bart D. Ehrman

  This tension between Peter and Paul over the keeping of the law, as we have seen, is very much at issue in the noncanonical Epistle of Peter, where the author, claiming to be Peter, but actually writing long after his death, attacks a person whom he calls his “enemy.” This enemy has preached a “lawless gospel to the Gentiles,” that is, a gospel that says one is made right with God apart from the law. This personal enemy of Peter has falsely claimed that he, Peter, agrees with his false understanding of the faith. “Peter,” however, does not agree with it and attacks his enemy for claiming that he does.

  This, then, is a thinly veiled attack on Paul written by a Jewish Christian who thought that it was proper, and even necessary, for Jews who believed in Jesus to continue observing the Jewish law. Failing to do so meant a breech in true religion. Paul, for this author, is not an apostolic authority. He is a false preacher.

  THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE WRITINGS

  A similar teaching is found in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings themselves.3 If you will recall, these are a set of long narratives allegedly written by Clement, the fourth bishop of Rome (i.e., the pope), in which he describes his travels, his meeting with the apostle Peter, and his conversion to become a follower of Jesus. Most of the books narrate his subsequent adventures while participating with Peter on his missionary journeys. In particular these accounts relate how Peter engaged in conflicts and miracle contests with Simon the Magician, who claimed to be the true representative of God, but who, according to Peter, was a false teacher. In some passages of these books it is clear that Simon is understood to be someone else—Peter’s real-life enemy, the apostle Paul.

  Nowhere is this more clear than in several passages in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings known as the Homilies.4 In one passage Peter elaborates God’s way of dealing with the world from the very beginning. Peter points out that there have often been pairs of people who appear in sacred history. The first to appear is always the inferior of the two. So, for example, the first children born to Adam and Eve were the wicked Cain (first) and the righteous Abel (second). So too the father of the Jews, Abraham, had two children: the firstborn, Ishmael, who was not to inherit the promises, and then Isaac, who was. Isaac then had two sons, Esau, the profane, and Jacob, the pious. And on and on through history.

  This pattern applies to the Christian mission field, argues “Peter.” The first missionary to the Gentiles was “Simon” (i.e., Paul); he was necessarily inferior. The second, the superior, was Peter himself, who claims, “I have come after him [Simon/Paul] and have come in upon him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon disease” (2.17). Not a very affirming portrayal of Paul! Peter has followed in Paul’s missionary path, straightening out everything that Paul had gotten wrong.

  A second passage is even more condemning. As is well known, Paul was often said to have been commissioned to be an apostle by Christ in the vision he had on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9). Paul was not one of the original followers of Jesus. On the contrary, he started out as a persecutor of the Christian church. But then Christ appeared to him and converted him, telling him to become his missionary to the Gentiles. Paul himself, the historical Paul, took this commissioning with the utmost seriousness and claimed in books such as Galatians that, since he received his gospel message directly from Jesus, he was beholden to no one. Anyone who preached a message contrary to his message was advocating falsehood rather than truth (Gal. 1:6–9). He, Paul, had the truth from Christ himself. And among other things, this truth was that Gentiles were not to adopt the Jewish law in order to find salvation in Christ (thus Gal. 2:15–16).

  The author of the Pseudo-Clementines heartily disagrees and portrays Peter himself as mocking Paul for his claims to have direct access to the teachings of Jesus, based on a single brief vision. In Homily 17 Peter says to “Simon” (i.e., Paul):

  You alleged that…you knew more satisfactorily the doctrines of Jesus than I do because you heard His words through an apparition…. But he who trusts to apparition or vision and dream is insecure. For he does not know to whom he is trusting. For it is possible either that he may be an evil demon or a deceptive spirit, pretending in his speeches to be what he is not.

  Visions cannot be trusted, because you have no way of knowing, really, what you are seeing. So if Paul’s authority is rooted exclusively in a vision, it is no authority at all.

  Peter continues with an argument that would seem hard to refute:

  Can anyone be rendered fit for instruction through apparitions? And if you will say, “It is possible,” then I ask, “Why did our teacher abide and discourse a whole year to those who were awake?” And how are we to believe your word, when you tell us that He appeared to you? And how did He appear to you, when you entertain opinions contrary to His teaching? But if you were seen and taught by Him, and became His apostle for a single hour, proclaim His utterances, interpret His saying, love His apostles, contend not with me who accompanied Him. For in direct opposition to me, who am a firm rock, the foundation of the Church, you now stand.

  Paul may have had a brief vision of Jesus. But Peter was with him for months—a year!—not asleep and dreaming, but awake, listening to his every word. And Jesus himself declared that it was Peter, not Paul, who was the “Rock” on whom the church would be built. Paul is a late interloper whose authority rests on entirely dubious grounds. It is the teachings of Peter that are to be followed, not those of Paul.

  Whether or not this is the view of the historical Peter is something we will probably never know. But it is certainly the view of Peter set forth in the forged writings known as the Pseudo-Clementines.

  JAMES

  In the New Testament itself we find a book that appears to attack Paul’s teachings, or at least a later misinterpretation of Paul’s teachings. This is a letter that claims to be written by someone named James. In the early church it was widely assumed that this James was the brother of Jesus.

  James was known throughout the history of the early church to have been firmly committed to his Jewish roots and heritage, even as a follower of Jesus.5 According to the New Testament he was not a disciple of Jesus during his lifetime (see John 7:5), but he was one of the first to see the resurrected Jesus after his death (1 Cor. 15:7), and because of that, presumably, he came to believe in him. No doubt it was his filial connection that elevated him to a position of authority in the church.

  The apostle Paul, who personally knew James (Gal. 1:19), indicates that he was committed to keeping the Jewish law and appears to have insisted that the other Jewish followers of Jesus do so as well (2:12). He was well known for his great piety; one early source indicates that he prayed so often and at such length that his knees became as calloused as a camel’s. The best historical records indicate that he died around 62 CE, after heading the Jerusalem church for thirty years.

  James was a very common name among Jews in first-century Palestine, and among Christians as well. A number of people named James are in the New Testament. Matthew 10:3–4 indicates that two of Jesus’s twelve disciples had the name. To differentiate the two Jameses, normally they are given additional identity markers, such as “James the son of Zebedee” or “James the son of Alphaeus.” The author of the book of James, however, does not identify himself further, suggesting he expected his readers to know which James he was. There seems to be little doubt, then, that he is claiming to be the most famous James of all, Jesus’s brother. This view is corroborated by the fact that he writes his letter to the “twelve tribes in the Dispersion,” a reference to the twelve tribes of Israel who are scattered throughout the Roman world. James, the chief Jewish Christian, is writing to the dispersed Jewish Christians.

  The book contains a number of ethical admonitions that urge readers to live in ways appropriate for the followers of Jesus. They are to have faith and not to doubt; to endure trials, be slow to anger, watch their tongues, control their desires and not to show partiality, be jealous or ambitious, seek wealth, or show favoritism
to the wealthy, and so on. Many of these admonitions seem to reflect the teachings of Jesus himself, for example, from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7).

  The author is particularly concerned with one issue, however, an issue that reflects a bone of contention with other Christians. Some Christians are evidently saying that to be right with God, all you need is faith; for them, doing “good works” is irrelevant to salvation, so long as you believe. James thinks this is precisely wrong, that if you do not do good deeds, then you obviously don’t have faith:

  What use is it, my brothers, if a person says he has faith but has no works? Is faith able to save him? If a brother or sister is naked and has no daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and be filled,” without giving them what their bodies need, what use is that? So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead, being by itself. (2:14–17)

  The author goes on to argue that having faith apart from works cannot bring salvation and in fact is worthless. This is shown above all by the example of Abraham, father of the Jews, who was saved by what he did, not just by what he believed:

  But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one? You do well: even the demons believe, and they shudder. But do you wish to know, O shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works and faith was completed by the works. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” And he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone. (2:18–24)

  Here, then, is a sharp invective against anyone who maintains that it is faith alone that can put a person into a right standing before God (in James’s words, that can “justify” a person). His evidence is Abraham, and the Scripture he quotes in support is Genesis 15:6: “And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

  One of the reasons this passage is significant is that it sounds almost like a parody of something that Paul himself wrote, earlier, in his letter to the Galatians, when he was trying to convince his Gentile readers that they did not have to do the works of the law in order to be justified (be made right with God), but that faith in Christ alone was all that was needed. What is most striking is that Paul tries to demonstrate his case by referring specifically to Abraham and by quoting Genesis 15:6. Here is what Paul writes:

  We know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ; so we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because no one will be justified by works of the law…. Thus Abraham “believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” You see therefore that those who have faith are the children of Abraham. (Gal. 2:16; 3:6–7)

  For centuries scholars of the New Testament have maintained that the book of James is responding to the teaching of Galatians. Paul taught that it was faith in Christ that put people into a right relationship with God, independently of whether or not they did the works of the law. James insisted that works were needed, that faith alone could not bring justification. The two authors use the same language (“justify,” “faith,” “works”), they appeal to the same Old Testament figure, Abraham, and they both cite the same verse, Genesis 15:6. Since Martin Luther at the beginning of the Reformation, some interpreters have insisted that James is contradicting Paul. Luther’s conclusion was that James had gotten it precisely wrong.

  More recent scholars, however, have called this reading of James into question. In large measure that is because, even though the letter uses the same terms as Paul, James demonstrably means something different by these terms. When Paul uses the term “faith,” as we saw in an earlier context, he means something relational by it; faith in Christ means trusting that Christ’s death and resurrection can restore a person to a right standing before God. This, for Paul, comes “apart from the works of the law,” meaning that one does not have to do the works prescribed by the Jewish law in order to trust Christ. One does not need to observe the Sabbath, keep kosher food laws, be circumcised if male, and so on.

  James means something different, however, by both “faith” and “works.” For him, faith does not have the relational meaning of “trusting someone.” It refers to intellectual assent to a proposition: “Even the demons believe [God is one], and they shudder” (2:19). In other words, even demons know that there is only one real God, but it doesn’t do them any good. This decidedly does not mean that the demons trust God; they simply have the intellectual knowledge of his existence. Faith—intellectual assent to the propositions of the Christian religion—will not save anyone, according to James. But would Paul disagree with that? Probably not.

  Even more striking, when James speaks of “works,” he is not referring to actions required by the Jewish law: Sabbath observance, kosher food requirements, and so on. He is clearly talking about good deeds: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked (the two examples he gives), and so on. For James, an intellectual assent to Christianity that does not manifest itself in how one lives is of no use. It can’t save a soul.

  And so the book of James may seem to be contradicting Paul, but it is not really contradicting him. What is one to make of that? Actually it is not too difficult to see what happened historically. In Chapter 3 we saw that there were later authors, such as the author of Ephesians, who claimed to be Paul, but who transformed his teaching that the works of the Jewish law could not bring salvation into a teaching that said “good works” could not save (see Eph. 2:8–9; see also Titus 3:5). For an author like the pseudonymous writer of Ephesians, doing good deeds does not contribute to making a person right with God. James therefore is reacting not to what Paul said but to what later Christians misunderstood Paul as saying.

  These later Pauline Christians interpreted Paul’s argument that it was faith, not works, that justified to mean that it doesn’t matter what you do or how you live. It matters only what you believe. Paul’s teaching on “works of the law” was taken to be a general principle about “good deeds.” And Paul’s teaching about “trust in Christ” was altered into a teaching about “what to believe.” For these later Christians, then, what mattered was your belief, not your life. They thought this teaching came from Paul, and so they too appealed to Abraham, the father of all believers, and to Genesis 15:6, which indicated that Abraham was justified by his faith, not his works. James reacted against that by arguing the opposite: you can’t have true faith without it being reflected in how you live your life. “Faith without works is dead.”

  This, then, was another controversy over the teachings of Paul as they came to be reinterpreted in his churches after his day. James does not name Paul explicitly, but it is perfectly clear that his teachings are what he has in mind, at least as they were being interpreted in his day. But was he really James, or was he someone else claiming to be James?

  There are excellent reasons for thinking that this letter was not written by the brother of Jesus, but was forged in his name. For one thing, the teaching being opposed must have arisen later than the writings of Paul. That is to say, it is a later development of Pauline thinking in a later Pauline community. The teaching is indeed similar to the teaching found in Ephesians, written after Paul’s lifetime in his name. But it goes even farther than Ephesians, since the author of Ephesians would never have said that it didn’t matter how you lived so long as you have faith. Just the opposite in fact! (See Eph. 2:10.) Whoever is writing the book of James is presupposing an even later situation found among Paul’s churches. But since the historical James was probably martyred in 62 CE, two decades or so before Ephesians was written, the book could not very well have been written by him.

  Moreover, the one thing we know best about James of Jerusa
lem is that he was concerned that Jewish followers of Jesus continue to keep the requirements of Jewish law. But this concern is completely and noticeably missing in this letter. This author, claiming to be James, is concerned with people doing “good deeds” he is not at all concerned with keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath and Jewish festivals, or circumcision. His concerns are not those of James of Jerusalem.

  The real clincher, though, is one we have seen before in relation to both Peter and Jude. This author has written a very fluent and rhetorically effective composition in Greek. He is intimately familiar with the Greek version of the Old Testament. The historical James, on the other hand, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant from Galilee who almost certainly never learned to read. Or if he did learn to read, it was to read Hebrew. If he ever learned Greek, it would have been as a second language in order to speak it, haltingly no doubt. He never would have gone to school. He never would have become proficient in Greek. He never would have learned how to write, even in his native language, let alone a second tongue. He never would have studied the Greek Old Testament. He never would have taken Greek composition classes. He never would have become skilled in Greek rhetoric.

  This book was not written by an illiterate Aramaic-speaking Jew. Whoever wrote it claimed to be James, because that would best accomplish his objective: to stress that followers of Jesus need to manifest their faith in their lives, doing good deeds that show forth their faith, since without works faith is dead.