Forged

by Bart D. Ehrman

  The letter presents a revelation that Jesus gives to the apostles after his resurrection, much as the Book of Thomas the Contender and other Gnostic writings give the “secret teachings” of Christ after the resurrection. But here the emphasis is completely anti-Gnostic. Few documents stress as heavily as this one the importance of the flesh. Jesus is said to have had a real crucifixion and a real physical resurrection, as noted by the apostle Andrew, for example, who saw Jesus’s footprints on the ground after he had been raised: “A ghost, a demon leaves no print in the ground,” he insists (chap. 11). The apostles stress: “We felt him, that he had truly risen in the flesh.”

  Christ himself says, “I…put on your flesh, in which I was born and died and was buried and rose again” (chap. 19); and he indicates that “the flesh of every one will rise with his soul alive and his spirit” (chap. 24). Anyone who teaches anything different (the authors of the Book of Thomas the Contender and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter!) will suffer eternal punishment, involving real, physical pain (chap. 29).

  It is interesting that this book explicitly claims to be written against those who “deliberately say what is not true” (chap. 50). This is a book that deliberately claims to be written by apostles who had been dead for a century.

  Conclusion

  ONE OF THE MOST fascinating features of early Christianity is that so many different Christian teachers and Christian groups were saying so many contrary things. It is not just that they said different things. They often said just the opposite things. There is only one God. No, there are many gods. The material world is the good creation of a good God. No, it comes from a cosmic disaster in the divine realm. Jesus came in the flesh. No, he was totally removed from the flesh. Eternal life comes through the redemption of the flesh. No, it comes through escaping the flesh. Paul taught these things. No, Paul taught those other things. Paul was the true apostle. No, Paul misunderstood the message of Jesus. Peter and Paul agreed on every theological point. No, they were completely at odds with one another. Peter taught that Christians were not to follow the Jewish law. No, he taught that the Jewish law continued to be in force. And on and on and on, world without end.

  Not only did those on every side in all of these debates think that they were right and that their opponents were wrong; they also maintained in all sincerity and honesty that their views were the ones taught by Jesus and his apostles. What is more, they all, apparently, produced books to prove it, books that claimed to be written by apostles and supported their own points of view. What is perhaps most interesting of all, the vast majority of these apostolic books were in fact forged. Christians intent on establishing what was right to believe did so by telling lies, in an attempt to deceive their readers into agreeing that they were the ones who spoke the truth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  False Attributions, Fabrications, and Falsifications: Phenomena Related to Forgery

  THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK I HAVE focused on “literary” forgery, a deception in which the author of a literary text claims to be someone else. We all know of other, nonliterary kinds of forgeries as well: forgeries of documents (fake wills, marriage certificates, driver’s licenses; other forms of identification), works of art, money, and so on. In all of these cases the forger intends to deceive and mislead people for his or her own purposes.

  There are many other ways to deceive people, of course. Sometimes deception comes from hiding the truth, for example, by distorting or not telling the whole truth, as our president did for months during the Monica Lewinsky fiasco; or by removing evidence that can reveal the truth, as when another, earlier president, or one of his lackeys, erased crucial portions of the Watergate tapes. Sometimes deception comes from doctoring the truth, as happened when the American and British people, and possibly their elected officials, were fed misinformation about the threat to the United States posed by Iraq’s stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. Sometimes deception comes when people make excessive claims about themselves or their work, as when James Frey stated that his book Million Little Pieces was autobiographical, when in fact it was fictional, arousing the ire not only of millions of potential readers, but also of the great Oprah herself. And sometimes deception occurs when someone claims as his or her own work the work of another, for example, in instances of plagiarism, which are reaching epidemic proportions on college campuses around the country thanks to that boon and bane of modern human existence, the Internet.

  All of these alternate forms of deception were available in antiquity as well, of course (well, apart from the Internet). To round out my study of forgery, I would like to consider some of them in this chapter, restricting myself specifically to literary forms of misinformation. The first is not necessarily a form of deception; it is the other kind of pseudepigraphy that I mentioned at the outset of my discussion. Whereas some pseudepigrapha—writings under a “false name”—are forgeries, others involve “false attributions” in this case someone other than the author claims that an anonymous writing was written by a well-known person, when in fact it was not. Sometimes, to be sure, that can be a form of deception (though not by the author). Other times it is just a well-intentioned mistake.

  False Attributions

  IT WAS A LOT more common to write a book anonymously in antiquity than it is today. Just within the pages of the New Testament, nine of the books—fully one-third of the writings—were produced by authors who did not reveal their names. When church fathers were deciding which books to include in Scripture, however, it was necessary to “know” who wrote these books, since only writings with clear apostolic connections could be considered authoritative Scripture. So, for example, four early Gospels that were all anonymous began to be circulated under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about a century after they were written. The book of Acts was known to have been written by the author of the Third Gospel, so it too was assigned to Luke. The anonymous book of Hebrews was assigned to Paul, even though numbers of early Christian scholars realized that Paul did not write it, as scholars today agree. And three short anonymous writings with some similarities to the Fourth Gospel were assigned to the same author, and so were called 1, 2, and 3 John. None of these books claims to be written by the author to whom they were ultimately assigned. But since the real authors made no claims for themselves, the books are not forgeries. They are simply false attributions—assuming, for the moment, that the names attached to them are not those of the people who actually wrote them.

  MISATTRIBUTIONS BY MISTAKE

  Often in early Christianity anonymous writings were assigned to certain authors for fairly neutral reasons—readers simply wanted to know who wrote them. Just to give a simple example, in the third and fourth centuries there was a book in circulation called Against All Heresies. The book, which we still have today, gives a description of thirty-two individuals or groups who held beliefs that the anonymous author considered false. One of the great heresiologists—that is, heresy hunters—of the early Christian centuries was Tertullian, from the early third century. Some readers of Against All Heresies came to think that even though the book was anonymous, it must have been written by him. So scribes who copied the book identified Tertullian as the author, and the book was added to the collection of Tertullian’s writings, even though it never claims to be written by him.

  Modern scholars are convinced on stylistic grounds that Tertullian did not write the book. Who then did? We do know of a book with this title written by the church writer Victorinus of Pettau, who was active around the year 270 CE, half a century after Tertullian. Some scholars have thought that this is the book we have.1 Others have argued that it was written by an unknown author seventy years earlier, in Greek rather than in Tertullian’s Latin, so that the book we now have is a translation into Latin of an originally anonymous work. The reality is that we will never know for sure. The readers and scribes in the ancient world who thought that Tertullian wrote it were almost certainly wrong, but there may not have been any ulterior motive
in their assigning it to him. They may simply have made a mistake.

  ATTRIBUTIONS MADE TO INCREASE THE AUTHORITY OF A WRITING

  In other instances the attribution of a writing to an author may have been made in order to add greater weight to its significance. For example, one of the earliest Christian writings from outside the New Testament is a letter sent from the church of Rome to the Christians of Corinth, urging them to reinstate a group of church elders who had been unceremoniously removed from office. Traditionally the book has been known as 1 Clement. This is a long letter—sixty-five chapters in modern editions—that uses numerous scriptural and rhetorical arguments to make its point, which is that leaders of the church have divine authority and are not to be replaced at the whim or on the vote of a local congregation. Anyone who acts against the leadership of the church is doing so out of profane jealousy. The church of Corinth is to restore its leaders to their rightful place.

  Even though the letter claims to be written by the “church” that is in Rome, obviously someone wrote it, not hundreds of people serving on a letter-writing committee. Eventually the letter came to be attributed to a figure we have met before in our study, Clement of Rome, allegedly the fourth bishop of Rome, who had been appointed to that office by none other than Simon Peter, Jesus’s great disciple and apostle of the church. Once the name of Clement was associated with the letter, it obviously took on greater force and persuasive power. This is not simply a lengthy exhortation written by a group of unknown and unnamed individuals. It is a book written by one of the great authorities of the early Christian church. Largely as a result of this attribution, the letter enjoyed great success in the early church. Some Christians thought that it should be included among the writings of the New Testament.2

  MISATTRIBUTIONS OF THE GOSPELS

  Yet other anonymous writings were, of course, later deemed to be part of the Christian Scriptures. That never happened, however, unless it was known, or at least claimed, that the books had been written with apostolic authority. This is the case of the four New Testament Gospels, all of which were originally anonymous and then later connected with the names of apostles and apostolic companions.

  It is always interesting to ask why an author chose to remain anonymous, and this is never more so than with the Gospels of the New Testament. In some instances an ancient author did not need to name himself, because his readers knew perfectly well who he was and did not need to be told. That is almost certainly the case with the letters of 2 and 3 John. These are private letters sent from someone who calls himself “the elder” to a church in another location. It is safe to assume that the recipients of the letters knew who he was.

  Some have thought the Gospels were like that—written by leading persons in particular congregations who did not need to identify themselves, because everyone knew who they were. But then as the books were copied and circulated, names were still not attached to them. As a result the identities of the authors were soon lost. Then later readers, rightly or wrongly, associated the books with two of the disciples (Matthew and John) and with two companions of the apostles (Mark the companion of Peter and Luke the companion of Paul).

  Another option is that the authors did not name themselves because they thought their narratives assumed greater authority if told anonymously. If the Gospel stories about Jesus are claimed by a particular author, then in some sense they seem to lose their universal appeal and applicability; they are seen as one person’s version of the story, rather than “the” version of the story.

  There is one reason in particular for thinking that this is what the Gospel writers had in mind. It involves the way these narratives are written. In all four Gospels, the story of Jesus is presented as a continuation of the history of the people of God as narrated in the Jewish Bible. The portions of the Old Testament that relate the history of Israel after the death of Moses are found in the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. All of these books are written anonymously. These books take the story of God’s people from their conquest of the promised land (Joshua) to their ups and downs under charismatic rulers called judges (the book of Judges) and then under a series of kings (1 Samuel–2 Kings). This biblical history includes a promise to the first truly great king, David, that he would always have a descendant on the throne ruling Israel (2 Sam. 7:14). But the history concludes with disaster, when the Babylonian armies wipe out the nation and remove the king from power (end of 2 Kings).

  Many Jews expected that in the future God would fulfill his promise to David and bring a new anointed one, a new “messiah,” to rule his people Israel. The Gospels are written to show that in fact this new messiah is none other than Jesus (see Mark 1:1; John 20:30–31). To be sure, Jesus was different from the kind of messiah that other Jews were expecting.3 Rather than coming as a great king, like David, he came as a prophet speaking of the future kingdom of God. He himself would bring this kingdom not by being installed as king in Jerusalem, but by dying on the cross to bring salvation. This was a salvation not from the enemies of Israel, the Romans, but from the ultimate enemies of God, the powers of sin and death. Jesus conquered these alien powers at his death and resurrection, and he is returning soon as king of the earth.

  This is the message of the Gospels, and it is portrayed in these books as continuous with the anonymously written history of Israel as laid out in the Old Testament Scriptures. This can be seen, for example, in our earliest Gospel, Mark, which begins by quoting an Old Testament series of prophecies anticipating the coming of the messiah and then introducing Jesus as the one to whom these prophecies pointed. It can be seen in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which portray the birth of Jesus as a fulfillment of the predictions of Scripture, using imagery and language heavily dependent on Old Testament narratives to give their opening stories a “biblical” feel. It can even be seen in the Gospel of John, which begins with a powerful poem about Christ’s coming into the world here at the end of time in terms highly reminiscent of the stories of the creation in the book of Genesis (Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”).

  The Gospel authors, each in his own way, seem to be portraying the story of Jesus as a continuation of the story of the people of God, Israel. He is the fulfillment of all that was anticipated by the authors and prophets of the Old Testament. So it makes sense for these Gospel writers to remain anonymous, as the writers of biblical history were almost always anonymous.

  The anonymity of the Gospel writers was respected for decades. When the Gospels of the New Testament are alluded to and quoted by authors of the early second century, they are never entitled, never named. Even Justin Martyr, writing around 150–60 CE, quotes verses from the Gospels, but does not indicate what the Gospels were named. For Justin, these books are simply known, collectively, as the “Memoirs of the Apostles.” It was about a century after the Gospels had been originally put in circulation that they were definitively named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This comes, for the first time, in the writings of the church father and heresiologist Irenaeus, around 180–85 CE.

  Irenaeus wrote a five-volume work, typically known today as Against Heresies, directed against the false teachings rampant among Christians in his day. At one point in these writings he insists that “heretics” (i.e., false teachers) have gone astray either because they use Gospels that are not really Gospels or because they use only one or another of the four that are legitimately Gospels. Some heretical groups used only Matthew, some only Mark, and so on. For Irenaeus, just as the gospel of Christ has been spread by the four winds of heaven over the four corners of the earth, so there must be four and only four Gospels, and they are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.4

  Modern readers may not find this kind of logic very compelling, but it is not difficult to see why orthodox writers like Irenaeus wanted to stress the point. Lots of Gospels were in circulation. Christians who wanted to ap
peal to the authority of the Gospels had to know which ones were legitimate. For Irenaeus and his fellow orthodox Christians, legitimate Gospels could only be those that had apostolic authority behind them. The authority of a Gospel resided in the person of its author. The author therefore had to be authoritative, either an apostle himself or a close companion of an apostle who could relate the stories of the Gospel under his authority. In the year 155, when Justin was writing, it may still have been perfectly acceptable to quote the Gospels without attributing them to particular authors. But soon there were so many other Gospels in circulation that the books being widely cited by orthodox Christians needed to be given apostolic credentials. So they began to be known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  Why were these names chosen by the end of the second century? For some decades there had been rumors floating around that two important figures of the early church had written accounts of Jesus’s teachings and activities. We find these rumors already in the writings of the church father Papias, around 120–30 CE, nearly half a century before Irenaeus. Papias claimed, on the basis of good authority,5 that the disciple Matthew had written down the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language and that others had provided translations of them, presumably into Greek. He also said that Peter’s companion Mark had rearranged the preaching of Peter about Jesus into sensible order and created a book out of it.6

  There is nothing to indicate that when Papias is referring to Matthew and Mark, he is referring to the Gospels that were later called Matthew and Mark. In fact, everything he says about these two books contradicts what we know about (our) Matthew and Mark: Matthew is not a collection of Jesus’s sayings, but of his deeds and experiences as well; it was not written in Hebrew, but in Greek; and it was not written—as Papias supposes—independently of Mark, but was based on our Gospel of Mark. As for Mark, there is nothing about our Mark that would make you think it was Peter’s version of the story, any more than it is the version of any other character in the account (e.g., John the son of Zebedee). In fact, there is nothing to suggest that Mark was based on the teachings of any one person at all, let alone Peter. Instead, it derives from the oral traditions about Jesus that “Mark” had heard after they had been in circulation for some decades.