And if lying is justified in some instances, what better reason for lying than to get people to understand and believe the truth? What would make better sense than writing a book that embodies a lie about a relatively unimportant matter (who really wrote this) in order to accomplish what really does matter (the truth being proclaimed)?
On the other hand, maybe the authors who forged these texts were wrong. Maybe they should not have tried to deceive their readers. Maybe it is better always to tell the truth, to stand by the truth, to be willing to take the consequences of the truth, even if you would much prefer the consequences of telling the lie.
Maybe children have the right to know what parents honestly believe. Maybe it is better for a spouse to tell her partner about an extramarital affair, if the alternative is to live a life of deceit and distrust. Maybe a dying parent (or grandparent, sibling, or anyone else) has the right to know that death is imminent, so he or she can prepare for the inevitable. Maybe it is better for church leaders not to mislead their people, but to tell them what they honestly know to be true (e.g., about church finances or about their own sinful past) or what they honestly believe (e.g., about God or the Bible). Maybe it is better for our elected officials to come clean and tell us the truth, rather than mislead us so as to be authorized to do what they desperately want to do domestically or on foreign soil. Maybe, on the whole, truth is better than lying.
To be sure, most people, in most circumstances, present, past, and very distant past, realize that there are times when it might be right and good to lie, if, for example, it can save a life or keep someone from physical harm. But the reality is that most of our lies are not so weighty. Certainly the lies manufactured by the forgers of early Christian texts were not told in order to protect life and limb. They were told in order to deceive readers into thinking that the authors of these books were established authority figures. If these texts were produced by reliable authorities, then what they say about what to believe and how to live must be true. True teachings were based on lies.
At the same time, the authors of these lies were no doubt like nearly everyone else in the world, ancient and modern; they too probably did not want to be lied to and deceived. But for reasons of their own they felt compelled to lie to and deceive others. To this extent they did not live up to one of the fundamental principles of the Christian tradition, taught by Jesus himself, that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Possibly they felt that in their circumstances the Golden Rule did not apply. If so, it would certainly explain why so many of the writings of the New Testament claim to have been written by apostles, when in fact they were not.
NOTES
Introduction: Facing the Truth
I am outlining here just the “orthodox” views that ended up winning the early Christian battles over what to believe. There were lots of Christians who held other views, as we will see later in the book. For further reflections, see my book Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Thus, for example, Irenaeus Against Heresies 3.2–4; 4.26; see also Tertullian Prescription Against Heresies.
This is why there is such a close connection in Christian antiquity between the content of a writing and its claim to authorship, as we will see. It was widely thought that if a writing promoted “false teachings,” then it certainly could not have been produced by an established authority. In other words, the decision about who authored a work (an apostle?) was often made on the basis of whether the teachings in the work were acceptable. See the discussion of the Gospel of Peter in Chapter 2.
Chapter 1: A World of Deceptions and Forgeries
The authoritative discussion of the Hitler diaries, told with flair and in precise detail, is found in Robert Harris, Selling Hitler (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986).
For a fascinating account by one of modern times’ most adroit forgery experts, see Charles Hamilton, Great Forgers and Famous Fakes: The Manuscript Forgers of America and How They Duped the Experts, 2nd ed. (Lakewood, CO: Glenbridge, 1996).
The story is told by the Greek historian Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Philosophers (5.92–93).
For a collection of some of the most interesting, see Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). For a more comprehensive collection, see J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
Tertullian On Baptism 17. See also the discussion of ancient fictions about Paul in Chapter 3.
This is my own count.
As we will see later in Chapter 3, some scholars have maintained that the allegedly forged writing the author of 2 Thessalonians is referring to is none other than 1 Thessalonians!
Eusebius Church History 7.25.
Jerome The Lives of Famous Men 4.
Didymus the Blind, Comments on the Catholic Epistles (never translated into English), in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca 39, 1774.
Clement of Alexandria Miscellanies 2.52.6.
This has recently been argued in Clare Rothschild, Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of the Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009).
There may be some question, however, about Xenophon. The Greek philosopher Plutarch maintained that Xenophon used the pen name precisely to lend more credibility to his account by having it written by an outside party rather than writing about himself in the first person. If so, this is a pen name “with an edge.”
For reasons for thinking that the Gospel of Matthew was not really written by the disciple Matthew, see Chapter 7, and in greater depth, John Meier, “Matthew, Gospel of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:618–41.
Galen Commentary on Hippocrates’ On the Nature of Man 1.42.
Smith wrote two books about the discovery and its importance for understanding early Christianity and the historical Jesus, one an intriguing detective-like story for popular audiences, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel of Mark (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), and the other a hard-hitting analysis for scholars, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973). Recent years, however, have seen a spate of publications by scholars arguing that Smith in fact forged the document. See especially Stephen Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005); and Peter Jeffries, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). See also my discussion in Chapter 8.
Josephus Jewish Wars 1.26.3; trans. William Whiston, The Works of Josephus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979).
See Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum (Munich: Beck, 1971), p. 145.
For an English translation, see R. J. J. Shutt, “Letter of Aristeas,” in James Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:7–34.
Martial Epigrams 7.12; 7.72; 10.3; 10.33. I am not saying, of course, that in this or any of the other cases I mention we actually know the real motivations of the forger. What we do know is that Martial read his motivations in this way.
Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 10.3.
Pausanius Description of Greece 6.18.5.
The New Testament book of Revelation, written by an unknown John, is a very rare exception.
One of the most interesting discussions is in the writings of the church father Tertullian, who asked how the book of Enoch, written by the famous figure Enoch—a man who never died, but was taken up to heaven while still living seven generations after Adam—could have survived down to his, Tertullian’s, own day. If there was a worldwide flood after Enoch’s time in the days of Noah, wouldn’t the book have perished? Tertullian goes out of his way to explain how it could, in fact, have survived
the flood. Why does Tertullian have to go to the trouble of explaining this? Because he genuinely believed that it was written by Enoch. Tertullian was no dummy—far from it. He was one of the real intellectuals of the Christian third century. It is anachronistic for modern-day scholars to think that ancients must have seen through the ruse of apocalyptic forgery and recognized that the books produced were simply following the requirements of the genre.
Porphyry Isagoge pr. I.
For the letter and a full discussion of it, see A. E. Haefner, “A Unique Source for the Study of Ancient Pseudonymity,” Anglican Theological Review 16 (1934): 8–15.
It is almost always claimed by scholars dealing with Christian pseudepigrapha that the author of the so-called Acts of Paul (or Acts of Paul and Thecla) was caught and punished. That is true, but his crime was not committing forgery. As I point out in Chapter 3 in greater detail, the Acts of Paul is not a book that claims to be written by Paul; it claims to be a true account about Paul. The author was punished not for lying about his identity, but for fabricating a fictitious account and trying to pass it off as a historical record.
Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
See Raffaella Cribbiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
In Chapter 4 I deal with other explanations that try to sanitize the practice as well, including the claim that apparent forgeries can be explained by authors having used secretaries who used a different writing style and altered the content of what the authors wanted to say.
In addition, some ancient authors described the penning of works in a name other than one’s own with the Greek and Latin equivalents of our verb “to make” (as in “to create,” “to forge”) or “to make up” (i.e., to “fabricate”).
The most thorough examination is now forty years old, but it has never been equaled, let alone surpassed. Most New Testament scholars, alas, have never read it—Speyer’s Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum. Also valuable, though considerably less thorough, is Norbert Brox, Falsche Verfasserangabe: Zur Erklärung der frühchristlichen Pseudepigraphie (Stuttgart: KBW, 1975). Most work on forgery in early Christianity focuses on the question of whether any pseudepigraphical writings made it into the New Testament. The most recent work along these lines is Armin Baum, Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im frühen Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Together these authors give a comprehensive survey of all the ancient sources on forgery. And all of them agree that forgers intended to deceive their readers.
Herodotus Histories 7.6.
Plutarch The Oracles at Delphi 407B.
Athenaeus The Banqueters 13.611B.
Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung, p. 3; translation mine.
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 4.7.
Xenophon Memorabilia 4.2.14–18.
Plato Republic 382C; 389B; Heliodorus Ethiopica I.26.6.
The fullest and most compelling study of Augustine’s view of lying is David J. Griffiths, Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2004).
Origen in his lost book the Miscellanies, discussed by Jerome in Against Rufinus 1.18; Clement Miscellanies 7, 9, 53, 1–4.
Chapter 2: Forgeries in the Name of Peter
In the fuller account of the story, George’s father is so proud of his son for speaking the truth in the face of possible adversity that he takes him into his arms and praises him to the heavens.
There are a number of interesting books on lying for a general audience. One of the most influential has been Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage, 1999).
For lying in antiquity, see especially the collection of essays in Christopher Gill and T. P. Wiseman, eds., Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).
Exceptions may be some kinds of fantasy and science fiction, but even there plausibility is an important feature; postmodern novels, to no one’s surprise, are a different kettle of fish.
Polybius Histories 2.56.10–12; trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb Classical Library (New York: Putnam, 1922).
For English translations of these stories, collectively known as the Acts of Peter, see J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 390–430; and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. McL. Wilson, from the sixth German edition, 2 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991–92), 2:271–321.
Eusebius Church History 6.12.
For an English translation, see Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Plese, Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
It is debated among scholars whether it is the “evildoer” who is punished by not having his legs broken or Jesus. I tend to think the former, since it doesn’t make as much sense to think that the soldiers got angry at Jesus for something the other fellow said.
Some scholars have argued that these verses are not actually docetic. Here I’m not arguing that the author intended them to be read docetically. I’m simply saying that a hostile reader like Serapion may well have thought they were meant docetically, even if they were not.
Note again the relation of an “author” to “authority” and vice versa. In Serapion’s view a false account such as the Gospel of Peter could not have been written by an authority such as Peter. And so the book was pseudepigraphical, written “under a false name” by someone else.
For English translations, see Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. McL. Wilson, from the sixth German edition, 2 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991–92), 2:493–94. I have taken my quotations from there.
Though not in Paul’s own writings. See the discussion of Gal. 2:11–14 in the section on the noncanonical Epistle of Peter in Chapter 6.
I deal with the matter for a general audience in my book Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). For a more thorough and heavy-hitting study, see Harry Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985). For a fully authoritative account, see Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
English translations can be found in Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 593–612; and Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 2:620–38.
Eusebius classifies the Apocalypse of Peter among the notha—the “bastard,” forged writings—rather than among the books he accepts as canonical. But the fact that he has to mention the book at all in this context suggests that there were other Christians who maintained that it should be accepted as Scripture, as with most of the other books he classified as notha, such as the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas. The Apocalypse of Peter is also received as canonical (tentatively) in the late second-century Muratorian Canon, a document I discuss in Chapter 3.
For a discussion of the book, which includes evidence that it was not written by Peter, see J. H. Elliott, “Peter, First Epistle of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5:269–78.
Jesus of course would have been speaking Aramaic. The Aramaic word for “rock” is Kephas, and that is how Peter’s name occurs when given in its Aramaic form. I am not saying that I think the account in Matthew is historically accurate in describing Peter as the “rock” of the church, but I do think it highly probably that Jesus renamed Simon “the Rock” during his public ministry.
It should not be objected that Peter did not actually see the crucifixion of Jesus and so was not a “witness” to his sufferings. Whoever wrote this book almost certainly did not have the Gospels to read; we can’t know what he thought about Peter’s involvement in Jesus’s last hours.
For a discussion of the book, whi
ch includes evidence that it was not written by Peter, see J. H. Elliott, “Peter, Second Epistle of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:282–87.
Simeon appears to be the Hebrew form of “Simon.” Why the author mixes Hebrew (Simeon instead of Simon) with Greek (Peter instead of the Aramaic Kephas) is a puzzle.
Paul himself did not think that he was writing “Scripture.” He was writing personal letters to his churches. They too treated these writings, when they received them, as personal correspondence. It was only later, after Paul’s lifetime, that different churches and individuals collected these letters and started regarding them as Scripture. For insightful comments on the early collections of Paul’s letters, see Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 58–65.
There are other reasons for assuming Peter did not write this letter. In 3:2 the author slips and refers to “your apostles” as if he is not one of them. Moreover, the author uses the book of Jude and so must have written later than that forged letter. And he knows 1 Peter (since he refers to this book as his “second” letter), which, as I will argue more fully now, could not have been by Peter either, but was written later, at least after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70.
William Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
Among the many excellent studies of ancient education systems, see especially the study of Raffaella Cribbiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
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