Forged
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Catherine Hezser, Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).
Mark Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); see also his more recent study, Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Jonathan Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 140–69.
The famous synagogue that tourists see on the site today was built centuries later.
Chapter 3: Forgeries in the Name of Paul
For an English translation, see J. K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 350–89; and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. McL. Wilson, from the sixth German edition, 2 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991–92), 2:213–70.
For a full account of the Thecla traditions, see Stephen Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Tertullian On Baptism 17.
The classic study of Marcion, which is still worth reading today, was published by the great German scholar Adolf von Harnack in 1924; it has been partially translated into English by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma as Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990). The most recent overview is Heikki Raïsänen, “Marcion,” in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, eds., A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 100–124.
For an English translation, see Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 305–07. Some scholars date the Muratorian Canon to the fourth century, but this view has not proved convincing to most.
For an English translation, see Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 380–82; and Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 2:254–57.
Benjamin White, “Reclaiming Paul? Reconfiguration as Reclamation in 3 Corinthians,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009): 497–523.
For an English translation, see Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 547–52; and Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 2:46–52. My quotations here follow Schneemelcher’s translation.
For a fuller description of Gnosticism, see Chapter 6.
The scholarly literature on the pastoral letters is so massive that it is difficult to know where to refer interested readers who want to see the basic arguments about their authenticity. Possibly it is best to start with Jerome D. Quinn, “Timothy and Titus, Epistles to,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Friedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:560–71. As is true of everything I talk about in this book—as is true, in fact, for virtually anything any biblical scholar talks about—there are differences of opinion even here. For a representative of the minority view that Paul actually was the author of the pastoral letters, see the lively discussion in the introduction in Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
For example, Michael Prior, Paul the Letter Writer in the Second Letter to Timothy (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1989).
Among other things, this means that if any one of these letters is forged, they’re all forged.
A. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921).
This is the case even with scholars who want to argue that Paul did write the letters. One of the most recent studies is Armin Baum, “Semantic Variation Within the Corpus Paulinum: Linguistic Considerations Concerning the Richer Vocabulary of the Pastoral Epistles,” Tyndale Bulletin 59 (2008): 271–92. Baum points out that in the other letters of Paul, the fewer total number of words that can be found in a letter means that there are fewer different words used. But not with the pastoral letters, which have fewer words than many of Paul’s letters, but more different words. Baum still wants to think that these books are written by Paul, however, and so comes up with an explanation that sounds perhaps like a case of special pleading. In his view, Paul took more consideration and time with these letters than his others, since he was composing them in writing rather than orally. That seems highly unlikely to me. Paul certainly put a lot of time and effort into composing letters like Romans and Galatians. Moreover, Baum doesn’t cite any evidence to suggest that the Pastorals were composed in writing by Paul rather than dictated, by Paul or anyone else.
Unfortunately, the article is available only in German: Norbert Brox, “Zu den persönlichen Notizen der Pastoralbriefe,” Biblische Zeitschrift 13 (1969): 76–94.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983).
Once again, the scholarship on this question is voluminous. A good place to start is Edgar Krenz, “Thessalonians, First and Second Epistles to the,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:515–23.
F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).
J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).
See J. Christiaan Beker, Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).
See Victor Paul Furnish, “Ephesians, Epistle to,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2:535–42.
See Victor Paul Furnish, “Colossians, Epistle to the,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1:1090–96.
Unfortunately, the book has never been translated into English: Walter Bujard, Stilanalytische Untersuchungen zum Kolosserbrief: Als Beitrag zur Methodik von Sprachvergleichen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973).
Chapter 4: Alternatives to Lies and Deceptions
It didn’t occur to me at the time that the author of 2 Timothy would have been speaking only about the Scriptures he knew, the “Old Testament,” and that his doctrine of inspiration may not have coincided with my own view that the Bible was completely without error, a view that in fact came into existence only in modern times.
A partial exception may be the view of evangelical scholar Donald Guthrie, who tries to argue on historical, rather than dogmatic, grounds that there can be no forgeries in the New Testament; see his “The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudipigrapha in New Testament Criticism,” Vox Evangelica 1 (1962): 43–59.
These views of Daniel and Ecclesiastes are almost universally held by critical scholars today. For an introductory discussion, see two of the leading textbooks on the Hebrew Bible in use throughout American universities today: John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); and Michael Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Another approach is to acknowledge that false authorial claims do indeed constitute forgery—lies with the intent to deceive—but to insist that the Bible should not have such books in it. This is the claim of one of the most recent scholars of forgery who has come out of Germany, Armin Baum, who thinks that if it can be shown that a book really is forged, it should be removed from the New Testament (implied in his book Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im frühen Christentum [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001] and confirmed by private correspondence). As you might imagine, given such a view, Baum is reluctant to consider too many of the books of the New Testament forgeries. But he is willing to concede, for example, along with the vast majority of scholars, that 2 Peter is.
A. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 12.
A. W. Argyle, “The Greek of Luke and Acts,” New Testament Studies 20 (1974): 445.
M. J. J. Menken, 2 Thessalonians (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 40.
Andrew Lincoln, Ephesians (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990), p. lxx.
R. McL. Wilson, Colossians and Philemon (London: Clark, 2005), p. 31.
For an assessment of how certain books came to be con
sidered part of the canon of Scripture, see my study Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). A fuller discussion can be found in Harry Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).
Bruce M. Metzger, “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972): 15–16.
Norbert Brox, Falsche Verfasserangabe: Zur Erklärung der frühchristlichen Pseudepigraphie (Stuttgart: KBW, 1975), p. 81; translation mine.
Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum (Munich: Beck, 1971), p. 3; translation mine.
Kurt Aland, “The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries,” Journal of Biblical Literature 12 (1961): 39–49.
James Dunn, “The Problem of Pseudonymity,” in The Living Word (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 65–85.
David Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986).
Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, Colossians (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 123.
Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), p. 8.
Two additional sources come from centuries later still and are of almost no historical worth, as I argue below.
The passage is discussed at some length, for example, in Baum, Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung, pp. 53–55.
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a, Kitab ‘uyun al-anba ’fi tabaqat al-atibba’, ed. ‘Amir al-Najjar, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma lil-Kitab, 2001), 1:244–45.
Iamblichus Life of Pythagoras 31.
See Leonid Zhmud, Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frühen Pythagoreismus (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), p. 91.
See, for example, Holger Thesleff, Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period (Åbo: Åcademi, 1961).
Two later Neoplatonic philosophers, Olympiodorus and Elias, living some two and a half centuries after Iamblichus, make roughly similar comments (Olympiodorus Prolegomenon 13.4–14.4; Elias In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias Commentaria 128.1–22). But they are so long after the fact that they cannot help us know what was happening in the time of the New Testament, half a millennium earlier (any more than the editorial practices in vogue today can tell us what was happening in the 1500s). Moreover, the comments of Olympiodorus and Elias may ultimately derive from the tradition starting with Iamblichus, some two hundred fifty years earlier.
E. Randolph Richards, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991).
Richards, Secretary, p. 108.
Richards, Secretary, pp. 110–11.
Chapter 5: Forgeries in Conflicts with Jews and Pagans
See John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
For an English translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus, see Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Plese, Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
Tertullian Apology 21.24; Eusebius Church History 2.2.
For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
Tertullian Apology 21.24.
For an English translation, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
For a fuller discussion, see my Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2005), pp. 63–65.
In the history of the interpretation of the passage the question has always been, “What was he writing?” Some have thought that he must have been writing out the sins of the woman’s accusers. Or a particularly apt quotation of scripture. Or a declaration of condemnation of unjust judges. Or something else!
Chris Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Augustine On the Harmony of the Gospels 1.10.
Other writings allegedly written by Jesus are referred to in several church fathers, such as Augustine (Against Faustus 28.4) and Leo the Great (Sermon 34.4).
My reasoning in this case is that it is not a letter that existed outside of its fictional context, a piece of correspondence that circulated independently as a writing of Jesus.
For English translations of both letters, see Ehrman and Plese, Apocryphal Gospels.
An English translation of excerpts of Egeria’s diary is provided by Andrew Jacobs in Bart Ehrman and Andrew Jacobs, Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450 CE: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 333–46.
Tertullian Apology 40; trans. S. Thelwell, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
Minucius Felix Octavius 9.6–7; in G. W. Clarke, ed., The Octavius of Minucius Felix (Mahway, NJ: Paulist, 1974).
Minucius Felix Octavius 9.5.
For English translations of a range of accounts, see Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).
Eusebius Church History 9.5.
Ovid Metamorphoses 14.136–46.
For an excellent study of the Sibyl and her oracles, see H. W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, ed. B. C. McGin (London: Routledge, 1988).
For a full analysis and translation of the surviving oracles, see John J. Collins, Sibylline Oracles, in James Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983–85), 1:317–472.
All translations are by Collins, in Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
Justin First Apology 20.
For example, the pagan critic Celsus around 177 CE, as quoted by the church father Origen in his book Against Celsus (5.61.615; 7.53.732; 7.56.734); also see a Latin oration attributed to the (Christian) emperor Constantine found in Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, in which the emperor claims that the pagan charges of forgery are false.
Chapter 6: Forgeries in Conflicts with False Teachers
John J. Gunther, St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background (Leiden: Brill, 1973).
Thomas Sappington, Revelation and Redemption at Colossae (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991); Richard DeMaris, Colossian Controversy: Wisdom in Dispute at Colossae (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1994); Clinton Arnold, Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); Troy Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
I have taken all translations of the Pseudo-Clementine Writings from Thomas Smith, “The Pseudo-Clementine Literature,” in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8 (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
They are called this because they consist of twenty sermons allegedly given by Clement, in which he tells his tales of journeys and adventures with the apostle Peter.
There has been a spate of books on the historical James in recent years. For a competent treatment by a good scholar (with whom I disagree on a number of points), see John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition (Edinburgh: Clark, 1997).
See, for example, the discussion in my Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), pp. 53–58.
Scholars have come up with four major possible explanations for these “we passages.” Three of the four explanations simply don’t seem to work. The traditional explanation is that the author really was Paul’s companion. That view is problemat
ic though, since the author makes so many mistakes about Paul’s life and teachings that he doesn’t seem to be a close companion. Other scholars have maintained that the author, whoever he was, had access to a companion of Paul’s travel itinerary and inserted it in a few places, creating the odd use of “we” on occasion (since that was how the itinerary was worded). This is an attractive option, but it does not explain why the writing style and vocabulary of the “we passages” is virtually the same as the rest of Acts. If the itinerary came from a different author, you would expect the style to be different. Other scholars have argued that the author is using an age-old technique of describing travel narratives—especially those involving sea journeys—in the first person. But still other scholars have pointed out that there are lots of sea-travel narratives not written in the first person, so this does not seem to explain these passages. The fourth explanation is the one that seems to me to have the fewest problems: the author has edited these sections of Acts to make his readers assume that he was actually with Paul for these parts of the story, even though he was not. This would explain why the “we” sections begin and end so abruptly: it was just a stylistic device used by the author to insert himself into the story in a few places.
Irenaeus Against Heresies 3.14.1.
See note 6.
Scholars today are widely split on how to discuss Gnosticism or even whether to consider Gnosticism a single broad phenomenon. For three very different perspectives from leading scholars, see Karen King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: Ancient Wisdom for the New Age (New York: Doubleday, 1987); and Birger Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007).
For a fresh translation of the Nag Hammadi writings, see Marvin Meyer, ed., The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007).
Epiphanius The Medicine Chest 26.
Whether Epiphanius actually knew and read these other books or instead was making them up is anyone’s guess.