9. To counter other forgeries. One of the least studied phenomena of early Christian forgery is the production of forged texts designed to counter the positions staked out in other forgeries. In the early fourth century, according to the church father Eusebius, an anti-Christian pagan forgery was produced called the Acts of Pilate. Apparently this narrative told the story of Jesus’ trial and execution from a Roman point of view, to show that Jesus fully deserved what he got. This was a widely read document: the Roman emperor Maximin Daia issued a decree that it was to be read by schoolboys learning their letters (Eusebius, Church History 9.5). Soon afterward, however, a Christian document that was also known as the Acts of Pilate made its appearance. In this account Pilate is in complete sympathy with Jesus and fervently tries to release him as innocent of all charges.22 The Christian version appears to have been written to counter the pagan one. This phenomenon of Christian counterforgery appears to have been fairly widespread. There was a text written in the fourth century called the Apostolic Constitutions. It claims to have been written by the twelve apostles after the death of Jesus, even though the apostles had been dead for three hundred years by the time it was written. Among the many remarkable features of this book is its insistence that Christians not read books that falsely claim to be written by apostles (Apostolic Constitutions 6.16). There is something similar even within the New Testament: the author of the book of 2 Thessalonians warns his readers not to be upset by a letter allegedly by Paul (that is, a letter forged in Paul’s name; 2 Thessalonians 2:2). But as we will see in a moment, there are good reasons for thinking that 2 Thessalonians itself is a pseudepigraphic book, putatively by Paul but not actually written by him.
10. To provide authority for one’s own views. This is the motivation that I think is by far the most common in early Christian forgeries. There were lots of Christians in the early centuries of the church who claimed numerous points of view, most of which came to be branded as heresies. Yet all of these Christians claimed to represent the views of Jesus and his disciples. How could you demonstrate that your views were apostolic, in order to, say, convince potential converts? The easiest way was to write a book, claim that it had been written by an apostle, and to put it in circulation. Every group of early Christians had access to writings allegedly written by the apostles. Most of these writings were forgeries.
Early Christian Forgeries
No one can reasonably doubt that a lot of the early Christian literature was forged. From outside the New Testament, for example, we have a large range of other Gospels allegedly (but not really) written by wellknown early Christian leaders: Peter, Philip, Thomas, James the brother of Jesus, and Nicodemus, among others; we have a variety of apostolic Acts, such as the Acts of John and of Paul and Thecla; we have epistles, such as the letter to the Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians, an exchange of letters between Paul and the Roman philosopher Seneca, and a letter allegedly written by Peter to James in order to oppose Paul; and we have a number of apocalypses, for example, an Apocalypse of Peter (which very nearly made it into the canon) and an Apocalypse of Paul. We will examine some of these other writings in chapter 6.
Early Christian writers were busy, and one of their common activities was to forge documents in the names of the apostles. This leads us now to the big question: Did any of these forgeries make it into the New Testament?
From a historical perspective, there is no reason to doubt that some forgeries very well could have made it into the canon. We have numerous forgeries outside the New Testament. Why not inside? I don’t think one can argue that the church fathers, starting at the end of the second century, would have known which books really were written by apostles and which ones were not. How would they know? Or perhaps more to the point, how can we ourselves know?
This might sound a little strange, but it is easier for us today to detect ancient forgeries than it was for people in the ancient world. The methods we use are the same as theirs. Like Galen, we consider the style in which a letter is written. Is it the same writing style that the author uses elsewhere? If it is different, just how different is it? Slightly different or extremely different? Is it possible that an author wrote in different styles? Or are there some features of the style that are completely unlike what the author uses elsewhere, especially in those aspects of style that we don’t think much about when we write (which kinds of conjunctions we use, how we construct complex sentences, how we use participles and infinitives)? We also consider the word choice: is there a set vocabulary that an author uses that is missing from this writing? Or is some of the vocabulary used in this book not attested until later periods of ancient Greek? Most important are the theological ideas, views, and perspectives of the book. Are they the same in this book as in the author’s other writings, or at least roughly similar? Or are they strikingly different?
The reason we are better equipped than the ancients to make judgments of this sort now is that we are better equipped! Ancient critics who attempted to detect forgeries obviously didn’t have data banks, data retrieval systems, and computers to crunch out detailed evaluations of vocabulary and style. They had to rely a lot on common sense and intuition. We have that, plus lots of data.
Still, even with our improved technologies there remains room for doubt in many instances. There isn’t space here for a detailed discussion of every piece of New Testament writing that is in question. Instead I will explain the most compelling reasons for thinking that Paul was not the author of six of the canonical letters that go under his name. I believe all of these books were forged. Their authors may have been well-meaning. They may have thought they were doing the right thing. They may have felt perfectly justified. But in every case, they claimed to be someone other than who they were, presumably in order to get their views heard.
The Pseudepigraphic (Forged) Letters of Paul
In none of the instances that I cover here will I be able to provide in-depth coverage of all the arguments back and forth regarding the authorship of these letters.23 For my purposes it is enough to explain some of the chief reasons scholars have long argued that these letters were not written by Paul, even though they are claimed to be by him.
Since I have already mentioned 2 Thessalonians, I will start there—a good place to begin, in any event, since it is the most hotly disputed of the six letters of Paul whose authorship is questioned. There are lots of good scholars on both sides of the debate (as opposed to, say, the Pastoral Epistles or 2 Peter, where the vast majority of critical scholars think the letters are pseudonymous). Nonetheless, there are strong reasons for thinking Paul did not write the letter.
2 Thessalonians
One of the reasons the authorship of 2 Thessalonians is heavily debated is that in terms of writing style and vocabulary, it sounds a lot like the letter Paul almost certainly did write, 1 Thessalonians. In fact, it is so much like 1 Thessalonians that some scholars have argued that its pseudonymous author used 1 Thessalonians as a model for constructing the letter, but then added his own content, which differs significantly from that of his model. The similarity of the two letters reveals one of the problems scholars have with establishing whether or not an ancient document is forged. Anyone who is skilled in committing a forgery will naturally do his best to make his work sound like the work of the person he is imitating. Some forgers will be better at this than others. But if someone is particularly good, it is hard to show what he has done, at least on the basis of style.
But why would someone imitate Paul’s style yet take a theological position that is different from his? One can think of a lot of possible reasons: maybe the situation in the churches had changed, and the author wanted to address new problems by calling Paul back from the grave, so to speak; maybe the author didn’t have a full understanding of Paul and mistook some of his key points (Paul himself indicates this happened in his own lifetime, for example, in his letter to the Romans; see Romans 3:8); maybe the author sincerely thought that his readers had misunderstood Paul’s real me
ssage and wanted to correct their misunderstanding, not knowing that all along the readers had it right.
My methodological point is this: one would expect a good imitator of Paul to sound like Paul. But one would not expect Paul not to sound like Paul. The key to seeing 2 Thessalonians as non-Pauline is that its main thesis seems to contradict what Paul himself said in 1 Thessalonians.
2 Thessalonians is written to counter the view, possibly based on an earlier now-lost letter forged in Paul’s name, that “the day of the Lord is already here” (2:2). The Christians being addressed appear to think that the end of the age—Jesus’ return in glory—is right around the corner. This author writes to correct that misimpression. And so in chapter 2, the heart of the letter, the author indicates that there is a sequence of events that must transpire before the end will come. First there will be some kind of general rebellion against God, and then an anti-Christ figure will appear who will take his seat in the Jewish Temple, declaring himself to be God. This lawless one will do all kinds of deceptive miracles and wonders to lead people astray (2:1–12). Only after these things have taken place will the end finally come. The end is not yet here and is not coming right away; it will be preceded by clear and obvious signs, so that the Christians in the know will not be caught unawares.
This is a powerful and intriguing message. The problem is that it doesn’t coincide well with what Paul himself said in 1 Thessalonians.
That letter was also written to address the question of what would happen at the end, when Jesus returns from heaven in glory (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). The reason Paul wrote the letter was that the members of the Thessalonian congregation had been taught by Paul that the end was imminent. They were puzzled and distraught because some of the members of their church had already died before Jesus returned. Had these lost out on the reward to be brought with Jesus at his second coming? Paul writes to assure those who were still alive that the dead will be the first to be raised at Jesus’ second coming, and that they, too, would be certain to receive the blessings that were their due.
Paul goes on to reiterate what he had told them when he was among them (1 Thessalonians 5:1–2), that Jesus’ coming would be sudden and unexpected, “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). It would bring “sudden destruction” (1 Thessalonians 5:3), and so the Thessalonians had to be constantly prepared so that it would not overtake them unexpectedly.
If Paul meant what he said in 1 Thessalonians, that Jesus’ return would be sudden and unexpected, it is hard to believe that he could have written what is said in 2 Thessalonians—that the end is not coming right away and that there will be clear-cut signs to indicate that the end is near, signs that had not yet appeared. The author of 2 Thessalonians writes, “I told you these things when I was still with you” (2:5). If that were true, why would the Thessalonians have been upset when some members of their community died (1 Thessalonians)? They would have known that the end was not coming right away, but was to be preceded by the appearance of the anti-Christ figure and other signs.
It looks as though Paul did not write both letters. It may be that the heightened expectations of Christians toward the end of the first century led some unknown author in Paul’s churches to write 2 Thessalonians in order to calm them down a bit, to let them know that yes, the end was going to come, but it was not coming right away. Some things had to happen first.
Colossians and Ephesians
The arguments against Paul having written Colossians and Ephesians are similar. They and 2 Thessalonians are called “Deutero-Pauline” epistles by scholars, since they are believed not to have been written by Paul, making their standing in the Pauline corpus secondary—the root meaning of “deutero.”
In the judgment of most scholars, the argument for the pseudonymity of Colossians and especially of Ephesians is even stronger than in the case of 2 Thessalonians. First, the writing style of both letters is uncharacteristic of Paul’s. This is the kind of argument that can’t be demonstrated without going into detail about the way the Greek sentences are constructed. The basic idea, though, is that the authors of both Colossians and Ephesians tend to write long and complex sentences, whereas Paul does not. Colossians 1:3–8 is all one sentence in Greek; it’s a whopper, and quite unlike the kind of sentence Paul typically wrote. Ephesians 1:3–14 is even longer, twelve verses—not like Paul at all. Nearly 10 percent of the sentences in Ephesians are over fifty words in length; this is uncharacteristic of Paul’s undisputed letters. Philippians, about the same length, has only one sentence that long; Galatians is much longer, and also has only one.24
There is also a lot of material in Colossians (for example, Colossians 1:15–20) and Ephesians that sounds more theologically advanced and developed than what you find in Paul’s letters. More important than that, though, is the fact that there are particular points on which these two authors, assuming they are different authors, and Paul appear to disagree. Both of these authors and Paul want to talk about how things have changed for believers in Jesus who have been baptized. But what they say about the matter differs significantly.
In the early church, baptism was not performed on infants, only on adults after they had come to faith in Christ. For Paul, baptism was an important ceremonial event, not merely a symbolic act. Something actually happened when a person was baptized. The person was mystically united with Christ in his death.
Paul works out this idea most carefully in his letter to the Romans. The basic idea is an apocalyptic one. There are powers of evil in the world that have enslaved people and alienated them from God, including the power of sin. Sin is a demonic force, not simply something you do wrong. Everyone is enslaved to this force, which means that everyone is hopelessly alienated from God. The only way to escape the power of sin is to die. That is why Christ died, to release people from this power of sin. To escape the power of sin, then, requires a person to die with Christ. That happens when the person is baptized. By being placed under the water (Paul’s churches practiced full immersion), a believer is united with Christ in his death, as he was put in the grave, and so also has died to the powers in control of this world. People who have been baptized are no longer enslaved by the power of sin but have “died with Christ” (Romans 6:1–6).
Paul was quite insistent, however, that even though people had died with Christ, they had not yet been “raised with him.” Followers of Jesus would be raised with Christ only when Christ returned from heaven in glory. Then there would be a physical resurrection. Those who had already died in Christ would be raised and those who were still living at the time would experience a glorious transformation of their bodies in which this mortal shell would become immortal, not subject to the pains of life or the possibility of death.
Whenever Paul talked about being raised with Christ, it was always as a future event (see, for example, Romans 6 and 1 Corinthians 15). Within Paul’s churches, some of his converts had a different opinion, thinking that they had already experienced a kind of spiritual resurrection with Christ and were already “ruling” with Christ in heaven. This is the view that Paul quite vociferously opposes in his first letter to the Corinthians, the key and climax of which comes at the end of the letter, where Paul stresses that the resurrection is not something already experienced but something yet to come, a real, future, physical resurrection of the body, not a past spiritual resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). Paul is quite emphatic in Romans 6:5 and 8 that those who were baptized had died with Christ, but that they had not yet been raised with him (note his use of the future tense “will”):
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his;…If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also be raised with him. (Emphasis added)
Both Colossians and especially Ephesians disagree. Here is what the author of Colossians says about the very same point:
When you were buried with him in baptism you were also raised with him through faith in the pow
er of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:13)
Casual readers might not detect much of a difference between these positions—after all, in both the author speaks of dying and rising with Christ. But precision was very important for Paul. The death with Christ was past, but the resurrection was absolutely not past. It was future. Paul devoted a good chunk of 1 Corinthians to arguing this point, precisely because some of his converts had gotten it dead wrong and he was extremely upset about it. Colossians, though, takes exactly the position that Paul wrote his letter of 1 Corinthians to oppose.
Ephesians is even more emphatic than Colossians. In speaking about the past spiritual resurrection, the author says, in contrast to Paul, “God…made us alive together with Christ…and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2:5–6). All this has already happened. Believers are already ruling with Christ. This is what some of the converts of Paul in Corinth and the authors of Colossians and Ephesians—also members of Paul’s churches—got wrong.
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible Page 14
