Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are [Hardcover]

 

 

Create your own review

Faith is a profoundly emotional issue with its own dynamics as Eric Hoffer makes clear in The True Believer, a seminal study on the nature of belief and mass movements. Another valid insight is that of the metaphysician Ernest Holmes who warned against destroying or undermining a person's faith if it gives them comfort and helps them seek what is good and right: "Every person's religion is an answer to the cry of the soul for something which is real, something which may be relied upon - a resting place for which everyone instinctively feels a need."

Thus, the pursuit of truth may be a perilous enterprise that leads to painful places. Giving up certainties takes courage. In this investigation, Ehrman approaches the subject with empathy. Both non-canonical works and those eventually included in the New Testament are subjected to scrutiny. That is appropriate since when these were written, no canon existed.

It is no secret to most scholars in the field: Many of the books of the New Testament were composed by authors who lied about their identities, deliberately impersonating famous characters such as Peter, Paul and James. That is deception; a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery.

In order to avoid this harsh reality, most Christian theologians employ the word "pseudepigrapha" when referring to these forgeries. Yet the word literally means "writing inscribed with a lie." Scholars may claim that it was an acceptable practice in the ancient world to write a book in someone else's name. Not so: the author cites Polybius, Martial and Diogenes Laertius in this regard.

Only 7 of the 13 letters of Paul of Tarsus were written by him. In the ancient world, books like that were called "pseudoi" (lies). Yes, it matters today, since for example 1 Timothy justifies the subordination of women.

Chapter One investigates forgeries in general, recent and ancient. Interestingly, the condemnation of forgeries in the texts appears to be a prominent feature of forged books. Good examples are Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians. This corresponds with Paul of Tarsus' repeated assertions that he "is telling the truth, not lying," if indeed it was him who wrote those words.

The next chapter is devoted to forgeries in the name of Peter. Ehrman points out that both truth and falsehood assume different forms. Evidence is produced that the Epistles of Peter could not have been written by him, another fact acknowledged by scholars.

The opening passages of the third chapter deals with invented tales about Paul. After that, New Testament forgeries ascribed to the founder of Christianity are identified by means of word frequency and semantics. Amongst the books discussed are Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians.

In chapter 4, Ehrman proves that forgery was as unacceptable in the ancient world as it is today. Ancient sources condemn the practice, meaning that the excuses offered by modern scholars are themselves deceitful.

The following two chapters consider extracanonical forgeries that derive from Gnostic and Jewish-Christian controversies. The most thought-provoking analysis of canonical are those of Colossians, Jude, James, the Epistles of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles.

Chapter 7 examines various phenomena pertaining to forgery such as false attributions, fabrications, falsifications, plagiarism and interpolations. Mark, Luke and the Acts are used as examples. There is no doubt that some Christians employed all the aforementioned practices in a wildly successful campaign to promote their version of the faith. A particular dogma was promoted through deceptive means - a most disturbing irony.

In chapter 8, Ehrman explains how successful ancient and modern forgeries have been in persuading large numbers of people of their authenticity. This chapter concludes with a discussion of attitudes towards deception and its motives. The justification of forgeries on any grounds goes against a cardinal moral principle. One rule exists for all. Forgeries by Christians are unacceptable.

In certain books, specifically the Gospel of John, scribes added key passages at different times. After Christianity sought the approval of the Roman Empire, writings were forged to absolve the Romans of the murder and to accuse the Jews of deicide. Such accounts are filled with anti-Semitic stereotypes of malevolent Jews as "Christ-killers."

As Judith Taylor Gold demonstrates in Madonnas & Monsters, anti-Semitism appears in both overt and covert form in the Gospel of John, a book that is exceptionally hostile to Judaism. The teachings and personality of Jesus in the Gospel of John differs so radically from those in the three Synoptic Gospels that prominent theologians have been claiming - since the 1800s - that only one of the two traditions can be true; it is impossible that both can be.

Raymond E Brown provides a brief synopsis of a prominent theory on the development of this gospel, identifying three levels in the text: (a) An original narrative of someone personally acquainted with Jesus/Yeshua (b) A Structured literary creation by an editor that draws from other sources (c) An attempt to harmonize the text with the rest of the New Testament canon.

There are further troubling realities not specifically addressed by Ehrman in this book. The NT writers "quote" Hebrew scripture passages that do not exist, quote already fulfilled Hebrew prophecies to claim that NT events are their fulfillment, quote 50 - 60 OT passages as proof of fulfilled messianic prophecies while none of those is a prophecy at all.

The criteria for the validation of scripture include origin, transmission, internal marks of authority and consistency. The text of the Hebrew Bible was rigorously preserved and reproduced under strict supervision, resulting in only minor variations, while there are scores of textual variants for the NT as proved by inter alia Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus.

XXXXX

"Let me conclude this introduction simply by saying that I have spent the past five years studying forgery in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, especially but not exclusively within Christianity. My goal all along has been to write a detailed scholarly monograph that deals with the matter at length. The book you're reading now is NOT that scholarly monograph.

What I try to do in the present book is to discuss the issue [of forgery] at a layperson's level, pointing out the really interesting aspects of the problem by highlighting the results of my own research and showing what scholars have long said about the writings of the New Testament and pseudonymous Christian writings from outside the New Testament...The present book...is not intended for my fellow scholars...It is...intended for you, the general reader, who on some level is...interested in THE TRUTH."

The above comes this informative and readable book by Bart Ehrman. He is a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. Ehrman is also the author of more than twenty books.

Ehrman's interest in this book is with forgeries of the early Christian Church. He discusses many Gospels, letters, treatises, and apocalypses that claim to be written by people who did not write them. Such authors who called themselves Peter, Paul, John, James, Philip, etc., etc., were fully aware that they were not these people.

Ehrman debunks many popular myths about the Bible's forged books and letters, including the idea that "writing in the name of another" was a common accepted practise in antiquity.

At the end of most of the chapters of this book is a conclusion. I found these most helpful in consolidating a particular chapter.

Finally, what I personally found quite interesting is with regard to the first book of Timothy. This book is known to be a forgery. But it is STILL used today to oppress women, and provides the scriptural basis of the Roman Catholic Church's refusal to ordain female priests.

In conclusion, this book will turn upside down about what we "know" about the Bible. I leave you with this book's last paragraph:

"The authors of these lies [or forgeries] were no doubt like nearly everyone else in the world, ancient and modern; they probably did not want to be lied too 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. [What does that do to the authority of Scripture?]"

(first published 2011; acknowledgements; introduction; 8 chapters; main narrative 265 pages; notes; index)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

XXXXX

Let me state from the outset that I applaud Ehrman's efforts to cover the on-going work of biblical scholars and specifically here to discuss in this book on Forgery "the issue at a layperson's level, pointing out the really interesting aspects of the problem ..." (p.10). He further, claims that this is a precursor to a scholarly monograph on forgery in the ancient world so that if any of his fellow scholars who if they read the present non-technical volume will do so simply out of curiosity since the present book is for "the general reader, who on some level is, like me, interested in the truth." (p. 11), which is somewhat of a loaded statement in my view since it begs the question: Just who is not interested in the truth? I get very suspicious when I hear such truth claims. On further reflection, though I might fit into the curious catergory which he mentions, I am most interested to see how Ehrman thinks that scholarship works regarding the issue of forgery. I am not in fact interested in the truth of the situation per se since the scholarly consensus can and will most likely change over time. What I wish to know are what are the data which biblical scholars have collected and how have they choosen to construct the facts (Latin facio to do/make) from these data. So how does Ehrman perform on this score? In my opinion quite well given that he is writing for an audience that will be most familiar with the New Testament and not the larger scope of literature in the ancient Roman-Hellenistic world in general - though there is some of that for sure. Of course some people will want to dispute his interpretation of the data especially since he understands a good deal of the Pauline corpus to be forgeries, including forgeries interjected into the genuine Pauline letters such as the instruction for women to be silent in the church in I Cor 14:34-35 (p. 244). Moeover, I think that this book is useful since it will make aware the general reader to other literature that would have circulated in various Christian communities before there was anything like the canon of the Bible that people too easily take for granted as normative today. However much I like this book, I am still left wondering how Ehrman and other scholars would describe the process by which the falsified letters written in Paul's name, for example, came to be accepted in the church as genuine when in fact they were not. The simple problem is we do not know how any of the writings of the New Testament whether forgeries, falsely atributed, or even genuine came to be accepted by the larger Christian movement. Yes, we know that what made it into the canon was disputed, but just who decided that a writing was worthy of dissemination and preservation is not at all clear to me. If we accept the canonical gospel accounts, there were twelve apostles (ones sent) of Jesus, plus Paul later added as "one untimely born" and yet we have literature preserved from few of these apostles - perhaps because like Jesus they were illiterate, but as sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out, new religious movements tend to be started by people with elite connections, not those from the bottom social ranks (Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief, 2007). A minor quibble in the production of the book, is that Ehrman several times cites a book he has co-authored with Zlatko Plese, Apocryphal Gosels: Texts and Translations (New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 2010), which in May of 2011 is still awaiting publication and has been long delayed from the original promised date of production in the first half of 2010. Hopefully, Oxford Press does produce the text for this coming June, but the reader will not be able to access this particular item which he references frequently in chapter 5 in his cited work at this point. Overall a very interesting and worthwhile read, sure to infuriate some, to please others, as well as to confuse some I suspect, yet he avoids the pitfalls of some who unfairly characterize Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, including scholars, as "brain dead hicks" or something to that effect - though I must admit that some of these so called evangelical scholars do make some real gaffs at times, but then again even Ehrman has the little gaff witih his unpublished book above which he and his editors failed to excise and correct.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 4 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
Bart D. Ehrman, in my opinion, is a scholar whose books everybody should read.

This is another exceptional work that brings the reader into a time when there was no... Read more

Published 13 months ago by OppressedAtheist

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 4 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!