"A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on." -- Mark Twain [source]
Although it sounds a lot like something he would say (and possibly did in a lecture or two) this quote isn't original to Mark Twain. It was attributed to him nine years after his death in 1910. Jonathan Swift gets credit for one of the earliest forms of this adage from an article he wrote for a newspaper in 1710, but the actual wit who uttered this truism is lost to history. Might as well be Mark Twain!
Does the name Peter Robinson ring a bell? Very few of us might recognize the name, but many of his compositions immediately became some of the most famous and world-altering speeches ever given. Remember this?
"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Wait, wasn't that Ronald Reagan's speech in June of 1987 calling for an end to the Cold War?
Yes, but it was technically Mr. Robinson who drafted it. So who gets the credit for these words? If President Reagan authorized and spoke them, did they become his own words? Speechwriters have a responsibility to express what their client wants to say in the best possible way while they remain in the background, and for the speech to have the desired effect it must appear as if it arose from the esteemed speaker's own heart and mind. The authority behind a text may not arise from the actual author.
This principle applies to ancient texts as well as modern speeches. Our Bibles happen to be a collection of prized works of literature from antiquity, but we don't really know who the authors were. In most cases, the names attached to books like Jeremiah, Matthew and Jude were placed there by tradition. In our New Testament, strong evidence points to the use of amanuenses or scribes who did the actual writing (and we can't be sure how much editing was done by them). There are also texts that are almost certainly pseudepigrapha, that is, texts written by someone who published under a well-respected name to give their work higher importance and authority. It was especially important in the late first and early second centuries to bolster the reliability of one's writings by connecting it to the original apostles or their immediate successors- a chain of custody, so to speak.
Examples of imprecision regarding biblical authorship include:
Baruch: mentioned as Jeremiah's stenographer in Jer. 36. How involved was Baruch in the composition of a book that is supposed to be Jeremiah's inspired text, or "God's Word?" When a book of the Bible has a particular author ascribed to it and we find out that it was actually written down by someone else, have we been misled? And when do ancient literary conventions become lies?
The Book of Enoch, alluded to in some of our New Testament texts, was ascribed to the same Enoch from Genesis who was taken up and "did not die." It includes fabulous accounts of angels, demons and heaven. Was it really written by Enoch? No one with any background in ancient writings takes that seriously.
Six of Paul's New Testament entries are known to scholars as deutero-Pauline because of strong evidence that they weren't actually composed by Paul but by later pretenders. If 1 Timothy was not really authored by Paul, is it still OK to place it in the special Sacred Scripture category? At what point is truth at stake?
Galatians 6 preserves a line by Paul who mentions that his handwriting is much larger than his scribe's "See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!" This indicated the use of a scribe. Even more apparent is the greeting from Tertius (meaning number three- a common slave name) in Romans 16
Deuteronomy 34, which tradition asserts was the final book of the Torah written by Moses, records his death. That obviously throws the authorship of Deuteronomy into question, or at least indicates that someone else wrote that part- and maybe others?
The idea that our New Testaments contain some forgeries is not a simple issue. Scholars have been looking askance at the authorship of the pastoral epistles since at least 1800. Christian apologists committed to inerrancy and univocality have suggested various assertions in favor of Paul's authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, but give up ground on the letters' thematic content, which strays far afield from Paul's other authentic letters.
Authorship then was not like authorship now. The production of written texts and their copies was completely alien to the way we think about mass-produced books today. The act of reducing speech to written language was expensive, tedious and time-consuming so most educated literate elites hired the work out to slaves who had the ability to take dictation. For more on this, see Time, Text and Translation, Interrogating Biblical Inspiration and Can I Get Your Autograph?
What does authorship mean?
Who was Carolyn Keene? Some readers may remember her name inscribed on the cover of each book in the Nancy Drew mystery story series. In fact, "Carolyn Keene" was at least eleven different ghostwriters and a team of editors. What does that imply for readers of the book series? Does the experience of enjoying the Nancy Drew novels lose value because Carolyn Keene isn't real?
Fiction authors Danielle Steele, James Patterson and Tom Clancy and many others have employed ghostwriters to help produce their prodigious numbers of books for sale. While Bill O'Reilly's name is emblazoned on his book covers (larger than the title in most cases), it's writer Martin Dugard who actually writes the drafts.
Does it matter whose name is at the top of a work of literature? According to many literary experts, there are only 7-9 basic plots in every fictional work. Stories are told and retold with extraordinarily creative variations in setting, characterization and style. Readers can appreciate a certain writer's flair, diction or literary craftsmanship, and wait with great anticipation for her next book, even though it may chiefly be the product of people other than the author listed on the cover.
Plagiarism vs. Forgery
Accusations of plagiarism have dogged well-known authors like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Alex Haley (Roots) and Stephen Ambrose. When writers mix in a chunk of prose created by someone else and pass it off as their own, they should get in trouble for stealing an intellectual property. Citing your sources or showing that it was used by permission is standard ethical behavior for all authors. If nothing else, it helps protect those who originally published something from being misunderstood or misrepresented.
Forgery is the opposite. It's an attempt to publicize one's work under the name of someone more well known than the originator. This was a bit easier to do in the first and second centuries, but it was just as detestable in most cases.
A large fraction of the Bible first circulated without being written down, sometimes for centuries. Only later did compilers of the Israelite national story add titles and authors to these collections. Not many scholars today insist that Moses actually wrote all of the Pentateuch. In the Psalms, compilers took the liberty of associating some to King David, as if they were copied out of his personal diary. To a modern way of thinking, it would be wrong for an editor to sign David's name to a song that couldn't be reasonably connected to him in some way, but that ethic did not occur to the many editors working on the psalter up through the 3rd century BCE. Exilic themes are common in the Psalms, but are anachronistic to David's estimated reign, occurring at least 300 years later.
Forgery was certainly understood and seen as a problem in the first and second centuries. Frank W. Hughes and Norbert Brox makes some observations on this:
"The repeated condemnation of pseudonymity in antiquity is meaningless without the persistence of pseudonymity. Since there is no reason to believe that Christian writers of pseudepigrapha had motives different from others in antiquity who used literary pseudonymity, (55) and since both Christians and others could point to authoritative examples from the time-honored past, it is not surprising that, in Brox's words, "[t]he history of early Christianity with its pseudoapostolic literature is full of heretical and orthodox examples" of pseudonymity.(56) It is based on the understanding that the present life of the church needs to be justified in some way by appeals to what authoritative figures said and taught. The most authoritative figures were, of course, Jesus, the apostles, their students, and the church fathers. "In the final analysis, pseudepigraphy is not effectively explained by a refined moral sense of truthfulness nor indeed by a better developed conscious idea of geistiges Eigentum (intellectual property); rather, it is explained by a changed understanding of the relation between truth and history for human beings."(57) Early Christian literature which justifies the church's present doctrines and practices by appeals to figures from the past thus looks back to the apostolic era as a kind of golden age."
55. Norbert Brox, Falsche Verfasserangaben, 105.
56. Brox, Falsche Verfasserangaben, 107.
57. Brox, Falsche Verfasserangaben, 119
To summarize- don't be too quick to find ancient authors guilty of forgery… They had biases and presuppositions about history just like we do, only different ones.
Bible Genres
This brings up the issue of genre. Both fiction and nonfiction works can have tremendous impacts on individuals and entire societies that go far beyond authorship. So what then is the purpose of indicating who wrote what? Is the Bible fiction, nonfiction or a mix of the two? Texts discussing religious and other metaphysical claims seem to dwell in a gray area between fact and fiction; how do we categorize personal accounts of one's subjective experiences, rules for a community based on principles of belief, predictions and prophecies or even treatises summarizing a theology?
Precision of authorship is one way to establish authority and credibility. We routinely look to "experts" to help us answer questions about reality, and knowing we are interacting with someone who knows more than we do is a crucial part of deciding whether or not a truth claim is justifiable. Readers can test, assimilate, reject or adjust data according to their own accumulated knowledge about the world in conversation with an expert. If we were to encounter an anonymous post on social media claiming that first century people wore socks with their sandals, we would tend to ignore it. However if we knew that the author was a proven and highly capable scholar (like Dr. Katie Turner) who has published reputable journal articles about actual physical evidence for ancient sock-wearing, we would lend a great deal more credibility to the assertion.
The same with theology and doctrine. Once the first few generations of believers died out, pedigreed links to the actual Apostles became rarer. Written texts swooped in to save the day by "freezing" the Apostles teaching in writing. These codexes could be passed around and preserved over time, space and number by making copies and circulating them among the cities and towns that harbored ecclesia.
Literate church proponents had motive, means and opportunity to produce pseudonymous letters or treatises on ecclesiastical functions and correct doctrine in the name of assisting the growth of this new movement.
What is the Bible, Anyway?
If churches do address this question, the answer is usually subsumed under the dogmatic assumption that every word (in English?) is "God-breathed" and therefore untouchable by the normal methodologies of interpreting ancient documents.
Many of us are happy to go along with our tradition that tells us that Matthew wrote Matthew and Mark wrote Mark, Moses wrote the Pentateuch and so on without realizing that none of them actually signed their names. All four gospels are anonymous. John's identity is ambiguous. The vast majority of New Testament scholars agree that only seven of Paul's writings can be shown to be authentically his.
To many American Christians, framing the gospels as anonymous seems to lessen the authority of "God's Word." But there isn't any internal evidence in the gospels to support their authorship claims. Each one is a carefully crafted work of rhetorical persuasion which at some point was bestowed with the name of a revered author to boost their clout. Here are a few realities to consider in thinking about the authorship of the gospels:
The earliest fragments and manuscripts contain titles like "The gospel according to…" These date to around 200 CE. These are most certainly copies of copies from much earlier manuscripts*
All four have this odd verbal construction: "The Gospel according to…" Did they all meet and decide on this as the proper way to title their story? Not only that, it's a strange way to refer to yourself as the author, and has no parallel in contemporary writings. This wasn't a normal rhetorical convention
Mark's gospel has an introductory comment: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…" Matthew and John plunge right in with their story. Luke's comment assures the reader that his is an improvement on any other accounts, and yet he doesn't sign his name to it
Added titles including authors may have simply functioned to distinguish between the many different gospels in circulation contemporaneously with the four we are most familiar with.
Early second century Apostolic Fathers don't use authorial titles when they quote from the gospels: Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr to name a few.
Our earliest manuscripts are dated to the second century and all of them have author's names attached, so it didn't take long for Christians to append an authoritative name to their gospels- but it was almost 100 years
Very early on, it was highly important to authenticate guidance on faith and practice by showing a direct line of transmission to the original apostles or Paul. Papias, for example, promoted oral traditions above ones that were written down
Justin Martyr, active in 150-160 CE, refers to the gospels from which he quotes extensively as "The Memoirs of the Apostles" without indicating which ones
Thirty years after Justin, Irenaeus of Lyons assigns what we know as traditional authorship to the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, mainly to differentiate them from the many others "gospels" and their associated heresies in circulation. It was approaching 200 CE by that time- 170 years after the Jesus event
The gospel of Thomas- composed in roughly the same period as other gospels- doesn't feature the "according to…" phrasing. It begins "These are the secret sayings spoken by Jesus and transcribed by Didymus (the twin) Judas Thomas."
For a different perspective, one that affirms the apostolic authorship of the gospels, try this YouTube video: Who Wrote the Gospels? (with Wesley Huff) Decide for yourself if you think the Apostle Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him.
What difference would it make to be more precise about authorship in the NT? What if we approached these texts with the same methodologies as historians and scholars? For those who have adopted a position of inerrancy, infallibility, inspiration and univocality, there's a lot to defend, beginning with that fact that God's word is not only inerrant in the original manuscripts, but in all the other intervening copies and translations as well. And they aren't identical.
So who actually wrote the Gospels? Who wrote First Peter? Second Timothy? Hebrews? If we claim that Peter of the gospel stories genuinely wrote his eponymous epistles, what value is added? If it was written by the real ex-fisherman Simon Peter, a companion of Jesus with a direct link to God's presence on earth, there's no questioning his expert status as one qualified to speak with authority about matters of faith.
But what if 1st and 2nd Peter were composed by a well-educated second century Christian hoping to inspire his or her fellow believers to persist in their chosen beliefs in the face of persecution? Were ancient believers more credulous than post-enlightenment critics? Would these two books have been admitted to the canon if it was revealed that the author wasn't really Peter? Are there any clues that indicate for or against Petrine authorship?**
And the question remains: Does it matter? Would we think differently about the moral lessons in First Peter if his name was not appended to the letters? The book of Hebrews is one example where a text is considered authoritative, but we can't be certain about its date or author. Christian leaders feel free to preach and teach from Hebrews without hesitation.
In the 440s CE one Salvian of Marseilles wrote Ad Ecclesiam (To the Church) using the name "Timothy" for… reasons. First, Salvian's low social status as a monk guaranteed that the letter he composed would not have had much chance at being noticed. Second, he apparently chose a pseudonym as an act of humility. A pen name would properly obscure the real author who would then be immunized from the sin of pride. It also didn't hurt that some might associate the text with the New Testament companion of Paul.
Here's how Salvian starts his four treatises to the Church, taking her to task for avarice:
"Timothy, the least of the servants of God, to the Catholic Church spread throughout the world. Grace and peace to you from God, our Father and from Jesus Christ, our Lord with the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Salvian, The Four Books of Timothy to the Church, Book 1
No wonder readers were a little confused. "Timothy's" salutation is a lot like Paul's. Read further though, and it's easily apparent that it was not written by the biblical Timothy, for example, there's a long section in Book Three about handling your believing and unbelieving children's financial inheritances.
In his book Forged, Bart Ehrman*** depicts Salvian as a villainous forger, but a deeper look belies his conclusions. Suffice it to say there's a lot we can't know about the dynamics of how authors came to be attached to biblical texts. Salvian's own words to his bishop are helpful here. These are excerpts from Letter 9:
"Now I speak about the second question: why the books [in Ad Ecclesiam] are not titled with the author’s name.
"First, there is that reason which derives from the mandate of God, by whom we are ordered to avoid the vanity of worldly glory in all things, lest, while we seek a little breath of human praise, we lose a heavenly reward.
"…rightly thinking that others must also evaluate him as he evaluates himself, he rightly inserted a strange name on his books, lest the insignificance of his person detract authority from his salutary statements. …the writer wished to be completely hidden and to keep out of the way, lest writings which contained much helpfulness should lose their force through the name of the author.
"There remains an explanation of why the name Timothy was chosen.
"When, therefore, he wished to withhold his own name from the title of the book and to insert another’s name… He thought that the sin of falsehood should never be committed in the exercise of a holy work. Being thus placed in uncertainty and doubt, he thought it would be best to follow the most holy example of the blessed Evangelist, who, affixing the name Theophilus to both beginnings of his divine works, wrote for the love of God when he was apparently writing to men.
"For, as love is expressed by the word Theophilus, so is honor of the divinity expressed by the word Timothy. Thus, when you read that Timothy wrote To the Church, you must understand thereby that it was written to the Church for the honor of God… [Timotheus means "Honor of God"]"
--Salvian, quoted in Pearse, Roger: Salvian, Letter 9, to Salonius: on why he used the name Timothy when writing Ad Ecclesiam
In his response to another of Ehrman's books, David Brakke notes:
For instance, cases of false attribution, such as the attribution of an originally anonymous gospel to the disciple named Matthew, are not forgeries. Not all forgeries are pseudonymous, that is, written under a false name: the author of 1 John did not claim the name “John,” but did deceitfully depict himself as someone who knew Jesus firsthand and thus created a forgery. Forgery is not plagiarism, the presentation of someone else’s work as one’s own; indeed, it is the opposite of plagiarism, the presentation of one’s own work as someone else’s. Nor is it literary fiction when an ancient writer takes on the literary persona of another person, but without the intent to deceive readers into thinking he really is that person.
David Brakke; Early Christian Lies and the Lying Liars Who Wrote Them: Bart Ehrman's Forgery and Counterforgery
The Journal of Religion, Vol. 96, No. 3 (July 2016)
Observations
Much of this discussion emerges from the concept of Veritas, the Roman virtue of truthfulness. As the centuries passed since the church began, ways of observing, testing and understanding Veritas have changed dramatically. Modern science and philosophy have contributed to much different standards of justification for truth claims. Religious folk, who are usually very concerned with truth and falsehood, especially concerning the tenets of an exclusive belief system, often find themselves in conflict with the centuries of scholarly analysis of biblical texts, and are quick to fall back on their tradition's interpretation of what God has said in the Bible as settled fact without considering any alternatives.
So what is going on when a Christian casually quotes Jesus from one of the gospels as if Matthew or Luke were standing there taking notes? One popular current hermeneutical principle is the idea that the Bible is simple and straightforward, and anyone who can understand written or verbal English can interpret the Bible as well as any expert. The Reformation may have put the scriptures in the hands of the "priesthood of all believers," but the Catholic hierarchy did have a valid point: interpretive accuracy does require some education and exposure to scholarship in order to unlock the unfamiliar genres and archaic rhetorical conventions in play when these texts were first circulated. Informed interpretation also reduces the misuse and harmful application of biblical material.
With little disagreement among Christians, we can say that the writings of the New Testament were crafted well after the facts they describe. They contain traditions, memories and impressions passed down from personal experience, eventually becoming shared collections of stories and finally reduced to written form generations later. What we normally miss when we read the gospels is the fact that there were years of motivated theological development between Jesus and his biographies.
Therefore, instead of quoting Jesus from the gospels as his exact words, recorded and transcribed by a skilled eyewitness, would it not be more helpful to add the caveat: "this is what the author of Matthew represents as something Jesus said…"? Over the actual actions and sayings of Jesus are layers of analysis, perceptions, judgements and decisions about everything included in the texts. If Jesus was remembered to say something like "blessed are the poor…" but he really didn't, what implications does this have on what we call divinely inspired scripture? As with all ancient historical data, there's no way of knowing exactly what Jesus did or did not truly say.
Maybe the Holy Spirit was inspiring anonymous biographers 50-100 years later. So are the later (false) attributions to gospel notables inspired too?
Is it a matter of trust for denizens of our twenty-first century culture? When mountains of biblical scholarship is just a couple of clicks away (or in our church library), do our leaders diminish their credibility when they don't address questions like pseudonymity? When a church leader or teacher casually refers to "John" as the beloved disciple, eyewitness to Jesus and author of five New Testament books, it changes how we treat the Book or Revelation or Second John. We may have given certain books a pass into the canon because it was at one time believed that the same person who wrote the gospel of John wrote the other ones as well.
Finally another quote from Frank W. Hughes:
In philosophical terms, pseudonymous writings can be conceived of as a "good lie," a falsehood told in what the liar believes to be the best interests of the person lied to. But one can ask a fairly straightforward philosophical question: Is it not a fundamental contradiction for persons following the God of justice and truth to commit falsehoods by claiming apostolic authorship for writings of their own? This is more than just a religious question: it is also a philosophical one.
Questions:
John's Jesus promised in Chapter 16 that the Holy Spirit will "lead us into all truth." Why then has it been so difficult for followers of Jesus to agree, especially about the last phrase of the promise: "…he will declare to you the things that are to come?"
Our inability to agree on truth as revealed in the Bible: Our fault or God's? If it's our fault, what can we do about it?
Do you wish the church would talk about Bible scholarship more, instead of simply preaching moral lessons?
Notes:
*P66 (circa 200 CE): This manuscript of the Gospel of John contains the title "The Gospel According to John" (Κατὰ Ἰωάννην). It is one of the earliest extant manuscripts with a title included.
P75 (late 2nd to early 3rd century CE): Another early manuscript containing portions of Luke and John, it also includes the title "The Gospel According to [Name]" in some cases.
**In Acts 4, Aramaic-speaking Peter is clearly depicted as uneducated and ordinary. The odds of a fishing business owner in Capernaum being able to compose or dictate complex philosophical texts in Greek are vanishingly small. Another description of Peter uses the word "agrammatoi" or unlettered which means something close to our English word illiterate, although Peter was probably able to write out receipts or short notes.
"Peter's" epistles also show a familiarity with the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which again would not have been in Jewish Peter's range of mastery. Hearing the scriptures read in Hebrew on occasion would be the normal extent of a Galilean's repertoire of scripture understanding.
Were his texts written by a secretary who was fluent in cultured Greek and simply used Peter's ideas and crafted a fluent Greek text? If one wishes to promote this argument, then most of the authority of Peter's writings should devolve to these amanuenses, not Peter.
The origins of the Christian tendency to reference Rome as "Babylon" is disputed. In 1 Peter 5, the author uses this convention, which is not found until the 90's when Revelation was composed.
Skepticism about Peter's authorship also arises from what's missing. If one were to open and read an epistle from Peter, companion of Jesus himself, one would likely expect more material concerning the life and teachings of his master.
Second Peter is different linguistically from First Peter, dealing with themes and justifications stemming from Hellenistic contexts and possible allusions to second century gnostic ideas.
The author refers to Paul as a beloved brother when last we knew in Paul's account in Galatians, the two did not see eye to eye. It's only too possible that a reconciliation between these two was imagined for rhetorical reasons.
***If you intend to read or have read Bart Ehrman's books on Forgery, this Amazon customer review by Joseph Alward provides the needed grain of salt
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