Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (10 page)

Despite the temporary popularity of Aland’s view, there is little to commend it. For one thing, the claim that the earliest Christian authors would not write under their own names because they considered themselves inspired by the Spirit appears simply not to be true. Our earliest author is Paul, who names himself in no uncertain terms, and who certainly felt driven by the Spirit—at least as much
as, say, the forgers who produced books in his name in later periods (Ephesians, 1 Timothy, and so on). Moreover, as was the case with Speyer, Aland’s view might well explain why an author refused to name himself—it was the Spirit talking, not him personally—but it cannot explain why an author
did
name himself, as some other (well-known) person. If it was the Spirit talking, why claim specifically to be Peter? Or James? Or Jude? Why not simply say “Thus says the Lord,” or “Thus says the Spirit of God”? Or write anonymously altogether?

Moreover, it is worth noting that no ancient pseudepigrapher justifies his work on these grounds, and no ancient critic supplies this explanation for why works were forged. In the end, this is an attempt to justify a practice widely recognized in the ancient environment as deceitful. It is, in other words, theology, not history. And in the view of H. Balz it is not even good theology, as it means that these later “authentic pseudepigraphers” were more inspired by the Spirit than the Apostle Paul was.
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More influential in recent decades, at least in English-speaking circles, is the notion set forth in a revised Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Nottingham by David Meade, who argues that a good deal of the early Christian pseudepigrapha—at least those found in the canon—can be explained not as forgeries meant to deceive but as claims to stand within authoritative streams of tradition. Meade argues that the authors of the New Testament were appropriating modes of authorship with a venerable standing in the Jewish tradition (he pays no heed to the literary practices of the rest of the world). In Jewish writings, Meade avers, it was common to assume the name and the mantle of a fountainhead of a tradition, not in order to lie about one’s own identity but in order (truthfully) to indicate one’s traditional allegiances. This happened already in biblical sources.

So, for example, the book of Isaiah is not entirely the work of the eighth-century prophet of Jerusalem. The writings of two later authors, living in different contexts and addressing different situations, were added to those of their famous predecessor. This was not to deceive the reader but to inform her that the views and perspectives represented in this new account stood in the authoritative line of tradition begun by Isaiah himself. So too wisdom sayings produced centuries after the death of Solomon were attributed to the great king in order to apply his traditional wisdom to new situations. Similarly, later apocalyptic traditions were named after such figures as Enoch and Daniel.

In none of these instances was an author trying to deceive his readers. He was instead reactualizing the old tradition for a new context, showing how the old tradition was relevant and important for a new setting. This form of
Vergegenwärtigung
, then, does not represent the illicit borrowing of the name of another; it
involves making a legitimate claim to stand in the other’s line of tradition. And so, for example, with respect to the composite book of Isaiah, Meade can conclude:

The anonymous/pseudonymous expansion of the Isaianic corpus is a recognition that Isaiah had become
part
of the tradition, and
the resultant literary attribution of that corpus must be regarded more as a claim to authoritative tradition by the participants in the process, and less a claim to actual authorship by Isaiah of Jerusalem
.
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So too, the attribution of Ecclesiastes to Solomon, or of apocalyptic texts to Daniel and Enoch, “
is primarily an assertion of authoritative tradition, not a statement of literary origins
.
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And so, for Meade, the authors of New Testament pseudepigrapha, such as the Pastoral epistles, were not being deceptive when they claimed to be apostles. The author of 1 Timothy was informing his reader that he stood within the tradition established by the authentically Pauline epistles. He was genuinely attempting to apply Pauline views to the new situation that he was addressing. His claim to be Paul amounted to an assertion that his exhortations and perspectives were those of Paul himself—or would be, were Paul alive to address the new situation at hand. Vergegenwärtigung then is not forgery; it is a completely legitimate claim to stand closely within the Pauline tradition.

On one hand, this position is innately attractive: it acknowledges the historical fact that a number of the writings of the New Testament are pseudepigraphic, yet it absolves the authors of the charge of forgery. The view is nonetheless seriously flawed, on a number of grounds.

For one thing, Meade isolates the writings of the New Testament canon from the rest of the early Christian literature. Here again, this is theology, not history. Are there really
historical
grounds for claiming that 1 Timothy is pseudepigraphic Vergegenwärtigung but 3 Corinthians is a forgery? Was the author of 3 Corinthians not trying to make Paul speak for a new day? Does he not also stand—or at least try to stand—in line with Paul’s teachings, for example, on the importance of the resurrection and life in the body?

In addition, Meade isolates these writings by situating them firmly, and only, in Jewish literary practices of the Bible, as if the New Testament authors were (1) Jews who (2) both knew and embraced the editorial practices that brought the various authors later named Isaiah altogether on the same scroll, or the various strands of the Danielic or Enochic traditions into a single work.

As to the first point, the vast majority of the early Christian authors, in particular the anonymous and pseudepigraphic writers after Paul (in other words, virtually all of them), were not Jews, did not originate in the Jewish tradition, and show
no signs of being intimately familiar with distinctively Jewish authorial practices, if any such thing ever existed. They were gentiles, who learned to write in gentile circles. They certainly did not have Jewish habits of Vergegenwärtigung hardwired into them. Even beyond that, it is very hard indeed to establish that Jewish modes of pseudepigraphy were distinctive. As Christopher Rowland has aptly observed, with respect to the most common form of Jewish pseudepigraphic writing from the time of the New Testament, the apocalypses: “a distinctively Jewish interpretation of Pseudonymity is difficult to uphold.”
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If that is true of Jewish apocalypses, how much more so of Christian writings, which were not written by Jews and were not tied, in terms of genre, to anything specifically Jewish.

It is striking, however, that Meade maintains that the writers of the New Testament pseudepigrapha not only stood within a thousand-year Jewish tradition of reactualization but were conscious of doing so. If this was a literary tradition in ancient Israel, why is it never mentioned in any source from antiquity? The reality is that ancient Jews, at least in the time that Meade is interested in, were in no way conscious of this literary “tradition.” That is to say, first-century Jews, lacking access to nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship in higher criticism, did not know that Isaiah was the work of three authors put together onto one scroll. For them, and their Christian counterparts, there was one Isaiah and he wrote the entire book. And Daniel wrote Daniel and Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. How could these later writers have stood in a tradition they did not know existed?

Moreover, many of the key (Jewish) examples that Meade cites simply do not relate to the (Christian) phenomenon he is trying to explain. Whoever wrote 2 Isaiah says nothing about being Isaiah, and we have no idea who put his anonymous writings on a scroll with those of his predecessor from 150 years earlier. How does that relate, then, to the author of 2 Peter, who goes out of his way to inform his readers that he really is Simon Peter and that he actually saw Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, so that he, as opposed to his enemies, knows whereof he speaks? Or to the author of 2 Timothy, who not only names himself as Paul but supplies extensive verisimilitudes to prove it? These are not commensurate cases.

On one point Meade is certainly correct. Whoever wrote 1 Timothy wanted his readers to think that he was standing within the Pauline tradition and that his views were those that Paul would have expressed had he been writing in the same situation. But of how many instances of pseudepigraphy can that
not
be said? One of the salient features of the ancient Christian literary tradition is precisely that authors taking contrary theological and practical positions appeal to the same authorities in support. Or rather, they claim to be the same authors, while advancing their own views, thinking that their views are, or would be, the views of the authors they are claiming to be. Whoever wrote the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter in order to denigrate the flesh and show its unimportance in the scheme of salvation
appealed to Peter’s authority in support of his view, and if pressed no doubt would have indicated that this really was Peter’s view. But so too would the author of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter, who wrote to show that the fleshly existence ultimately matters and that salvation, and damnation, will be experienced precisely in the flesh. The first author would have considered the second a liar when he called himself Peter, and would have labeled his writing a forgery; the second would have responded in kind. Who is right? It may be possible for historians to adjudicate these claims, at least in theory. One of these writers may indeed be closer to the views of the historical man Peter. But given the fact that he has left us no writings, it is really very difficult to say. And even were we to give the palm to one writer or the other, the reality is that both of them fabricated narratives and then claimed to be Peter in order to deliver them. None of this material goes back to Peter. All of it is fabricated. Both works are forged.

In the end Meade’s position that pseudonymous claims of the (canonical) writers is primarily about authoritative tradition rather than literary origins is based on a false and misleading dichotomy. In point of fact, the “authoritative” tradition that a forger lays claim to is made authoritative for the reader precisely because of the claim of literary origins. It is because the author is Peter, or Paul, or Thomas, or John, or Jesus, that the claims of his account are accepted as authoritative. In other words, in all these instances an author has lied about his identity in order to establish the veracity of his account. But so did other authors—sometimes claiming the same names—in order to authorize their discrepant accounts. Completely opposite views are advanced in the same name. All of them are acts of Vergegenwärtigung. But to excuse some of them and not others requires either a set of theological (not historical) norms or a pair of canonical blinders.

Harry Gamble sums the matter up as follows: “Others [outside of Meade] … find nothing distinctive in Jewish pseudepigraphy and regard both Jewish and early Christian pseudonymity merely as particular manifestations of a wider ancient practice of which Greco Roman literature offers many examples.” Specifically with respect to Pauline materials, Gamble maintains: “Pseudonymous authorship is nothing else than it appears to be, namely the use of a revered apostolic name in order to assert the authority of teaching that was believed to be of value by its author, irrespective of its actual origins.”
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Later we will discuss two other approaches to pseudepigrapha often taken by New Testament scholars in order to minimize the charges of deception: (1) the claim that nondeceptive pseudepigraphy was both widely practiced and sanctioned in the philosophical schools of antiquity, and (2) the assertion that the epistolary
pseudepigrapha from early Christianity—at least the canonical cases—can be explained by appealing to the use of a secretary. Both claims, I will argue, are not supported by convincing evidence. These matters, however, need to wait until later chapters. At this stage it is more important to draw some preliminary conclusions. Forgery, based simply on the ancient terminology used to describe it, appears to have been a deceptive practice that was not widely sanctioned (more grounds will be given in
Chapter Four
). It cannot be explained away on the basis of alleged inspiration by the divine spirit(s); and it was not an innocent matter of reactualizing tradition. Forgery involved the conscious act of making a false authorial claim. Ancient writers considered it a form of lying. Before extending further evidence for this view, in the next chapter, we first need to continue our taxonomic efforts.

There are a number of literary phenomena that are closely related to forgery, and we do well to differentiate among them as clearly as possible.

It is widely recognized by scholars today, as it evidently was in antiquity, that some falsely named writings were not meant as deceptions but as literary fictions. This is particularly the case in certain letter collections and epistolary novels, written in the names of well-known figures but probably as rhetorical exercises rather than attempts to deceive a reading public. In many instances it is difficult to tell whether deception was part of the intent; in other instances the matter is clear. In either event this kind of pseudonymous writing has meager relevance for the present study, as there are no certain instances of pseudepigraphic fiction among the early Christian writings.
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The only full collection of epistolary fictions is in R. Hercher’s 1873 volume
Epistolographi Graeci
, representing sixty letter writers and some sixteen hundred letters. Recent years have seen a burgeoning of interest in the matter, with a helpful bilingual collection of important specimens by C. D. N. Costa and several important studies, one of them book-length by P. Rosenmeyer.
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