Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (4 page)

More remarkably, starting in 8.16, certain directives for church offices are made in the first-person singular: “With respect to the ordination of deacons, I Philip make this constitution.… With respect to a deaconess, I Bartholomew make this constitution.… With respect to the sub-deacons, I Thomas make this constitution.…” And so on, in the names of other apostles. As Bruno Steimer has pointed out, only rarely does the author slip up and betray the pseudepigraphic character of his writing: James, one of the speakers (8.35.1), is said already to be dead (7.46.1–2); Peter both speaks in the first person and is spoken of in the third (7.11, but 2.24.4; 7.2.12); Paul is sometimes not included in the assembly (e.g., 2.55.1); and in one place, at least, Peter and Paul seem to differentiate themselves from the apostles (8.33.8).
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It is frequently stated that the Apostolic Constitutions claims as its ultimate author Clement of Rome, who allegedly is writing the words given him by the apostles.
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This, however, is almost certainly wrong. Clement is not mentioned at the beginning of the book when the author addresses the readers in the names of the apostles, or in the beginning of any of the books’ three main sections. He does appear twice in the first person (8.46.13; 8.47.85), and so he has been inserted as a co-author of sorts. But he is not the ultimate writer of the document. The passages that have been appealed to in support of a Clementine authorship are 6.18.11, where “the Catholic doctrine” is said to have been sent
and again at the end the book at 8.47.85, where the writing is self-referentially said to have been addressed to the bishops
The book is clearly written “through Clement.” But this does not mean that Clement is the one recording the words of the apostles. It means he is being imagined as the one who carried the book to the recipients and who could, then, vouch for both its authenticity, as having been written by the apostles, and its accuracy.
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The Apostolic Constitutions, then, tries to pass itself off as an authentically apostolic writing, even though it is not. This is a clear case of what I will later be defining as literary forgery: a writing that makes a false authorial claim, with the apparent intention of deceiving its readers.
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A range of ironies emerge from this text as a result. One intriguing passage occurs in 8.3, where the author not only stresses his apostolic identity but also draws for his readers the ineluctable conclusion, in case they were too dense to catch it: “the one who hears us hears Christ, and the one who hears Christ hears his God and Father.” What would it mean, then, to disobey the apostolic instructions of the book? The reader can draw her own conclusion.

At the same time, this authorial authority, rooted in a direct apostolic line heading straight to God, is rooted in a falsehood. The book is pseudepigraphic—literally, “inscribed with a lie.” This makes the claim of apostolic succession all the more interesting, as the claim appears immediately after the author’s reminder of how God “rebuked the way of those who … attempted to speak lies” (
8.3.1). Here a liar condemns the telling of lies.
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What is more, as with Heraclides Ponticus, here too the deceiver has been deceived. The alleged authors—the apostles of Christ, including Paul and James—claim that the books of the New Testament were theirs:
(8.47.85). And so the author gives a list of which books those are, a
list including all the books that eventually became the New Testament, with the exception of the book of Revelation. Strikingly, after listing the Gospels and the letters of Paul, James, John, Jude, and Peter, the author indicates that the New Testament is also to include the two letters of Clement and, to cap it all off, the Apostolic Constitutions themselves. The list ends with “our Acts of the Apostles”
(8.47.85)—in other words, not just the letters that the authors had earlier produced but also the account of their activities.

By naming 1 and 2 Clement as scriptural authorities—part of “our” New Testament—the alleged authors are establishing the authority of the bearer of their writing, Clement of Rome, companion of the apostles. Including their own writing, the Apostolic Constitutions, as Scripture is the natural corollary of the pseudepigraphic enterprise. If they wrote the other books of the New Testament, then surely their other writing—that is, the present one—is also sacred scripture. This is pseudepigraphy with chutzpah. The author is not just forging an apostolic writing; he is urging, in the name of the apostles, that the writing be deemed part of Scripture.
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At the same time, to some extent this author is simply making explicit what other forgers clearly desired implicitly. Whoever wrote the extant letter of Laodiceans, the letter of 3 Corinthians, and the Gospel of Peter clearly expected their readers to accept their books as authentically apostolic and thus, surely, in some sense scriptural.

But, as intimated, the author of the Apostolic Constitutions is not only a deceiver; he is also deceived—in this case, about many of the books of the New Testament, which he did not in fact write but which were also, for that matter, not written by the apostolic authorities who are claimed as their authors. In making this mistake, our unknown author can certainly be excused. Virtually all Christians by the end of the fourth century assumed that the New Testament books were authentic; little did they know that the writings of Paul and the letters of Peter, James, and Jude would all come under criticism so many centuries later. All the same, here again we have a forger who has been fooled by other forgeries.
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