Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (66 page)

9
. As intimated, for instance, by Luke Timothy Johnson, “First Timothy 1, 1–20,” p. 19.

10
. Ihre Einheitlichkeit und Geschlossenheit dokumentiert sich weiter im einzelnen bis in eine enge Verwandtschaft der Sprache (Stil, Wortschatz), des Inhalts und vorausgesetzt kirchengeschichtliche Situation hinein. Sie sprechen dasselbe gehobene Griechisch, leben in derselben theologischen Begriffswelt, bekämpfen dieselben Häresien, kennen im ganzen dieselbe Organisation und Verfaßtheit der Einzelkirchen.”
Die Pastoralbriefe
, 4th ed. (Regensberg: Pustet, 1969), p. 12.

11
. “Die Past sind nicht bloß als pseudepigraphe Paulus
brife
geschaffen, sondern als pseudepigraphes
Corpus pastorale
konzipiert.” Peter Trummer, “Corpus Paulinum—Corpus Pastorale: Zur Ortung der Paulustradition in den Pastoralbriefen,” in
Paulus in den neutestamentlichen Spätschriften: zur Paulusrezeption im Neuen Testament
, ed. Karl Kertelge (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), p. 123.

12
. Gerd Häfner, “Das Corpus Pastorale als literarisches Konstrukt,” T?iQ 187 (2007): 259: “If the letters are best read as a corpus, [that is to say] as a literary construct, this fact would speak against their composition by Paul.” (“Sind die Briefe am besten als Corpus zu lesen, als literarisches Konstrukt, spräche dies gegen ihre Abfassung durch Paulus.”)

13
. Prior,
Paul the Letter Writer;
Murphy-O-Connor, “Paul the Letter Writer”; Luke Timothy Johnson,
The First and Second Letters to Timothy;
William A. Richards,
Difference and Distance in Post-Pauline Christianity: An Epistolary Analysis of the Pastorals
(New York: Peter Lang, 2002); Rüdiger Fuchs,
Unerwartete Unterschiede: Müssen wir unsere Ansichten über “die” Pastoralbriefe revidieren?
(Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus Verlag, 2003); James W. Aageson,
Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008); Jens Herzer, “Fiktion oder Täuschung?”

14
. Schleiermacher maintained that 1 Timothy was the odd one out, and that view has been maintained on rare occasion over the years. See the most recent discussion of Jens Herzer, “Rearranging the ‘House’ of God: A New Perspective on the Pastoral Epistles,” in
Empsychoi Logoi
—
Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst
, ed. Alberdina Houtman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 547–66. The striking similarities of 1 Timothy and Titus make this view implausible to most others.

15
. In 1 Timothy it refers to the parousia, in 2 Timothy to the incarnation (or the resurrection?).

16
. See further note 17.

17
. That is to say, if one were to posit that a Pauline imitator wrote 2 Timothy and an imitator of both Paul and 2 Timothy wrote 1 Timothy and Titus, then the hypothesis would require that the latter imitator chose as the specific linguistic features to replicate largely those not found otherwise in Paul. Moreover, this hypothesis requires three authors and three stages, whereas all of the data are more simply explained on the basis of two authors working at two stages: Paul and an imitator. As is true with the Synoptic Problem, the best solution should not unnecessarily multiply authors and stages for data that can be explained more economically.

18
. So, for example, Jens Herzer, “Rearranging the ‘House’ of God.”

19
. Herzer, “Rearranging.”

20
.
First and Second Letters to Timothy
, pp. 63–65.

21
.
1 and 2 Timothy, Titus
. NIBCNT (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), p. 6.

22
.
Making of Paul
, p. 84. Pervo goes on to show that if one assumes that the three make up a corpus, they can be read as a kind of epistolary novel.

23
. L. T. Johnson, “1 Tim. 1:1-20,” p.22.

24
.
First and Second Letters to Timothy
, p. 61.

25
. P. N. Harrison,
The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921).

26
. Wilhelm Michaelis, “Pastoralbriefe und Wortstatistik,”
ZNW 28
(1929) : 69–76.

27
. See, for example, Wolfgang Schenk, “Die Briefe an Timotheus I und II und an Titus (Pastoral-briefe) in der neueren Forschung (1945–1985),”
ANRW II
. 25, 4 (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987), pp. 3404–38.

28
. Armin D. Baum, “Semantic Variation within the
Corpus Paulinum:
Linguistic Considerations Concerning the Richer Vocabulary of the Pastoral Epistles,”
TynBul
59 (2008): 271–92.

29
. Jerome D. Quinn,
The Letter to Titus
AB (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1990), p. 5.

30
.
1 and 2 Timothy
, p. 75: “one of the weakest arguments against authenticity.”

31
. On the question of whether the verisimilitudes suggest authenticity, see the trenchant article of Brox, mentioned on p. 122.

32
. I do not need to deal at any great length with scholars who continue to find the issue of forgery in the New Testament to be theologically or personally troubling, given all that I have shown so far. A commentator such as I. Howard Marshall admits that the evidence is too strong against Pauline authorship, but he wants to insist that the Pauline follower who produced the letters did so “honestly”—not like the heretics who forged writings to promote their own “false” teachings (see p. 32, n. 9). This again is theology, not history. Such views lead then to his proposal, advanced with all seriousness, that in cases such as the Pastorals we speak not of pseudonymous but of allonymous writings, not of pseudepigraphy (let alone forgery) but allopigraphy.

33
. David Cook, “The Pastoral Fragments Reconsidered,”
JTS
35 (1984): 120–31. The even more highly nuanced, hypothetical, and, one might say, overly fragmented theory of James D. Miller,
The Pastoral Epistles as Composite Documents
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) has also failed to persuade, for similar reasons.

34
. As Lewis Donelson points out, this is simply not a problem for anyone who has read extensively in the forgeries of antiquity. He refers in particular, as an example, to the famous twelfth letter of “Plato,” forged in order to validate yet other works of Plato that the author himself knows are forged (he may have forged them himself), including random irrelevancies to mask his motives by what appear to be off-the-cuff remarks.
Pseudepigraphy and Ethical Argument
, pp. 23–42.

35
. Fingierte Personalnotizen sind als Stilmittel antiker Pseudepigraphie bekannt und stellen auch in den Pastoralbriefen nichts Erstaunliches dar; “Zu den persönlichen Notizen der Pastoralbriefe,”
BZ
13 (1969): 76–94, here 79–79; reprinted in Brox, ed.,
Pseudepigraphie in der heidnischen und jüdischchristlichen Antike
, pp. 275–76. Brox goes on to show that the verisimilitudes are not merely guises for authenticity, but they serve the rhetorical purposes—especially paranetic—of the letters as well.

36
. “1 Timothy 1, 1–20,” pp. 24–25.

37
. Prior,
Paul the Letter Writer
, p. 39.

38
. Ibid., p. 45.

39
. Prior does explore the use of the first person singular and plural in Paul’s letters, but when one examines the data he provides, it is to no effect. That Paul himself wrote these so-called co-authored letters by himself is suggested by Galatians 1:1, “all the brothers who are with me.” Are we seriously to imagine that everyone pitched in?

40
. Luke Timothy Johnson, “II Timothy and the Polemic against False Teachers: A Reexamination,”
JRelS 6
(1978): 1–26.

41
.
Pseudepigraphy
, p. 117.

42
. Ceslas Spicq,
Saint. Paul: les épitres pastorales
(Paris: Gabalda, 1969), pp. 52–72.

43
. Robert J. Karris, “The Background and Significance of the Polemic of the Pastoral Epistles,”
JBL
92 (1973): 549–63; Günter Haufe, “Gnostische Irrlehre und ihre Abwehr in den Pastoralbriefen,” in
Gnosis und Neues Testament: Studien aus Religionswissenschaft und Theologie
, ed. Karl-Wolfgang Tröger (Güterslow: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1973), pp. 325–39; Josef Zmijewski, “Die Pastoralbriefe als pseudepigraphische Schriften—Beschreibung, Erklärung, Bewertung,”
Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt
(1979): 97–118; I. Howard Marshall,
The Pastoral Epistles;
Lewis R. Donelson,
Pseudepigraphy and Ethical Argument
.

44
. “2 Timothy Contrasted with 1 Timothy and Titus,”
RB
98 (1991): 414.

45
. Jerry L. Sumney,
“Servants of Satan,” “False Brothers” and Other Opponents of Paul
, JSNTSup. 188 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).

46
. Robert J. Karris, “The Background and Significance of the Polemic of the Pastoral Epistles,”
JBL
92 (1973): 549–63.

47
. See p. 176.

48
. See further pp. 176–77 and 185–86.

49
. “One might therefore even consider whether the author here perhaps polemicizes directly against Col (as well as Eph).” (“Man könnte deshalb sogar erwägen, ob der Vf hier möglicherweise direkt gegen Kol (und auch Eph) polemisiert.”)
Aufhebung
, p. 139.

50
.
The Secretary in the Letters of Paul
, WUNT 2.42 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991). His more recent discussion,
Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection
(Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2004), adds little to the discussion; nor does the work of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor,
Paul the Letter-Writer: His World, His Options, His Skills
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995).

51
. Richards (
Secretary
, p. 46) cites Cicero,
Fam
. 16.10.2 and
Att
. 5.20, but he may be overreading the texts.

52
.
Att
. 7.17, cited in Richards,
Secretary
, p. 96, note (in quo accusavi mecum ipse Pompeium).

53
. Ibid., p. 52, n. 155. It should be noted that Richards uses this quotation in order to support his thesis that Brutus actually had a secretary compose his correspondence for him, but the text is explicitly addressing the issue of “epistolary style,” not substance.

54
. The term
peasant
has become a site of debate and even confusion in New Testament scholarship; I am using it in its most basic sense to refer to an uneducated person of low social status.

55
. See Richards,
Secretary
, p. 213, depending on Wikenhauser’s
Einleitung
.

56
. Richards,
Secretary
, p. 48.

57
. “Paul and Letter Writing in the First Century,”
CBQ
28 (1966):470.

58
. Richards,
Secretary
, p. 48.

59
.
Att
11.2,.4; 11.5. Cited by Richards,
Secretary
, p. 50, nn. 147, 148.

60
. Cicero,
Fam
, 8.1.1; cited in Richards,
Secretary
, p. 51.

61
. As Richards later admits,
Secretary
, p. 111.

62
. Ibid., pp. 110–11, emphasis his.

63
.
Vir. ill
. 1. Richard Bauckham is not right when he claims that Jerome argued that the differences between the two letters were due to the use of two different secretaries
(Jude, 2 Peter
, WBC 50, Waco: Word Books, 1983, p. 145). The passage in question is
Ad Hebidiam
, Epistula 120, 11 (c. 406/7): “Further, the two epistles, which circulate as Peter’s, are also different in style among themselves and in character, and in word structure; from which we understand that he used different interpreters (or “translators”: interpretibus—not secretaries) as necessary.”

64
. “Non est igitur ignorandum praesentem epistolam esse falsatam, quae licet publicetur, non tamen in canone est.”
Enarr. In Epist
. Cathol.
PG
39, 1774.

65
. Thus, for example, Peter H. Davids,
The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).

66
. Richard Bauckham,
Jude, 2 Peter
, WBC (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1983), p. 137.

67
. Ibid., p. 136.

68
. See note 54.

69
. “Peter, Second Epistle of,” ABD, 5. 284.

70
. Ibid., p. 283.

71
. Ibid., p. 284.

72
. “This makes for a particularly daring argument if one keeps in mind that the author himself fictionally constructs the claim to eye-witness status” (“Darinliegt freilich ein besonders kühnes Argument, wenn man bedenkt, dass der Autor selbst den Anspruch der Augenzeugenschaft fiktional konstruiert”). Jörg Frey, “Autorfiktion und Gegnerbild im Judasbrief und im Zweiten Petrusbrief,” in Jörg Frey et al., eds.,
Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion
, p. 707.

73
. See, for example, Frederik Wisse, “The Epistle of Jude in the History of Heresiology,” in
Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig
, ed. Martin Krause (Leiden: Brill, 1972), pp. 133–43.

74
.
Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels und die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Marcion
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1979), pp. 93–94.

75
. Demas and Hermogenes teach that “the resurrection which [Paul] says is to come … has already taken place in the children, and that we rise again, after having come to the knowledge of the true God.”
Acts of Paul
14; translation ofJ. K. Elliott,
Apocryphal New Testament
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).