JI: Forged in the Name of Paul

Last time I summarized Ehrman's introduction to ancient forgeries—remarkably, only 8 of the 27 New Testament books were definitely written by the authors they are traditionally attributed to. Now I'll cover his evidence that many books of the NT are forged. In particular, I'll go over five of the epistles supposedly written by Paul: Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.

Colossians & Ephesians
The evidence that these two books are forgeries is pretty strong, though not the strongest of all the NT books. Compared with Paul's other letters, Colossians and Ephesians use longer and more intricate sentences (e.g. Col. 1:3-8 & Eph. 1:3-14 are single sentences in the Greek), have more theologically developed views (e.g. Col. 1:15-20), use different vocabulary and use common terms differently. But Ehrman focuses primarily on one big difference in viewpoint.

In most of his epistles, Paul is adamant that Christians who've been baptized have "died with Christ" and been set free from sin, but have not yet been "raised with Christ." He emphasizes that only later will they be raised with him (e.g. Romans 6; 1 Cor. 15). In contrast, here are Colossians 2:12 and Ephesians 2:5-6:

"...buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead."

"...even when we were dead in trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus..."

These two books explicitly state that they have already been raised. The difference may seem minor, but to Paul such a claim would have had enormous theological ramifications. The writers of Colossians and Ephesians, on the other hand, apparently didn't quite catch the distinction.

1 Timothy, 2 Timothy & Titus
Due to similarities in theme and language, virtually all scholars agree that these three books (the pastoral epistles) have the same author—but they also agree that the author is not Paul, as he claims to be. First Ehrman explains the argument from vocabulary:

"There are 848 different Greek words used in these letters, of which 306 do not occur anywhere else in the letters allegedly written by Paul in the New Testament. ...Something like two thirds of these non-Pauline words are words used by Christian writers of the second century. That is to say, the vocabulary of these letters appears to be more developed, more characteristic of Christianity as it developed in later times."

Next he points out conflicts in the use of important terms. For example, in all of Paul's other writings, the word "faith" roughly means "trust in God." But in the pastoral epistles, it instead means "the beliefs that comprise Christianity" (e.g. Titus 1:13-14).

Most importantly, though, are the starkly contrasting portrayals of the early Christian church. In 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul's churches are portrayed as eschewing hierarchical leadership in favor of letting the Holy Spirit work among all the members and giving each a "spiritual gift" such as teaching or prophecy (see 1 Cor. 12-14). When Paul writes to rebuke the sinful ways of the Corinthian church, he addresses all the members—he can't address the church bishops because there weren't any. While this setup was chaotic, it was okay with Paul, because he believed that Jesus' return was imminent: they just needed to support one another until the end came.

But it didn't come. And so over the decades, the churches had to organize themselves and appoint a hierarchy of leaders in order to survive. That's what we see in the pastoral epistles: they're all about how to appoint bishops and deacons to various positions, how to deal with false teachers, and so on. Paul would have been long gone by the time the churches had reached this state. The conclusion: someone living in the second century wrote these books under Paul's name so they could influence the churches' policies more easily.

Ehrman goes over several other NT books as well, but this should be enough to illustrate the point. At some point in the future I'll devote a whole post to the authorship of 2 Peter. Although Ehrman doesn't give much space to it, the evidence of forgery there is even more decisive.

JI: Introduction to Forgeries

Ehrman spends the first few pages of JI's fourth chapter explaining how we know the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. First he identifies the purported writers: Matthew and John were disciples, Mark was the disciple Peter's secretary, and Luke was Paul's traveling companion. But there are several problems with accepting these people as the authors:

1. The four books have many contradictions and opposing viewpoints that make far more sense if the authors aren't eyewitnesses.
2. None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts of the events, and in fact all are written in the third person.
3. Jesus' followers were illiterate, Aramaic-speaking Galilean peasants. Yet the gospel writers were highly educated Greek-speakers who sometimes display ignorance of the area's geography and customs.
4. None of the gospels originally had an author's name attached to them; it was only later in early church history that they were attributed to these four people.

A few early church fathers did say that the disciples wrote gospels. But Papias got his information third- or fourth-hand, and "when he can be checked, he appears to be wrong." And Irenaeus had strong motives for attributing the gospels to authoritative people in order to increase their credibility and reinforce his viewpoint.

Next Ehrman provides a brief introduction to ancient forgeries. Remarkably, only 8 of the 27 New Testament books have completely undisputed authorship. He places the 19 whose authorship is disputed into three categories:

• Misattributed writings: anonymous books with incorrectly identified authors (e.g. the gospels)
• Homonymous writings: books by someone bearing the same name as a famous person (e.g. the author of James was simply assumed to be James, brother of Jesus)
• Pseudigraphic writings: books written under a false name—either as a pen name or as a literal forgery

Ehrman argues that forgeries were prevalent in the ancient world, that they intended to deceive, that they often did, and that ancient societies viewed the practice just as seriously as we do today. Then he gives a fascinating list of motivations for forgeries, only a few of which had occurred to me. I'll list the ones relevant to Christian writing here:

1. To make an enemy look bad: For example, Ehrman suspects that heresy hunter Epiphanus forged a book called The Greater Questions of Mary and claimed it was used by the heretical Phibionites. It contained a story about Jesus performing a sex act, thus casting them in a bad light.
2. To oppose a certain viewpoint: For example, the forgery 3 Corinthians uses Paul's name to argue against heretical views from the second century.
3. To make their enemies agree with them: For example, early Christians inserted references to Jesus to make it seem like pagan oracles prophesied his coming.
4. To express humility or love for an authority figure: Some forgers may have considered their works a mere "extension of what the master himself said." And the author of The Acts of Paul and Thecla claimed he wrote it "out of love for Paul."
5. To supplement the tradition: For example, in Colossians Paul mentions a letter to Laodicea which was never found, so early Christians forged a couple. And there's little mention of Jesus' childhood in canonical books, so they wrote several stories of their own.
6. To counter other forgeries: The Acts of Pilate, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the canonical book of 2 Thessalonians are cited as examples.
7. To provide authority for their own views: Ehrman says this is easily the most common reason for forgeries, especially for small groups who had been branded heretics.

With so many reasons to commit forgery, it's not surprising that a huge number of forged books were written, nor that some managed to make their way into the Bible. Next I'll cover the evidence Ehrman presents to demonstrate that this is the case.