Hm, good point. I really struggle with accepting as reliable, any recommendations by those who lie about who they are. I know that it was common back then, but that doesn’t make it appropriate :).
Sparks is right in this way, most likely. Thanks.
(BUT see note below–this may not be intended to deceive, as per Phil. Thanks. I have to watch the conclusions I jump to)
But I wonder if “lie” is a fair discription of what is going on. Books may well have been written by those in the tutorage or school of Paul, and not intended to deceive but rather to support his work. I does give me pause to consider the the nature of canonization, inspiration and such.
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This is another example of how I don’t understand the culture well enough, and need to take things very carefully. I apologize. Thank you!
Fair enough but would you extend this to the multiple dozens of Jewish and Christian pseudepigraphic writings outside the canon? Was the Gospel of Peter or Thomas meant to support the work of their claimed author? Surely if we put on rose colored glasses only for the canon we are engaged in special pleading.
But I agree it was definitely different back then. In some cases it may have been a sign of honor to write in a teacher’s name. But this is not a carte blanche license as at the same time people objected to forgeries as well and valued apostolic works. Not to mention a work like 2 Peter probably dates ca. 125CE. That is very far removed from an alleged disciple of Peter. Sometimes the deuteron-pauline corpus seems to correct the work of Paul for Christians, not really strictly continue it. Many scholars who think 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul believe it was written strictly to replace it.
It is clear 1 Thessalonians has an extremely urgent eschatology. They are worried some have died before Jesus returns. 2 Thessalonians 2 it seems to warns against a letter with the sentiments expressed in 1 Thessalonians:
1As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, 2not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. 3Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.
Most scholars see this as correcting mistaken parousia timetables so evident in early Christianity. This occurs in the redaction of John (ch 21) and also in 2 peter, probably the last book to be written where the return is put off indefinitely (a day is like a thousand years). It is not an easy issue to grapple with. It strikes right at the heart of hermeneutics.
And if Christian’s were arguing over proper doctrine, for someone to just come up with a new letter that addresses these concerns, it’s a bit troubling.
I’m with Sparks that God uses the writings of sinful humans to reach us. Even if the composition of a work itself was made under less than idea conditions God can still use the work and speak through the author. I think for canonization it’s the finished product. We know there have been many alterations to whatever the “autographs” looked like. We’ve never had those to begin with.
Someone on r/askbiblescholars actually just posted this today:
[
What happens to the Biblical canon knowing some of Paul’s letters were forged?
Here was one response:
It’s not an issue.
Firstly, they are pseudonymous, rather than “forged”. It was not uncommon way back then for writings to be ascribed to the wrong person, especially if that person was famous. It’s a different cultural context, and doesn’t have the negative connotations of “forgery”. All the gospels are likewise pseudonymous.
Secondly, it isn’t the original versions of anything that is canonised. It’s the bible as it is that constitutes scripture. So scripture includes things we know were not original, such as the story of the woman taken in adultery. For good biblical scholarly study, it is very significant to ask whether Paul wrote this or that epistle. But for Christian faith, it’s not really relevant. The bible is the bible.
And here was the second:
If you got rid of every bit of contradictory theology in the Bible, you would end up with a much shorter book!
The Bible and our interpretation of it is the ongoing story of many people with frankly incompatible views who in various ways lay claim to the title, “the people of God.” The very first chapters of Genesis present two incompatible stories of creation, which immediately calls us into struggling with the various theologies present within the Bible. The early Christians did not make it easier on us by only including texts that have perfectly coherent theology or stories either. The fact that the Gospels are four unique stories should key us into that fact!
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s The First Paul divides the letters attributed to Paul into three camps: the Radical Paul, the Conservative Paul, and the Reactionary Paul. The seven letters attributed to Paul that are generally accepted as authentically Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) make up this Radical Paul who believes in equality between Jews and Gentiles, advocates for Christians to free their leaves, and encouraged female leaders. The three letters that are disputed (Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians) make up a more conservative Paul, more in line with the culture of Paul’s day without really disrupting things very much. The three inauthentic letters of Paul (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) make up the Reactionary Paul, written in Paul’s name to deliberately undermine some of his radical positions.
But nevertheless, both the Radical and Reactionary Paul are present in the Bible. It was apparently important enough to be included regardless of its author. There are letters written by Paul that were not included and many of the books in our Bible were only attributed to authors after they were being circulated. The contents of the book seemed to matter more than who wrote them. The question is less about whether the book is a forgery and more why a book with contradictory theology was included in the first place.
Regardless of who wrote the inauthentic letters of Paul, they have now been part of the Christian tradition for nearly two thousand years. As a Protestant, I consider the Apocrypha at the same level as the rest of Scripture because it has also formed my theology in significant ways. The Bible is the central but not exclusive source of Christian faith and practice no matter what church you belong to; the question is simply how we weigh our interpretations of contradictory passages.
Vinnie
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Good stuff Vinnie. And of course it applies to the Old Testament as well. I don’t think it is even controversial that the latter part of Isaiah was written later by another hand.
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That was Bonhoeffer’s voice, not mine. I will yield to him, thanks.
I’ll give it considerably more deference than that, most certainly. The words ascribed to David in the Psalms, for instance – he was just another man after God’s own heart.
Please tell me just one that has enough spiritual discernment to believe the Gospel.
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Yes, let’s get our priorities and emphases straight. It doesn’t look to me like they all are.
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How is this any different than the question I already answered from you up above:
“Hi Vinnie, great response! Can you recommend any critical scholars that see what you see and yet still believe the Gospel?”
You might not like the implications of what this says but YECs don’t like the implications of science and what it means for their interpretation of the Bible. Some people don’t like the implications of Markan priority. Some people don’t like the implications that Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch. Some people don’t like the implication that the Bible has mythology in it. Some people don’t like the implication that the Bible has errors. Some people don’t like the implications of textual uncertainty.
Sometimes facts or strong evidence gets in the way of what we want to believe. Christianity and Judaism have always been able to adapt their beliefs as they evolved over time. I doubt either would have survived as such if they could not.
My advice to modern Christians who embrace evolution and the antiquity of the earth: Have some courage, or dare I say faith, and deal with the Bible, and be willing to do so exactly in the manner you expect YECs to based on the findings of science. Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it? As uneasy as you may be with pseudepigraphic or falsely attributed works in the Bible, how do you think conservatives feel when they are told to abandon the plain sense of scripture’s words and accept the Bible has mythology in Gen 1-11? We need to be willing to take our own medicine. We want a paradigm shift in thinking but are unwilling to entertain one? Something about a speck and a plank comes to mind.
Vinnie
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To which I replied and felt like you left the issue hanging. I’m not married to the text, but I am married to Jesus and his Spirit which has been poured out at Pentecost.
I mentioned a host of scholars and directly answered the question you asked:
I got lucky with my readings as I came across Raymond Brown early. His intro to NT is sober and he was absolutely sympathetic to Christian faith. I branched out from there. Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier (he just passed away last month), Pheme Perkins, Luke Timothy Johnson, Jerome Murphy O Connor, Donald Senior, Adela Yarbro Collins and a number of faithful Catholics are pre-eminent Biblical scholars. You could add Ken Sparks and Pete Enns I suppose but I think they are OT scholars. I haven’t polled all the Catholics I mentioned on the pastorals but they are all genuine critical scholars who assess the evidence very well in my experience.
Honestly, Bart Ehrman’s Intro to the NT is very good. There is less polemic than some of his other works but the NT Intro I would recommend most to Christians is Raymond Brown’s. I would recommend the New Jerome Biblical commentary first and foremost to any Christian interested in Biblical studies. It’s the single greatest Biblical resource there is. I have physical copies of both the first and second edition. It is phenomenal in every way.
This issue is not left hanging. I listed many critical scholars who take the gospel seriously. I am sure there are countless more whose work I have not had the benefit of reading yet.
The bottom line is if your faith is built on the impossibility of their not being pseudepigraphic writings in the New Testament, then intellectually, your faith is most likely wrong. If p then q. That is a dangerous game to play.
Vinnie
You also listed Bart Erhman who then caused me to have doubts about the belief of the other scholars.
Now you are hand waiving. For years I have genuinely wanted to read, and especially listen to a critical scholar who believes in Jesus because they have been convicted of their sin before a Holy God. While I say it’s genuine, it wasn’t the most pressing issue for me, but if I am talking about the issue with someone as knowledgeable as you are, I am sincerely asking for a reference.
I listed the ones I know. There are plenty more. I only listed Bart because his intro to the NT is actually a sober treatment of the basics of critical NT scholarship. But I recommended Brown because he is a Christian and sympathetic to faith.
I gave you what you asked for. Read those scholars. Or don’t. I can’t really answer the question any better. Grab the New Jerome Biblical commentary. It is unequivocally Christian. Read it. It presents the issues from a critical and Christian perspective. There are certainly other scholars who are less orthodox in their beliefs who still believe in Jesus but I neglected from naming them for that reason. There are a ton of self-identifying Christians who are critical scholars. I certainly will only be familiar with a very small percentage of them.
Vinnie
Thanks Vinnie for clarifying that. Best regards, Mike
As a sample of his work from his NT intro, here is what Brown writes in chapter 25 of his Intro to the NT:
PSEUDONYMITY AND THE DEUTEROPAULINE WRITINGS
Before we enter the problematic terrain of deuteroPauline letters, i.e., those that bear Paul’s name but possibly were not written by him, let us discuss the difficult concept of pseudepigraphy (literally, but often misleadingly, “false writing”) or pseudonymity (“false name”)1-terminology employed in bibli cal discussions with special nuance.
(A) Pseudonymous Composition in General
It may be clearer here to speak of “writer” rather than “author.” Normally, for us, “author” means not simply the one responsible for the ideas contained in a work but the one who actually drafted its wording. Ancients were often not that precise and by “author” may have meant only the authority behind a work. We are not totally unfamiliar with such a distinction, for we encounter the phenomenon of “ghost-writers,” particularly in the instance of entertainers who wish to write an autobiography but need the help of a skilled writer to cast their story in a correct or attractive way. Now more frequently, however, even a ghost-writer has to be acknowledged in the form of “The Autobiography of John/Jane Doe with the cooperation (or assistance) of John Smith.” That phenomenon is close to one ancient use of scribes (p. 4 1 1 above) and may be encountered in a genuine Pauline letter if Paul dictated the ideas and someone like Silvanus phrased them in writing. It is not what scholars mean by pseudonymity in reference to the NT works.
Unfortunately some confuse pseudonymous compositions (works that claim to be written by someone who did not write them) with anonymous compositions (works that do not identify by name their writer), especially in the instance where the writer has been externally identified. The Gospels, for instance, are anonymous; they do not identify their authors (see, however, John 2 1 :24); the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that appear in titles stem from the (late?) 2d century and are not part of the original works. Anonymous too are Acts, Heb, and I John (ll-Ill John claim to be written by '“the presbyter”). The pseudonymous works of the NT, i.e., those whose very wording identifies an author who may not have composed them, are ll Thess, Col, Eph, I-II Tim, Titus, Jas, I-ll Pet, and Jude. (The self-identification of the author is not reasonably disputed in the seven Pauline letters already discussed and in Rev [the prophet John].) In this Chapter I am leaving aside books not accepted into the biblical canon (Appendix II below).
586 §25. Pseudonymity and DeuteroPauline Writings
Modem readers also encounter writing under an alias or pen name, a method adopted for various reasons. In the 19th century Mary Anne Evans wrote under the male name George Eliot because it was difficult for women to get serious writing accepted. In the 20th century more than one author of mysteries has written under several names, sometimes with a particular fictional detective featured respectively by each "name;’ e.g., John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson are names for the one male author; Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine are names for the one female author. Writing under an alias is objectionable when deception is intended (e.g., composing a new Sherlock Holmes story and selling it as a recently discovered, unpublished original by Arthur Conan Doyle) but not when one is publicly continuing to write in the style of the now defunct original author (e.g., Sherlock Holmes scripts used in movies featuring him active during World War II).
In NT research some who first proposed that letters attributed to Paul were really pseudonymous hinted that the purpose might be fraudulent, but that connotation has largely disappeared from the discussion.2 Most often what is being suggested is that one of the Pauline “school” of disciples took it upon himself to write a letter in Paul’s name because he wanted it to be received authoritatively as what Paul would say to the situation addressed. Such a situation makes sens’e if one supposes that Paul was dead and the disciple considered himself an authoritative interpreter of the apostle whose thought he endorsed. Attribution of the letter to Paul in those circumstances would not be using a false name or making a false claim that Paul wrote the letter. It would be treating Paul as the author in the sense of the authority behind a letter that was intended as an extension of his thought-an assump tion of the great apostle’s mantle to continue his work. Indeed, such attribu tion could serve to continue the apostle’s presence, since letters were consid ered a substitute for personal face-to-face conversation (J. D. Quinn, ABO 6.564). Mutatis mutandis the same may be said of other proposed instances of NT pseudonymity: Those who considered themselves in the school of James (of Jerusalem), or of Peter may have written letters in their author ity’s name.
Justification for positing this type of pseudepigraphy is found in the OT.
Books of law written 700 or 800 years after Moses’ time were written in his name since he was the great lawgiver. Psalms (even those with titles attribut ing them to others) were collected in a Davidic psalter since David was famed as a composer of psalms or songs. A book like Wisdom written in Greek ca. 100 Be was attributed to Solomon, who had lived 800 years before, since he was the wise man par excellence. Prophets in the school of Isaiah continued writing 200 years after the prophet’s death and had their compositions included in the Book of Isaiah. Apocalypses, both canonical and non canonical, tended to invoke the name of famous figures from the past (Daniel, Baruch, Enoch, Ezra) as seers of the visions now being narrated, long after their lifetime. In the centuries just before and after Jesus’ time pseudepigraphy seems to have been particularly frequent even in Jewish works of a nonapocalyptic nature: the Prayer of Nabonidus, Odes of Solomon, Psalms of Solomon.
(B) Problems about Pseudonymity
True as all that may be, when we posit the pseudonymous character of NT works (as I shall), difficulties remain that should not be overlooked; and readers are asked to keep them in mind in the next Chapters. I have cited OT examples of pseudonymity where centuries separated the person from the writings; consequently they are not really parallel to works written within a few years of Paul’s life. We speak of disciples of Paul or adherents to the Pauline school of thought as pseudonymous writers, but we do not know their precise identity. (Silvanus, Timothy, Titus, and even Luke have been suggested for the various works). How close did one have to be to the historical Paul to write in his name? At times was it simply a matter of know ing Paul’s writings and using an earlier letter as a basis for further composi tion? (That suggestion has been made to explain the writing of II Thess in dependence on I Thess, and of Eph in dependence on Col.) Some scholars would date the Pastorals to AD 125 or later when Paul would have been dead a half century or three quarters. How long after the master’s death could one still claim authority to write in his name, especially when other Christian writers of the postapostolic generation were writing in their own names? How are canonical pseudonymous works different from apocrypha written in the name of NT figures but rejected by the church as noncanonical?6
.
588 §25. Pseudonymity and DeuteroPauline Writings
Is the audience (church) addressed to be taken as historical? For instance, if pseudonymous, was II Thess written to the church at Thessalonica as I Thess was, or did the writer simply copy that address since he was using I Thess as a guide for his motif? How in the l st century would a wider audience have received a letter seemingly addressed to the problems of the church at Thessalonica? Did the audience who first received a pseudony mous letter know that it was actually written by another in Paul’s name? Would the letter’s authority have been diminished if that were known? Did the writer think that such knowledge made any difference? (II Pet makes the author’s apostolic identity of key importance, e.g., 1 : 1 6.) Would the later church have accepted these letters into the canon had it known they were pseudonymous?? The percentage of scholarly opinion holding that the writer was not the claimant varies for each work, and so there remains the obliga tion to ask and answer the question: What difference does a decision on the question of pseudepigraphy make in how this letter/epistle is understood?
What are the criteria for determining genuineness and pseudonymity? They include internal data, format, style, vocabulary, and thought/theology.8 Already on pp. 4 1 1 , 498, 55 1 above we saw some problems with these crite ria; but since scholarship is almost evenly divided on whether Paul wrote II Thess, we can test them more practically in the next Chapter.
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That’s well written by Brown and I can respect where he is coming from. There was once a time where I read large portions of Guthrie’s NT Introduction, but I found that I really didn’t have the memory to make that reading profitable. I prefer listening to people if possible. What I like about Keener, is that while he shows sincere appreciation for the difficulties with the text, he also has a testimony I can relate to. I think the NT has guidelines for discerning teachers this way, even as they were able to be the Church without an established canon.
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Thanks Vinnie. That puts a lot into perspective. However, it still causes me discomfort when my church background has always put the authorship of those books as having been written by the traditional authors. That discomfort is similar to what I see with YEC adherents learning that what their church has said about science simply is not true, and thus casts doubt on the gospel.
Do you think that we (Christianity in general, evangelical Christianity in particular) should be more up front with the authorship and the process of canonization? Of course, that is not likely to happen due to the burden of inerrancy.
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Dietrich deals more fairly, thanks.
This reminds me of how I was once so unsettled by critical scholarship that I determined to merely read the NT as the work of early believers, and yet I still felt drawn to the words in a special way.
“If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences—that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt or vacillation, and that they may not also boggle at the smallest quibbles—we ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.”
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
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What, pray tell, is absurd about it?
Languages and genres may be different but there are still common principles by which they operate. There are also common principles by which methodologies in general operate, and one of those principles is that if you want to establish that your methodology works, you need to test it against something of known provenance. It’s called “having a control.”
Try Tolkien. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. They are not only the same genre by the same author, but they are about the same fantasy world. But as @Daniel_Fisher pointed out in the thread to which I linked:
I appreciate the other points that you’ve been making. There are other lines of evidence that we can and should take into account. But my whole point is that literary criticism of any form is not an exact science like physics, chemistry, geology or test-driven software development. It is a humanities subject, and as such it concerns the vagaries of humans and other living beings. This being the case, things aren’t going to be quite as black-and-white as when you type computer code into Visual Studio and then run a suite of tests to make sure that it does what you expect it to do. It will be a lot harder to establish just how reliable your conclusions are for starters.
Or to put it another way. For each of the epistles in the New Testament that are ascribed to Paul that are disputed by scholars, what confidence level can you assign to the thesis that Paul had nothing whatsoever to do with them? And how, precisely, can you calculate that confidence level?
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