Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (104 page)

Titus is instructed to “appoint presbyteroi in every city” (1:5). Obviously, since they are to be appointed, the presbyteroi are not simply older men, but (older?) men who have a leadership role in the churches. Since the author goes on to describe the qualifications of the episkopos two verses later, without indicating that he is talking about someone else now, a reasonable assumption is that the appointed elders in fact are appointed to be overseers. The qualifications of 1:7–9 are similar to those found in 1 Timothy, although there is a greater emphasis here on the need for the bishop to silence false teachers (1:9–11). There is no reference to the
in this briefer letter.

For our purposes one of the most interesting questions has to do with the polemical function of these concerns over church leadership. As I have noted, both of these books begin and end with injunctions about false teaching and contain similar doctrinal concerns scattered throughout. Is this concern for “healthy teaching” unrelated to the need to allow only the right people in leadership roles? Or, rather, are the overarching polemical concerns of these books directly connected with their interest in leadership? As just indicated, Titus itself makes the connection directly, especially in 1:7, 9–11. Just as Paul’s personal delegates are instructed to get the false teachers under control, so too are the bishops.

One of the salient purposes of these forgeries, then, is to give apostolic authorization for a church hierarchy that was needed in no small measure because of the variegated and dangerous teachings that had emerged in the Pauline communities near the end of the first century (assuming that this is when the letters were written, if not later). In the broader picture, how could “false” teachings most effectively be countered? By setting forth the true, apostolic teachings. When there were no longer apostles around to provide these teachings, one solution was to employ a form of literary deceit more widely used in the surrounding world at large. Claiming to be an apostle, an author could write treatises promoting the proper understanding of the faith, lying about his identity in order to advance the cause of truth. Moreover, true teaching could best be enforced from the top down, by leaders of the churches who saw the truth and were willing to silence anyone who violated it. And how was one to authorize the “right kind” of church leadership? Forgery again proved to be a useful tool. Writing in the name of Paul, a later forgery could presuppose the proper church hierarchy, insist on certain ecclesiastical arrangements, such as keeping women silent, and promote the cause of having the right leaders in charge.

Eventually within the proto-orthodox tradition this insistence on apostolic doctrines (even if found in forgeries) and on apostolic church structures (again,
supported pseudepigraphically) created the need for other forms of authorization. This need is what drove the development of the various arguments over “succession” in which both the teachings of the orthodox churches and the bishops of those churches could be established as standing in continuity with predecessors who were appointed by those who stood directly in the line of the apostles. And since the apostles learned at the feet of Christ, and Christ came from God, the church hierarchy and the doctrine it proclaimed was divinely sanctioned. Those who proposed different structures or different theological views could be cast out as schismatics and heretics who had alienated themselves from the Almighty.

In pursuing the motivating factors behind the forgery of the Pastoral epistles, we need to consider a once-popular opinion that these three books were written, at least in part, in order to counter the views embodied in the second-century Acts of Paul. I will not be dealing with the Acts of Paul as a possible forgery or counterforgery per se, since so far as we can tell from both patristic references and the scant manuscript tradition, the book, or set of books, did not claim Paul as the author but only as the leading subject of its narrative. The author, in other words, did not make a false authorial claim.

There is a debate over whether Tertullian has in mind the same Acts of Paul that has come down to us in our scattered manuscripts, when he makes his famous deprecatory comment that “it was a presbyter in Asia who put together that book compiling the work from his own materials in the name of Paul. Having been convicted, he confessed that he had done it out of love for Paul” (
De baptismo
17).
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Stevan Davies has mounted a multipronged argument that Tertullian has in mind an actual forgery that no longer survives, rather than the extant Acts; but W. Rordorf and A. Hilhorst have provided convincing refutations and defenses of the traditional view,
¹⁷
and in the end, the matter does not affect the questions I want to pursue here, which involve instead the relation of the surviving Acts, especially the Thecla story, to the Pastoral epistles. It does bear emphasizing, in any event, that Tertullian does not accuse the author of the Acts of Paul of forging the document but of fabricating it—a major difference (that is, it was “written in Paul’s name” because the “Acts of Paul” names Paul in its title). This
too is the claim of Jerome, who stresses that the book is apocryphal precisely because it is historically inaccurate (
Vir. Ill
., 7). Jerome’s proof: if such a story as Paul and the baptized lion had actually occurred, surely Luke would have known of it and included it in his canonical account of Paul’s ministry! Moreover, it should be stressed that according to Tertullian, the offending presbyter was not expelled from office, as often claimed. After admitting to what he had done, he left office himself.
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The Acts of Paul was judged—at least by these two authors—as an unacceptable fabrication.

But can the Pastoral epistles be understood as forgeries meant to counter the claims of these apocryphal tales? If so, how does one explain their relative dating? Already a century ago Hans Helmut Mayer argued that the Pastorals were directed, in part, against some of the views found in the Acts of Paul, a view influentially popularized by Dennis MacDonald in the early 1980s.
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To evaluate the view, we need to consider some of the important data.
²⁰

There are six proper names that occur in the Thecla story connected with Paul. Five of them occur, as well, often in related connections, in the Pastoral epistles: (1) Demas (AP, 3.1; 2 Tim. 4:10; also Col. 4:14 and Phlm. 24) in both places deserting Paul, both times for greed; (2) Hermogenes (AP, 3.1; 2 Tim. 1:15), whose name occurs only in these two places in early Christian literature, and in both places he is twinned with a companion and deserts Paul in Asia Minor; (3) Onesiphorus (AP 3.2; 2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19), mentioned in early Christian literature only in these two places, and in both instances he is connected with Asia Minor, he befriends Paul when Paul is in prison, and he appears with his family; (4) Titus (AP 3.2; 2 Tim. 4:10; Tit. 1:4; ten times in 2 Corinthians and Galatians); and (5) Alexander (AP 3.26; 1 Tim. 1:20; 2 Tim. 4:14), who is said to oppose Paul, in both places, and only there. The one exception is Castellius (AP 3.14), who appears in the Acts only as a governor at the trial, not in Paul’s ministry per se.

It is also worth noting that in both corpora there are two people connected with Paul who indicate that the resurrection has already taken place (Demas and Hermogenes in AP; Hymenaeus and Phileus in 2 Timothy). Moreover, both corpora connect a “coppersmith” with Paul, either Alexander (2 Timothy) or Hermogenes (AP).

In addition, there are four place names mentioned in the Acts of Paul, three of which also recur in the Pastorals: Iconium (3.1; 2 Tim. 3:11; five times in Acts); Antioch (3.1; 2 Tim. 3:11; sixteen times in Acts, once in Galatians); and Lystra
(1.3; 2 Tim. 3:11; five times in Acts). The one exception is Myra (AP 3.40; twice in Acts).

Some of the material parallels between the works are similarly impressive. For example, from outside the Thecla story, in AP 11.1, we learn that Luke from Gaul and Titus from Dalmatian were awaiting Paul at Rome. Compare this with 2 Tim. 4:10–11, where Paul is writing from prison, presumably from Rome, and he indicates that Titus has gone “to Dalmatia” and that “Luke alone is with me.” More striking still is the famous account of Paul and the baptized lion in the Acts of Paul. At this point of the narrative, Paul has been staying with Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus, and everyone else has turned against him. With no support, he makes a bold witness before the governor and the crowd. The governor condemns him to be eaten by a ferocious lion, but the lion—Paul’s previous acquaintance and convert—refuses to eat him and they both flee the scene unharmed. Compare this with 2 Tim. 4:16–19, where “Paul” indicates that no one took part at his defense and that everyone deserted him; but “the Lord stood by me and strengthened me so that the message could be fully proclaimed through me and all the Gentiles could hear.” Moreover, at that time, “Paul” indicates that he “was saved from the mouth of the lion.” He continues on, then, to send his greetings to Prisca and Acquila.

Despite these verbal and material overlaps, there are antithetical emphases in these two corpora that make their relationship of particular interest. And so, for example, 2 Tim. 3:6–7 attacks those who enter into households and capture weak women. This is precisely what the apostle himself appears to do in the Acts of Paul, certainly in the case of Thecla and later with Artemilla and Eubula. Similarly, Titus 1:10–11 speaks of opponents who upset entire households. Evidently these Christian teachers urge some form of asceticism, since Titus responds by asserting that with the pure all things are pure (i.e., nothing is forbidden). Thecla’s household in the Acts of Paul was certainly turned topsy-turvy by Paul’s proclamation in the home of Onesiphorus next door, a proclamation that has a rigorously ascetic bent. 1 Tim. 4:3 opposes those who are driven by deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons to forbid marriage. So too, the Pastor requires leaders of the churches to be married, and urges young widows to remarry and have babies. In the Acts of Paul, Paul may not condemn marriage, but he certainly discourages it, as in the lead case of Thecla; moreover, it is his enemies Hermogenes and Demas who offer the teaching, contrary to Paul, that the resurrection happens precisely in one’s progeny. In 1 Tim. 2:15 women are said to be “saved” by having children; whereas in the Acts of Paul women learn, through Paul’s beatitudes, that it is the celibate who abstain from sex who will be blessed. So too, whereas the Pastor’s women are not allowed to teach, but must be silent and submissive, in the legends Paul commissions a woman to go forth and teach (AP 3.39, 41, 43). Finally, whereas 1 Tim. 4:3 opposes those who abstain from certain foods, Paul in the Acts appears to maintain a vegetarian diet (AP 3.23–25).

And so, without yet drawing a specific conclusion concerning the direction in which the influence went, it is difficult to withstand the conclusion of J. Rohde
that the Acts of Paul accepts as “legitimate teaching” what the Pastorals reject as “false.”
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Indeed, it would be a mistake to claim that the two corpora are unrelated, on the ground, for example, that so much material present in each—the legends of the Acts and the teaching of the Pastorals—is neither found nor maligned in the other. No one need think that the single purpose of either body of writings was to attack the other; but some such polemic could well have been at least one of its purposes. At all times we need to recall that texts, as a rule, are generated for multiple reasons and serve multiple purposes. And so we are justified in considering the reason and purpose of the Acts of Paul in relation to the Pastoral epistles.

The most provocative view of the relation of the two corpora was the aforementioned monograph of Dennis MacDonald,
The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon
.
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In his study, MacDonald explored three episodes of the Acts of Paul: the Thecla story, the account of the baptized lion, and the martyrdom of Paul. He argued that these stories were based on oral traditions that had been in circulation principally among Christian women in Asia Minor, so that Tertullian’s presbyter was simply writing down accounts he had heard. The Pastoral epistles, on the other hand, were written in opposition to these oral traditions. There is not, in other words, a direct literary dependence between the two works, one way or the other; nor is the Acts of Paul responding to views eventually embodied in the Pastoral epistles. The relationship is the reverse: the Pastorals are responding to oral traditions that were later put in writing in the Acts of Paul.

Despite the attractiveness of the theory, it suffers from a weak set of arguments used to undermine a more obvious solution, that whoever wrote the Acts of Paul was reacting to the (earlier) Pastoral epistles. MacDonald argues that the influence did not go in this direction because, first of all, any author, such as the composer of the Acts of Paul, who “wanted to alter the traditional memory of a historical figure” (the author of the Pastorals), “would be more likely to use forged letters than a collection of stories.”
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But surely this is not self-evident; if the Pastorals themselves can be read as a kind of narrative—as Richard Pervo and others have tried to do
²⁴
—there is no reason they could not be responded to by a narrative. And there is certainly nothing to preclude an author writing a narrative that had, as a subsidiary purpose, the opposition to a view of his protagonist set forth in some other influential writing, regardless of genre. MacDonald goes on to argue that if the author of the Acts was opposing the Pastorals, “we would
expect to find him authenticating the narrative in order to secure credulity over against the epistolary opposition.” Here again, there is no reason that we should tell authors what they ought to do, or expect them to take what in the modern critical mind seems to be a more effective approach.