Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (118 page)

Even without pressing the logic of the preposition used in Col. 4:16, one might still question if its reference to a now-lost letter can explain the banal concatenation of Pauline phrases that have come down to us as the letter to the Laodiceans. Why would anyone feel compelled to produce such a letter, simply because one was once “known” to exist? Surely something drove the forgery outside of idle curiosity or
the desire to supply what was lost. Was it, really, just a random writing exercise? Why then would it have been put into such wide circulation? And how might the author’s motivation relate to the character of the letter he produced, which, had he signed his real name to it, would have opened him up to the charge of plagiarism?

The most radical view came in the later writings of Adolf Harnack, who changed his tune toward the end of his career and decided that in fact our surviving letter is the Marcionite forgery denounced by the Muratorian Fragment.
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The letter, in Harnack’s judgment, was forged not by Marcion, but by one of his followers. The forger kept his work, with its Marcionite tendencies, very subtle so as to escape detection and enable broad distribution. And his ploy obviously worked. No one except the anonymous author of the Muratorian Fragment recognized the writing for what it was. Until Harnack.

Harnack argues that, despite all previous scholarship, the Marcionite character of the writing can be shown irrefutably (unwiderleglich). His most important points are the following:

• Marcion’s “Apostolos” began with the letter to the Galatians, which provided the foundation for all that follows, starting with Gal. 1:1. And that is the verse with which the letter to the Laodiceans begins.

• Philippians begins with the words “I give thanks to my God.” Laodiceans echoes the thanksgiving with a key change that reveals the author’s modalistic (i.e., Marcionite) Christology: “I give thanks to Christ” (v. 3).

• On two occasions in vv. 4–5 the author warns against the vapid preaching of false teachers, which stands over against the “veritas evangelii.” This phrase, “the truth of the Gospel” is a Marcionite terminus technicus. Moreover, by stressing that this true gospel is “preached by me,” the author sets his (Paul’s) proclamation over that of other evangelists or apostles—a key Marcionite emphasis.

• Marcion denied the promise of knowledge of “eternal life” to those who adhered to the Old Testament and, especially, to the catholic Christians. “Eternal life” became a catchword of his proclamation and for his church. And strikingly the phrase “eternal life” shows up twice, unexpectedly, in this letter in vv. 5 and 10 (cf. v. 7).

Harnack concludes: “These observations are decisive: our letter is a Marcionite forgery.”
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As indicated, however, for him the letter did not derive from Marcion
himself. For one thing, Marcion renamed Ephesians Laodiceans, and so had no reason to create a separate letter to the Laodiceans. What is more, the letter was not produced as Marcion produced his other “biblical” writings, which was through editing, not creating/compiling. And so one of Marcion’s followers produced it after his lifetime but before the Muratorian Canon, 160–190
CE
. This unknown author wanted to fill the gap left by Col. 4:16 and did so by bringing the clandestine Marcionite teachings (die heimlich Marcionitischen Lehren) to expression in a way that catholic Christians would not be able to detect. And so he worked with Pauline phrases, principally from Philippians, because it was relatively easy, using this epistle, to make the composition appear harmless. Fearing to show his hand, he did not include any explicitly Marcionite teachings in the letter.

If anyone could make a case for the banal letter of the Laodiceans being a Marcionite forgery, it would have been the mighty Harnack. But he won virtually no converts to his view. Each of his points individually appears weak: (1) if the author wanted to stress Galatians at the outset, why would he not quote it more extensively throughout, and use at least one phrase that actually mattered for the Marcionite cause? (2) the exchange of God and Christ was exceedingly common in early scribal and homiletical contexts, and never required a Marcionite modalism for explanatory force; (3) false teachers are a problem for every Christian group, not just the Marcionites; (4) so too eternal life was a ubiquitous concern. More than that, there simply is no Marcionite theology in the letter. To claim that the author worked subtly would be an understatement: even heresiologists known for their ability to sniff out heresy where none existed did not detect a whiff of Marcionism in the letter. The letter would certainly not have been accepted in the West had there been the least thing to suspect in it; moreover, there would be no reason for the author of the Muratorian Canon to oppose the Marcionite “Laodiceans” if in fact this pastiche of Pauline phrases were it. There must, then, be a different explanation.

The most recent attempt at solving the problem is by R. Burnet, who tries to use the set of commonplaces that constitute the letter to advantage, in arguing that the letter has no point except to exist precisely as a letter of Paul.
¹⁰⁸
Unlike Paul himself, who used his letters as a substitute for his oral message when personally present, this letter has no message: it simply is “Paul” making himself present. Moreover, since the letter talks of eternal life—and thus eternity—this letter is not from the historical Paul but from the Paul living in eternity. It is Paul writing from heaven. The purpose of the letter is not to convey a message but to convey an apostolic presence from the world beyond.

Burnet’s hypothesis, which, he admits with a bit of understatement, is “sans avoir de preuve” (p. 140), is that the Christians in Laodicea were jealous of the fact that Paul had written a letter to the Colossians, and so created a letter of their
own, so that they too could claim to have an apostolic presence in their midst. The letter was important for them for its status as an object; not for the message it conveys (since it conveys none).

Unlike Harnack, Burnet does not attempt to offer any argument for his hypothesis, which must, as a result, remain as unprovable as any baseless hypothesis. It should be noted, however, that there is no evidence that the letter was actually produced in, read in, cherished in, or preserved in Laodicea. Nothing connects it with Laodicea other than its address. Any real association with the Christians there—about whom we know next to nothing—is necessarily imaginary.

A more compelling option was suggested by Wolfgang Speyer, although he did not explicate it in any detail. This is a view that turns Harnack’s suggestion precisely on its head: our letter to the Laodiceans is not the Marcionite forgery mentioned by the Muratorian Fragment, but a proto-orthodox counterforgery, produced precisely to oppose the (now-lost, if it ever existed) Marcionite version.
¹⁰⁹

If hard-pressed one could dig as deep into the well as did Harnack to find characteristics of the letter that could be taken in anti-Marcionite ways. The author, claiming to be Paul, tells his reasons to avoid false teaching that leads “away from the truth of the gospel” (v. 4). And why? Because of what will happen on the “day of judgment” (v. 3). That day will be survived by those who do the appropriate “good works” (v. 5). The author stresses his own suffering, which will lead to salvation (vv. 6–7). The author is happy to die for the sake of the gospel (v. 8). These are all tactile phenomena. The author stresses the importance of the physical response to the gospel: to do good, to act for God, to suffer, to die—all for God. Salvation does not come from an empty belief in a docetic Christ, but a hard-fought life of love and service.

But not too much can be made of the tactility expressed in the letter. The reason for thinking it is an anti-Marcionite forgery is that it exists. This is comparable to the supposition of Burnet, but in this case there is both an argument and a logic. What we know historically is this. In proto-orthodox circles, as evidenced in the Muratorian Fragment and Epiphanius, for example, it was known—or at least believed—that a Marcionite forgery existed, a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans. This forgery, whether real or imagined, was almost certainly conceived of on the basis of Col. 4:16, and was with equal certainty a forgery that actually (or imaginarily) pressed a Marcionite agenda (which, among other things, opposed the material world, Christ’s flesh, and the importance of human flesh). Proto-orthodox writers not only knew of the existence of this forgery; they also, naturally, opposed it. But what would be the best way to show that the Marcionite forgery was not the letter Paul was referring to in Col. 4:16? What better way than to produce the
real
letter of Paul to the Laodiceans? If the real item existed, the Marcionite version would be exposed as a forgery.

And so a proto-orthodox author produced the “real” thing. That is why the letter is both completely banal and totally dependent on other Pauline letters. There was no point to the forgery other than its existence, to show that the Marcionite forgery was a fraud. But it had to sound very much like Paul to be convincing. And who sounds more like Paul than Paul? The forger then simply borrowed a large number of phrases from Galatians and, especially, Philippians, strung them together, gave them a Pauline epistolary frame and format, and thereby accomplished his aim. The letter he produced was “the” Letter to the Laodiceans. To counter the Marcionite forgery it did not have to replicate anti-Marcionite polemic. All it had to do was sound like Paul. The author succeeded spectacularly. The letter circulated as part of the New Testament throughout a large chunk of the Latin Middle Ages.

The Apocalypse of Peter, to be differentiated from the Coptic Apocalypse of the same name, was discovered during the winter excavation season of 1886–87 by a French archeological team, digging in Cemetery A at al-Hawawis in the desert necropolis of Akhmim. It is one of four texts included in the sixty-six page book that included, as well, the Gospel of Peter.
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Debates over the date of the manuscript have been most satisfactorily resolved by Cavallo and Maehler, who place the hand in the late sixth century.
¹¹¹
Since the discovery, two small Greek fragments have appeared, shown by M. R. James to derive from a single manuscript. One of these is now in the Bodlean; the other is in the Erzherzog Rainer collection in Vienna.
¹¹²

The Ethiopic version of the apocalypse was uncovered from the manuscript tradition of the Pseudo-Clementines, and published in 1907 and 1910 by E. Grébaut, though not recognized as belonging to the same account as the Greek text until 1911, again by M. R. James.
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Today it is generally recognized that the Ethiopic version, which was probably derived from Arabic, is the older of the two, and that the surviving Greek text has been seriously edited, possibly in order to make it more closely aligned with the Gospel of Peter in the same codex.
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The
differences between the two versions matter a good deal for interpretation. As van Minnen points out, the Akhmim fragment edits away all positive “references to things Jewish.”
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Of yet greater significance for our purposes in this chapter, the future punishments of the damned in the Ethiopic account are transformed in the Greek into punishments in the present for those dwelling in heaven and hell.

There have been numerous debates over the date of the writing. As it is cited by Clement of Alexandria (Eusebius,
H.E
. 6.14.1;
Ecl. Proph
. 41.2, 48–49) and named by the Muratorian Fragment, it can clearly date no later than the mid second century.
¹¹⁶
Some scholars have urged greater precision in the dating, notably D. Buchholz and especially R. Bauckham, who base their arguments on the interpretation of the parable of the fig tree in
chapter 2
.
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Here Peter asks for an explanation of the parable, and Christ launches into a detailed exposition. The fig tree “is the house of Israel.”
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Once its branches sprout, then “shall deceiving Christs come, and awaken hope (with the words): ‘I am the Christ.’” One in particular will arise who “is not the Christ.” And when the followers of Jesus reject this one, “he will kill with the sword (dagger) and there shall be many martyrs.” These “shall be reckoned among the good and righteous martyrs who have pleased God in their life.”

Bauckham argues that this passage refers to the false messiah Bar Kochba and to his slaying of Christians who refused to participate in the second revolt, as mentioned by Justin (see 1
Apol
. 31). The Apocalypse, then, can be dated to the time of the second revolt, 132–35
CE
. Other scholars, however, such as van Minnen, have made convincing counterarguments. Even if
ch. 2
refers to the events under Bar Kochba—which is not clear, as the references are far from precise—that would simply mean that the text would date to some period later than 135; Bar Kochba, in that case, may be used by the text as an example of the
kind
of antichrist that will arise.
¹¹⁹
E. Tigchelaar goes even farther: the text at issue is corrupt, most of the terms used of the messianic figure are stock, there is no evidence that Bar Kochba killed “many” Christians, and many of the historical references of the text work as well for the events of 115–17
CE
. One payoff is that we cannot use the
second revolt as the hermeneutical lens for reading the account.
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At most we can say that the document was produced at least by the middle of the second century.

Whenever it was produced, the Apocalypse of Peter proved to be a historically significant book. It was considered to be part of Scripture by Clement of Alexandria
¹²¹
and the scribe of codex Claramontanus. It is listed as a disputed book in the Muratorian Fragment and the Stichometry of Nicephorus. Eusebius saw it as spurious (
H.E
. 3.3.2, 3.25.4, 6.14.1), but Sozomen reported that it was used in public worship on Good Friday (
H.E
. 7.19). It is not, however found in the Gelasian Decree.