Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (123 page)

I
f the various theological controversies from the end of the third century and into the fourth generated a large number of literary forgeries, most of them have since been lost. The ones that survive are not modern discoveries but old standards, known throughout the ages because, in no small measure, these authors were unusually successful in their deceitful endeavors. One of the most historically significant of these works was the forged Ignatian letters, to which I will devote the greatest attention in this chapter. But we would do well to return to two other forgeries that we have examined in previous contexts, as, in part, their production was spurred by the theological controversies of their day.

We have already discussed the forged correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar Uchama in the context of anti-Jewish polemic.
¹
These letters do not only malign Jews for their role in the death of Jesus, however; they also function in a more patently theological way. As Han J. W. Drijvers has shown, the letters appear to have been forged as an anti-Manichaean polemic.

As we have seen, the letters appear in the context of the larger Abgar legend, known from both Eusebius and the
Doctrina Addai
. My primary concern here is not with the legend per se. Even though it is certainly a fabrication of later times, it is not a forgery. The correspondence at the beginning of the legend, however, is forged, or rather doubly forged, one letter allegedly written by the king of Edessa and the other by Jesus himself. Taken as a Gestalt, the letters and the legend have been subject to considerable dispute. Burkitt argued that the complex grew out
of a historical kernel, in which the Christian conversion of Abgar VIII the Great (177–212
CE
) was retrojected back onto Abgar V Uchama (ruler: 4
BCE
–7
CE
and 13–50
CE
) in order to provide a greater antiquity for the church of Edessa.
²
W. Bauer argued, in contrast, that the entire legend, including the letters, was an invention ex nihilo, meant to support the claims of the orthodox party in Edessa to have an apostolic origin.
³
J. Segal argued that the complex originated as a Christian parallel and counterpart to the story of the conversion to Judaism of the royal dynasty of Adiabene, as preserved in Josephus.
⁴
And there have been other theories.
⁵

In a series of publications Drijvers has shown the problems with these various views, before reaching his own conclusion
⁶
: “The Abgar legend likely arose at the end of the third century in Edessa as a propaganda text for the orthodoxy of that era.”
⁷
Specifically, the propaganda is directed against a dominant form of Syrian Manichaeanism.

As I argued earlier, however, in contrast to Drijvers, the letters appear to have originated independently of the legend.
⁸
Even so, they too, as well as the legend, may have arisen during an anti-Manichaean campaign by orthodox Christians in Edessa. The grounds for seeing the correspondence in this light are given by Drijvers, who notes not only that letters were important to the Manichaean tradition in general, but also that, as known from Augustine, the Manichees claimed to have letters of Christ in particular (
Contra Faust
. 28.4). There are convincing reasons for seeing the Abgar correspondence as a counterforgery designed to undercut the claims (and possibly even the letters) of the Manichees.

Especially significant, in this regard, is Jesus’ promise to Abgar in the second letter: “After I have ascended I will send you one of my disciples to heal your illness and to provide life both to you and to those who are with you.”
⁹
This appears
to be an allusion to John 16:7–8 and its promise of the sending of the Spirit: “It is better for you that I depart; for if I do not depart, the Comforter will not come to you; and if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convince the world.…” As Drijvers notes, Mani understood himself to have been sent in fulfillment of this Johannine promise. The letter of Jesus, then, provides a counterclaim. Moreover, Mani understood himself to be sent from God as a healer: “I am a physician [doctor] from Babylon,” he says to the Sassanic king Shapur, whom he then heals—a close parallel to what is said to be about to happen to Abgar, not through the coming of Mani but through his counter, the apostle to be sent from Jesus.
¹⁰
Drijvers concludes: “It becomes clear that the reply Jesus sends to Abgar is a trenchant version of the saying concerning the Paraclete, which is perhaps intended to counter Manichaean claims and the Manichaean mission.”
¹¹
For this correspondence, Christianity will establish itself with the appearance of Jesus’ apostle, not with the coming of missionaries from Mani.
¹²

Drijvers notes that there is an internal discrepancy between the letter of Jesus and the legend of Addai. The letter claims that Jesus will send an apostle to Abgar, but in the legend, it is Judas Thomas who does so. This is “an anomaly” in the sequence of the narrative.”
¹³
But neither Drijvers nor anyone else who sees the letters as, originally, a piece, has an adequate explanation for the discrepancy. In fact, as seen earlier, the disjuncture is easiest accounted for by assuming that the letters and legend both sprang from the same polemical impulse, but were only secondarily added together. This would explain, as well, why they had separate histories of transmission (Egeria, for example, knows the letters but betrays no knowledge of the legend).
¹⁴

At the same time, the impulse behind the legend appears to have been very much like that behind the earlier letters. As Drijvers repeatedly emphasizes, one of Mani’s first apostles, sent in 240
CE
into the Roman empire where he healed and converted the queen of Palmyra, Zenobia, was named Addai. This cannot be a coincidence. Now the one (a Christian apostle) who comes to Edessa to heal and convert the King is Addai. Or, one might think, the
real
Addai: “This
is an ingenious piece of propaganda: A
Christian
apostle in rivalry with Mani, whose best-known apostle was actually called Addai.”
¹⁵
“The Christian Addai is a borrowing from Manichaeism.”
¹⁶
Drijvers points out other, probably noncoincidental, similarities between Manichean legends and the Abgar tradition.
¹⁷
The conclusion to be drawn from these parallels is clear: “The Abgar legend is a document of Christian propaganda which originated in a historical situation in Edessa at the end of the third century, in which the Manichean version of the Christian faith and the Manichean mission were sharply threatening orthodoxy, which formed only a minority.”
¹⁸

This propaganda campaign, however, took place in stages. It started with a set of forged letters between Jesus and the King of Edessa, which had their own history of transmission; it continued with a similarly oriented set of stories; it came to fruition in the combining of the two sets of documents. The combination yielded a notable inconsistency that was overlooked in antiquity, and is still ignored by scholars today. But the final product ultimately proved valuable for the orthodox community of Edessa.

We have already considered the Pseudo-Clementines in relation to their “Jewish” orientation and their resultant anti-Pauline (or possibly anti-Marcionite) polemic. Here I can say just a few words about other theological issues involved in their production.

The final editions of both the
Homilies
and
Recognitions
bear the marks of the time of their redaction, as both appear to have been edited sometime in the fourth century by Christians with “Arian” tendencies.
¹⁹
There is little to indicate that this redactor was intent on advancing his Arian views with polemical intent, however, and so I need say but little about the matter.

The common view of the
Homilies
was expressed well over a century ago in an influential study by Charles Bigg. From his analysis of
Hom
. 20:7, Bigg concluded: “If we suppose that we have in the present
Homilies
the product of an
Arian Christian of Syriac nationality who fancied that he found in Ebionitism a solution of the great problem—a historical and quasi-philosophical doctrine of the Arian savior—we should not perhaps go far wrong.”
²⁰

This general perspective is widely shared today, for example, in the most recent full-length study of Nicole Kelley.
²¹
So too
Rec
. 3.2–11 has long been recognized as containing an Arian perspective. The theology of the passage was so problematic—confused, confusing, or dangerous—that Rufinus tells us that he refused to include it in his translation:

There are also in both collections some dissertations concerning the Unbe-gotten God and the Begotten, and on some other such subjects, which, to say nothing more, are beyond our comprehension. These, therefore, as being beyond our powers, I have chosen to reserve for others, rather than to produce in an imperfect state.
²²

This is not to say that there are not theological polemics in the Pseudo-Clementines. Indeed, Kelley has made a compelling case that the books do have polemical intent. Eschewing questions of sources, she examines the final form of the text of the
Recognitions
for what it can tell us about the concerns of the editor, living in fourth-century Syria. In her view, the prominent motif that “true knowledge” can come only from the prophets of Scripture, and in particular from the True Prophet (Christ), is meant to function polemically, in order to counter other popular avenues of knowledge widely used in the author’s environment. In particular, the author/editor is intent on combating those who insist on the epistemological importance of both astrology and philosophy. That is why the heroes of the tale are shown to be experts in both disciplines, and yet converts away from them. They personally know what astrology and philosophy can provide, and they have realized their ultimate shortcomings: “Despite its insistence on its heroes’ expertise in the different paths to knowledge, the text also suggests that philosophy and astrology cannot really provide the access to true knowledge which they claim.… True knowledge comes only from prophets.”
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The author was confronted with a maelstrom of religious opinion, belief, and doctrine in his fourth-century Syrian environment. Rather than attack any one set of false teachings, he takes them on all at once, setting forth the true understanding of religion in opposition to any who stand in a different tradition or take another theological view. As Kelley summarizes:

In an environment characterized by a multitude of competing truth claims, the
Recognitions
functions as a multi-pronged attack not just against
one
group such as the Marcionites or Pauline Christians, but against several different varieties of belief. In this way the text redescribes the field of competition, so that it ceases to be a bewildering array of rival religious claimants and becomes something more manageable: a choice between prophetic and false knowledge, and ultimately a choice between salvation or damnation.
²⁴

Arguably the most historically influential set of forgeries of the late fourth century are the Pseudo-Ignatian letters. As has long been recognized, these were produced in the context of the Christological controversies racking the church at the time. Over the centuries they came to be used in a wide variety of other contexts, most notably in the wake of the English Reformation, in the numerous vitriolic exchanges over the validity of church hierarchy between the likes of Anglican Archbishop and scholar extraordinaire James Ussher and the young but outspoken Puritan John Milton.
²⁵

In addition to the seven Ignatian letters widely regarded as authentic today, ten other letters were circulated at various times and places in the medieval and early modern period. These ten come in two corpora. One corpus appears to have been a late medieval addition to the collection, and so will not concern us here. This comprises four letters, two from Ignatius to John, the disciple of Jesus, one addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the last a reply from Mary to Ignatius. The forger of these short missives appears to have had access to the so-called Long Recension of Ignatius, about which I will speak in a moment, in particular the forged letter of Ignatius to Mary of Cassabola, which is addressed to
christifera filia Maria. The letter to the Blessed Virgin uses the same epithet, “christiferae mariae suus Ignatius” and indicates that the author has written to her before. These four letters are only in Latin, probably their original language. Lightfoot plausibly suggested that they date no earlier than the eleventh century. Nonetheless, the forger was inordinately successful with his deceit: there are far more manuscripts of this correspondence than of the Long Recension itself, and far more quotations from it. As Lightfoot indicates, “in some quarters indeed S. Ignatius was only known through them.”
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