Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (18 page)

All of this in just one volume of one ancient writing. In the same volume Diogenes also mentions two cases of plagiarism.
²
And Diogenes is not unique: as we have already seen, and will see yet more presently, there was a widespread practice of criticism among pagan literati of our period.

The documented or suspected instances of forgery among Jewish writers of the time are not as extensive, in no small measure because there were far fewer Jewish writings of any kind.
³
In an earlier period, the so-called writing prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve), if they wrote at all, wrote in their own names (e.g., Isaiah, Amos) or anonymously (2 Isaiah; 3 Isaiah; editorial editions to Amos and others, for example). Only two books of the Hebrew
Bible can be considered forgeries in the sense that I am using it here. The visions of Daniel 7–12 claim to be written by the sage and prophet of the sixth century
BCE
but were almost certainly produced, in reality, four hundred years later by someone assuming the false name for reasons of his own. (I will be dealing with the question of apocalypses as pseudepigrapha shortly.) The book of Qoheleth is a textbook case of a non-pseudepigraphic forgery: its author clearly indicates that he is to be taken as Solomon (chs. 1–2), without naming himself, although he, once again, was writing many centuries after Solomon had passed from the scene.

Outside of the Hebrew Bible, orthonymous writings were, in the words of Annette Reed, “surprisingly rare among Second Temple Jews.”
⁴
She names as exceptions ben Sira, Aristobulus, Eupolemus, Artapanus, and later Philo and Josephus. The authenticity of other works, such as the writings of Hecataeus and Manetho, are today hotly contested.
⁵
Even so, there are well-known forgeries, including the Wisdom of Solomon
⁶
; the Letter of Aristeas
⁷
; the Letter of Demetrius of Phaleron to Ptolemy II within the letter of Aristeas; the Decree of Artaxerses in the additions to the book of Esther; 3 Ezra 6.7–22, 6.24–27, 6.27–34, 8.9–24; the letters from and to the rulers of Sparta in 1 Macc. 12.2, 5–23, 14.20–23 (cf. Josephus
Antiquities
12.225–28; 13.165–70); the letters between Solomon and Vaphres quoted in Eusebius (
Prep. Evang
. 9.31–32); between Solomon and Suron King of Tyre and Sidon (
Prep. Evang
. 9.33–34), the Decree of Alexander the Great in Sulpicius (
Severus Chron
. 2.17.2); and the Letter forged in the name of Herod’s son Alexander mentioned by Josephus (
War
1.26.3). Examples could be multiplied.
⁸

A special question arises concerning the literary character of Jewish apocalypses, books certainly written in the name of someone other than the actual author. But is it appropriate in these cases to speak of “forgery,” when pseudepigraphic authorship functioned as a standard element of the generic expectation of the works? In response, an obverse question might well be posed: Is there any reason that an entire (or almost entire) genre could not comprise, by its very nature, forgeries?

There has been extensive scholarship devoted to the question of the authorship of the Jewish apocalypses. None was more initially influential but subsequently renounced as D. H. Russell’s work
The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic 200
B.C
.-
A.D
. 100
.
⁹
Russell contended that the pseudonymous authorship of Jewish apocalypses could be explained on the grounds of (1) corporate personality, in which ancient Jewish authors did not clearly separate the individual from his or her larger social group; (2) contemporaneity, in which Jews at the time did not neatly differentiate between the past and present; and (3) extension of personality, in which Jewish authors, such as those of the apocalypses, identified so closely with earlier figures that they could legitimately claim to write in their names. Each of these three points, as well as Russell’s overall theory, has been effectively discounted by subsequent scholarship devoted both to the specific field of apocalyptic literature
¹⁰
and to pseudepigraphy more broadly.
¹¹

Apart from Russell, however, there is a broad, though not universal, sense among scholars of Jewish apocalypticism that the use of pseudonymity was so widespread as a practice that it must have been seen as conventional by the authors who produced the work and, correspondingly, “seen through” by their readers, who were not at all convinced that the resultant books were actually written by Abraham, Enoch, Ezra, Baruch, and so on. This broad sense is open to dispute, however, and has indeed been called into question by recent investigations. For one thing, one wonders where there is any actual evidence that the pseudepigraphic claims of the apocalypses were transparent fictions. It is striking that the one reader from antiquity who explicitly comments on the matter, Tertullian, insisted that Enoch’s pre-diluvian composition (our 1 Enoch) is not invalidated by the fact of the flood: his direct descendant, Noah himself, no doubt could have reproduced the book verbatim after all surviving copies were destroyed by the deluge (
De cultu Fem
. 1, 3, 1).

Apart from the question of ancient “reader response,” one needs to take seriously the functions and intentions of the genre itself, and of its pseudepigraphic character in particular. John Collins has repeatedly stressed that the authorial claim of the apocalypses functions precisely to make the
ex eventu
prophecies
believable. Readers who knew that Daniel was not really predicting the history of nations up to and following Antiochus Epiphanes would not have found much solace or assurance in his “prophecies.” Only if his authorial claim is believed can his predictions about the imminent destruction of Antiochus have any effect. That is to say, since other prophecies (
ex eventu
, as we now know) came true, so too then, obviously, will the ones the reader is most interested in, namely those involving the current oppressor. Likewise for other apocalypses of Daniel’s ilk, including those at Qumran.
¹²

Karina Martin Hogan takes the matter a step further. While acknowledging that earlier scholars tried to get the ancient pseudonymous authors of the apocalypses off the moral hook (Speyer: “echte religiöse Pseudepigraphie”; Russell “corporate personality”; and so on), Hogan chooses to stress the historical consciousness of Jewish apocalypticists. In her view, pseudonyms were carefully and consciously chosen by the apocalyptic authors because these particular names provided links between the key historical periods with which the apocalypses were concerned. In particular, Noah, Moses, Daniel, Baruch, and Ezra were assigned apocalyptic visions because as traditional figures they bridged distinct historical periods and watershed events: Flood, Exodus, Babylonian Exile, and Restoration. As Hogan concludes about the real authors: “by casting Israel’s history in the form of
ex eventu
prophecy, they bring a new perspective of determinism as well as an explicit claim to divine revelation, both of which set them apart from the biblical narratives and histories.”
¹³
Once again, in any event, the authorial claim was conscious, even calculated.

A different angle taken by Michael Stone leads to a similar result.
¹⁴
Stone argues that the authority of the Jewish apocalypses did not come merely from the transmundane revelation they narrated, but also from the fact that they were written precisely to be taken as Scripture and were based, for that reason, on “ancient normative tradition.” The claim to represent this tradition was secured by the name of the figure who conveyed the revelation. But that meant the name had to be explained and justified. This is what led to occasional self-conscious discussions of how the books were preserved from hoary antiquity to the present (cf. 1 Enoch 68.1; 81.1–5; 2 Enoch 10, 13, esp. 13.75–78; and so on): “That a need was felt to account for this is revealing. It betrays, by protesting overmuch, the awesome weight of the received scriptural tradition.” These authors, in short, “were conscious in large measure of what they were doing, yet did it in dialectic with the received tradition,” even if, as Rowland and others have insisted, “part of what they were doing was validated for them by their actual experiential practice.” As
a result, pseudepigraphic claims were done “partly ingenuously and partly very consciously.”
¹⁵

In light of these studies, there seems little reason to place pseudepigraphic apocalypses in a different category from pseudepigraphic prophecies, histories, epistles, and so on. For clear and distinct reasons, a writer claimed to be a figure from the distant past,
¹⁶
with the intent of convincing his readers that what he said about himself was true. Otherwise the apocalyptic visions would not “work” as visions.

With the testamentary literature we are dealing with a different phenomenon.
¹⁷
Even though the Testaments report the first-person narratives of their respective characters (the Twelve Patriarchs, Moses, Solomon, etc.), they do not claim to be written by these people. Instead, they function like embedded speeches or faux documents in, say, ancient histories, which purport to record the actual words of a key figure but which are, in reality, invented by the orthonymous (or, in the case of the Testaments, anonymous) authors themselves.
¹⁸

There is little reason to cite every instance that has come down to us of forgery among the Christians of the first four centuries, as I will be discussing prominent cases throughout the bulk of my study. It is worth observing, however, that criticism was very much alive and well among Christian thinkers of the first four centuries. A bewildering number of writings, including many of those that eventually became part of the New Testament, were claimed by one Christian critic or another not to have been written by their alleged authors. As some examples: Augustine’s Manichaean opponent Faustus argued that the Gospels were not actually written by apostles or companions of the apostles (
Contra Faust
. 32.2). Unnamed “heretics” rejected 1 and 2 Timothy, according to Clement of Alexandria, presumably meaning that they did not agree that Paul wrote them (
Strom
. 2.11). Eusebius indicates that the authorship of James was “disputed” (meaning some rejected it), because “few of the ancients quote it” (
H.E
. 2.23.25; 3.25); so too Jerome indicates that some writers considered the book pseudonymous (
Vir. ill
. 2.2). 2 Peter was doubted (Origen in Eusebius,
H.E
. 6.25.11) or rejected (Jerome,
Vir. ill
. 1); Didymus the Blind explicitly claims it was forged.
¹⁹
Jude too was “disputed” (meaning some rejected it) according to Eusebius (
H.E
. 2.23.25)
and rejected because it quotes Enoch, according to Jerome (
Vir. ill
. 4). “Not all” considered 2 John and 3 John “genuine” according to Origen (Eusebius,
H.E
. 6.25). Revelation, as we have seen, was thought by some to be homonymous (thus Dionysius of Alexandria; Eusebius,
H.E
. 7.25); others ascribed it to a specific forger, Cerinthus (Gaius according to Eusebius,
H.E
. 3.28). Eusebius appears to reject Clement as the author of 2 Clement (
H.E
. 3.38) and labels Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Shepherd as
(
H.E
. 3.25). The Gospel of Peter was eventually declared pseudepigraphic by Serapion (
H.E
. 3.25). So too Jerome labeled the Acts of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Judgment of Peter nonauthentic (
Vir. ill
. 1). According to Eusebius, the Prophecies of Barcabbas and Barcoph were in fact invented by Basilides (
H.E
. 4.7.6–7). Paul’s letters to the Laodiceans and the Alexandrians were labeled Marcionite forgeries by the Muratorian fragment. We have seen that Epiphanius names a number of Phibionite forgeries in book 26 of his Panarion; elsewhere he rejects Gospels written in the names of James, Matthew, and other disciples as Ebionite productions (book 30). Slightly later Jerome rejects the treatise “On Fate,” allegedly by Minucius Felix, and Augustine exposes the letter of Jesus allegedly written to Peter and Paul (Augustine,
De cons. Evang
. 1.10)

Early Christian authors similarly reject a long string of forged letters and documents: Athanasius was apparently the victim of an Arian letter forged in his name (
Apol. ad Const
. 19–21). There was also a forged summons to Augustine allegedly from Victorinus (Aug.
Epist
. 59, 2), a letter of Jerome suspected by Rufinus (
Adv. Rufin
. 3. 2), and another letter allegedly by Jerome about false translations of Scripture (
Adv. Rufin
3.25; also 2.24). Jerome himself wonders if a letter of Augustine’s is actually his (
Epist
. 102,1). Augustine doubts several books assigned to Pelagius (Aug.
De gest Pelag
. 1.19) and mentions a forgery in the name of Cyprian (
Epist
. 93.38). And a series of interpolations of false teachings amid the statements of Basil make it appear that he held these aberrant views (
Epist
. 129.1; 224.1).