Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (39 page)

135
.
Lying
, p. 14.

136
. Jane S. Zembaty, “Plato’s Republic and Greek Morality on Lying,”
JHP
26 (1988): 531.

137
.
Lying
, p. 13.

138
.
Institutio Oratio
, 12.1.41. Translation of H.E. Butler in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1929).

139
.
Ethiopica
, 1.26.6. Translation mine.

140
. “Es gab verbreitete Vorstellungen, nach denen um der Wahrheit und um der wirksamen Vermittlung der Wahrheit willen Täuschung, List und Tricks ausdrücklich gestattet waren, auch wenn andere Zeitgenossen anderer Meinung waren.… Man kann also nicht weiterhin sagen, daß alle Fälscher (auch die christlichen) schlechten Gewissens gefälscht haben müssen.”
Falsche Verfasserangaben
, pp. 91–92. A comparable notion involves the “antidote” given to heal a disease, as pointed out, based on passages in Plato, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Jerome, by Petr Pokorn
ý
, “Das theologische Problem der neutestamentlichen Pseudepigraphie”: “The authors of the canonical Christian pseudepigrapha apparently felt justified in their actions primarily by virtue of the notion of fighting fire with fire” (Die Verfasser der kanonisierten christlichen Pseudepigraphen fühlten sich in ihrem Vorgehen offensichtlich vor allem durch die Thesen von dem Gegengift gerechtfertigt).

141
. For a relatively full discussion of the use of critical methods to uncover forgery in antiquity, see Speyer,
Literarische Fälschung
, pp. 112–28.

142
.
Forgers and Critics
, passim.

143
. See the earlier discussion on pp. 61–62 and below p. 140.

144
.
Natural History
, 8.82. Pliny, however, was not speaking of forgers but of werewolves!

145
. “… waren literarische Kritiklosigkeit und Leichtgläubigkeit jedweder Art weit verbreitet. Die Geschichte der literarischen Leichtgläubigkeit ist noch nicht geschrieben.” Speyer,
Literarische Fälschung
, p. 85.

146
. See the discussion in Grafton,
Forgers and Critics
, p. 19.

147
. Translation of Wilmer Wright,
Philostratus
, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1952).

148
. Translation of Christopher P. Jones,
The Life of Apollonius of Tyana
, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2005).

149
. Speyer overstates the case when he claims: “Christian criticism was dogmatically determined. Their ‘Echtheitskritik’ (assessments of authenticity) worked almost exclusively with the terms ‘orthodox’ and ‘heretical’” (“Die Kritik der Christen war also dogmatisch bestimmt. Ihre Echtheitskritik arbeitete so fast ausschließlich mit den Begriffen und ”;
Literarische Fälschung
, p. 201). There were, as we have seen, other criteria used as well. But he does have a point: much of what passed as criticism in early Christian circles was theologically driven.

150
. See pp. 90–92.

151
. Scheck,
St. Pamphilus
, p. 130.

152
. Galen appealed to this criterion to establish that
De glandibus
was not actually a work of Hippocrates; none of the earlier physicians after the days of Hippocrates mentions it. See the discussion in Speyer,
Literarische Fälschung
, p. 126.

A
s we turn now to the central focus of this study, the use of literary forgery in early Christian polemics, several points already mentioned need to be returned to prominence. The first and most obvious involves the extent of the phenomenon being considered.

The literary landscape of the first several Christian centuries is littered with falsely attributed and forged writings. Among the twenty-seven books that were later deemed Scripture, only eight are orthonymous; one of these, the book of Revelation, was admitted into the canon only because of a quirk of homonymy. The other seven all stem from the pen of one man. The remaining books are either falsely attributed to early authority figures within the church (the Gospels, Johannine epistles) or forged. A fair critical consensus holds that six of the Pauline letters and the letters of Peter were written by someone other than the apostles claimed as their authors, and that James and Jude were falsely inscribed in the names of Jesus’ brothers. A good case can be made that Hebrews is a non-pseudepigraphic forgery, with the hints in the closing meant to indicate that it was written by Paul, even though his name is not attached to it. In what follows I will argue that Acts and 1 John are also best seen as non-pseudepigraphic forgeries, as they too make false authorial claims without naming a specific author.

Outside the New Testament false attributions continue, in such works as 1 Clement and Barnabas, pseudo-Justin
Cohortatio ad Graecos, De monarchia
, and
Oratio ad Graecos
, and pseudo-Tertullian
Adversus omnes haereses
. Forgeries of apocryphal works continue apace throughout the second and third centuries, and indeed on into and through the Middle Ages, with Gospels assigned to such figures as James, Thomas, Matthew, Philip, and Nicodemus, epistles allegedly written, again, by Paul (Laodiceans, Alexandrians, correspondence with Seneca) and Peter (epistula Petri), and apocalypses as well in the names of Peter and Paul. Starting in the third century, “church orders” begin to appear, not merely claiming
to convey the teachings of the apostles, as with the Didache, but actually produced, falsely, in their names, as in the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Constitutions. Eventually writings appear in the names of subapostolic authorities, such as the pseudo-Ignatian letters and the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies
and
Recognitions
, as well as in the names of respected authorities from within the orthodox community, writings allegedly by Basil, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, many of them produced within the alleged authors’ own lifetimes.

We are dealing with a large and complex phenomenon. In the analyses that follow I will be considering some fifty instances of forgery from the first four Christian centuries. How many were actually produced at the time is anyone’s guess.

It will be difficult to make sweeping generalities about these forged productions as an undifferentiated group. They were written at different times, in different places, by different authors, for different purposes. But as I will be limiting myself to forgeries that appear to have been generated out of polemical interests, one feature does appear to bind them together. Their authors assumed false names for one chief end: to provide for their views an authority that otherwise would have proved difficult to obtain had they written anonymously or in their own names. These were authors in the throes of controversy, eager to establish their views as both legitimate and authorized. To that end they employed means widely regarded throughout their environment as illegitimate and unauthorized.

Throughout our period orthodox writers regularly and roundly accused heretics of forging documents. We find the charge in our earliest surviving heresiologist, Irenaeus, who, for example, accuses the Cainites of making use of a forged Gospel of Judas Iscariot; at about the same time the Muratorian Fragment denigrates as Marcionite forgeries the “Pauline” letters to the Laodiceans and Alexandrians; and again, from roughly the same time, Serapion of Antioch pronounces the Gospel of Peter pseudepigraphic. At the end of our period Epiphanius maligns numerous forgeries of the heretics, including the seven books of Seth and the Gospel of Eve, not to mention that lascivious Greater Questions of Mary, a book that, as I argued in Chapter One, may have been his very own invention, possibly a case of casting a stone in a glass house.

In some instances one finds warnings not to be led astray by forged documents precisely in documents that are themselves forged. The charge is found at the very beginning of our period in the canonical work of 2 Thessalonians, which warns its readers not to be misled by a letter allegedly—but not actually—written by Paul. At the end of our period it is found in the Apostolic Constitutions, which warns its readers, in the names of the earthly apostles of Jesus, not to read writings falsely produced in the names of the earthly apostles of Jesus. All the Christian forgeries that warn readers to avoid forgeries are ultimately concerned with “false teachings,” in an environment when knowing the “truth” was essential for salvation. This, of course, is one of the disturbing ironies of the early Christian tradition, that those invested in establishing and promoting the truth often did so by lying—in this case by lying about their true identities. They appear to have done so in order to deceive their readers into believing that they were authority
figures who could, by their elevated status, establish the contours of the true faith. In short, they promulgated a falsehood in order to promote their understanding of the truth.

Sometimes the forged attacks on “false” teachings appear more subtly, in the phenomenon I am calling “counterforgery.” To a certain extent every forgery that counters the views of another person, group, or writing is a counterforgery, and sometimes the term is used by scholars in this weaker sense. More poignantly, sometimes a forgery is used precisely to counter the views set forth in another work that is itself a forgery. It is in this stronger sense that I will predominantly be using the term here. It is not always the case that the forgery being opposed is recognized and named as a forgery—as does happen, however, in both 2 Thessalonians and the Apostolic Constitutions. More commonly it is impossible to know whether the forger realizes that the views under attack are in fact represented in a forged document; these, then, would be unwitting cases of fighting fire with fire.

Internecine conflicts were not the only polemical contexts within which the Christian writers of the first four centuries worked. Christians were embattled on several fronts at once; on the outside were the “unbelieving” Jews and the hostile pagans. Orthonymous writings of the so-called church Fathers attacked these Others and defended the true faith throughout the period; but so too did forged documents, believed by insiders to convey especial authority in view of their authorial claims. In many instances these forged attacks and apologiae served several purposes at once, intramural and extramural. And so it is important yet again to stress the potential multifunctionality of our surviving texts. Like many (most?) writings, Christian forgeries could and did serve a variety of purposes at one and the same time. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas polemicizes against apocalyptic expectations of other Christian teachers, against Judaism and Judaizing, and against theologies that stress the reality and importance of the flesh. It did not serve a solitary purpose. A writing such as the Protevangelium Jacobi serves nonpolemical ends of entertainment and of filling in lacunae from the stories of Mary and Jesus, but also apologetic aims in answering the charges against the savior and his mother by a pagan critic such as Celsus. It is not important to my study that the polemical functions of this or that forgery be seen as the one and only purpose of the work. On a practical level, the multifunctionality of several of these texts means that they will be discussed under more than one rubric.

The rubrics that I have devised are topical, guided to some extent by a loosely chronological logic. The earliest orthonymous Christian writings are concerned to no small extent with questions of eschatology. 1 Thessalonians, for example, is written, at least in part, to comfort those whose expectations of an imminent appearance of the Lord from heaven had been frustrated by the passage of time, and who were, as a result, concerned over the fate of those who had died in the interim. 1 Corinthians is written, again in part, to correct those within the community with an overly realized eschatology that claimed the benefits of the resurrected existence were already available and enjoyed in the present age, with little or nothing to expect in a cataclysmic break with the present in the future. Given
this feature of early authentic writings, it is no surprise that our earliest surviving forgeries too deal with issues of eschatology—most obviously 2 Thessalonians but also, I will argue, Colossians and Ephesians (Chapter Seven). It is of some interest that the range of eschatological views that result through juxtaposition of the various perspectives found in these writings were all deemed worthy of hearing, in no small part because of the apostolic authority that lay behind them. And so, all of them were eventually accepted as canonical views, resulting in the paradoxical eschatology of “already and not yet.” From early days, followers of Jesus were entrenched in theologies of paradox, later to come to fruition in complex Christological (“fully divine and fully human”) and Trinitarian (“three persons but one God”) views.

The eschatological questions did not cease with the passing of the first Christian generation, of course, and so later forged writings continued to take them on, both within the canon (2 Timothy; 2 Peter) and outside (Gospel of Thomas; Chapter Eight). Paul, the alleged author of most of these sundry works, was himself a debated topic from early days, as is evident from his own writings, such as the Corinthian correspondence and the letter to the Galatians. And so we find a number of early forgeries that are concerned either to promote or to attack Paul’s authority, for example, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Acts (which I will argue, as I’ve mentioned, is a non-pseudepigraphic forgery) on one side of the issue (Chapter Nine), and James, Jude, the Epistula Petri, and the Pseudo-Clementine
Homilies
on the other (Chapter Ten). A closely related problem, best known precisely from the Pauline letters, has to do with the status of Jews and, relatedly, Jewish Christianity; these issues too were dealt with in polemical forgeries (including those discussed in Chapter Ten), such as the Gospel of Peter, the Epistula Clementis, the Didascalia, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Abgar Correspondence, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and other writings of the Pilate cycle (Chapter Eleven).