Forgery and Counterforgery: Do Forgeries Exist in Our New Testament?

What does ChatBot AI have to say about who wrote the New Testament? This is the second post in a multi-part series reviewing Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery.

Nowhere does the seriousness of the claims of forgery in the New Testament become so problematic as when it comes to the letters associated with the Apostle Paul. Aside from the writings attributed to Luke, Paul is our most prolific author in the New Testament, making up 23.5% in terms of total word count. We have explicit statements in thirteen of our New Testament books which either ascribe the writing of these letters to the Apostle Paul alone, or in a few other explicit cases, Paul along with a fellow companion, such as with Timothy in the case of Colossians.

However, not every scholar agrees that Paul wrote all thirteen of these letters. Unless you take a religion class at a secular college or university, or spend much time on social media, you might not know about this. However, we can always ask an artificial intelligence bot, like ChatGPT, to give us a current summary of the scholarly debate. If I type in “Did Paul write all 13 letters attributed to him in the New Testament?,” here is a typical answer you will get:

There is some scholarly debate over whether the Apostle Paul wrote all 13 of the letters attributed to him in the New Testament. While traditionally these letters are attributed to Paul, some scholars have raised questions about the authorship of a few of them. The letters that are generally considered to be undisputed or securely attributed to Paul are:

• • Romans
  • 1 Corinthians
  • 2 Corinthians
  • Galatians
  • Philippians
  • Philemon
  • 1 Thessalonians

These letters are widely accepted as authentic Pauline writings. However, there is more debate about the authorship of the following letters:

• • Ephesians
  • Colossians
  • 2 Thessalonians
  • 1 Timothy
  • 2 Timothy
  • Titus

Some scholars believe that these letters may have been written by followers of Paul or in his tradition, but not necessarily by Paul himself. The reasons for this debate include differences in writing style, vocabulary, and theological emphasis between the undisputed and disputed letters.

Ultimately, the question of authorship may not have a definitive answer, and opinions on this matter can vary among scholars. It’s important to note that these debates do not diminish the religious significance of these letters in the Christian tradition, but they are a subject of scholarly inquiry and discussion.

Well, there you go. Artificial intelligence speaks!

Bart Ehrman would fit in that category of a scholar who seriously questions the authenticity of those six letters mentioned last. Ehrman unashamedly describes all six of those letters as “forgeries.” That is a pretty serious claim. Is there a defensible, historically orthodox answer to this?

Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics argues that up to 70% of the New Testament is made up of actually forged documents. How well do the claims of Bart Ehrman stand up to scrutiny?

Case Study:  Is 2 Thessalonians a Forgery??

It would take too much space to address each and every New Testament document, but a reasonably careful look at a letter like 2 Thessalonians is enough to demonstrate how Ehrman’s presuppositional posture informs his judgments as to the authenticity or inauthenticity of various New Testaments letters. Then we can briefly survey how Erhman’s approach to 2 Thessalonians applies to other New Testament documents.

While not all critical scholars agree with Bart Ehrman’s views of 2 Thessalonians, Ehrman’s skepticism about the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians is fairly representative of the mainstream view among critical New Testament scholars, so it is worth engaging with his arguments. As Erhman argues, there is no one single argument which demonstrates conclusively that 2 Thessalonians is a forgery, or any other New Testament work. Rather, there is a cumulative case to be made, which takes into consideration numerous points of data with respect to the style, vocabulary and content which inform the verdict that such a work should be considered as a forgery.¹

Ehrman devotes considerable attention to differences in style and vocabulary between 2 Thessalonians and the undisputed letters of Paul. However, as noted from the first blog post, such differences can be explained by considering the influences into the text from an authorized secretary; known among scholars as an amanuensis.

Ehrman dismisses this objection as follows: “This secretary hypothesis has become a panacea for all things authorially dubious.” Nevertheless, after showing the stylistic differences between 2 Thessalonians and the undisputed letters, Ehrman later concedes that “in isolation this kind of stylistic demonstration can carry little weight. Authors can and do vary their style, and statistical models are constantly challenged on grounds related both to the statistics and the models.” Ehrman then qualifies his argument by noting the similarities between 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians, and then contrasts certain vocabulary differences found in 2 Thessalonians, which in his view suggests the work of a forger. For example, Paul uses the phrase “eternal destruction” only once to speak of the fated of the wicked, in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, never using that phrase in 1 Thessalonians, much less any of his other writings.²

Yet the clincher for Ehrman is neither style nor vocabulary, but rather, theological content. “Remaining doubts [about the 2 Thessalonians forgery thesis] can be removed by the most complex of the three main arguments against Pauline authorship, the theology of the letter.” The theological content issue is really the heart of Ehrman’s argument, and should therefore receive the most attention. For it is the aggregate of stylistic issues, vocabulary issues, and most importantly, the theological content issues together which undergird the forgery claim associated with disputed books within the New Testament (Ehrman, pp. 161-162, 218-22).

1 Thessalonians today is overwhelmingly considered today as having been authentically written by the Apostle Paul. One of the predominant themes in 1 Thessalonians is the imminent expectation of the “End Times,” primarily associated with Jesus’ Second Coming. It is in 1 Thessalonians where we find the famous “Rapture” passage of the New Testament, a topic of many Christian books and movies, such as Timothy LaHaye’s Left Behind series. The message is quite direct: Jesus is coming back and coming back soon, and he could come at any moment, like a thief in the night.

2 Thessalonians, on the other hand, acknowledges that there is some sort of delay associated with the Second Coming. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2, the author is warning the Thessalonians not to listen to anyone claiming that the Second Coming has already arrived. The “End Times” are still approaching, but certain events must take place before such End Times events completely unfold. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, the End Times will not fully arrive until after “the rebellion comes” and “the man of lawlessness is revealed.”

Bart Ehrman accentuates this theological difference between the two letters to the Thessalonians. One letter suggests that Jesus’ return could happen at any moment, while the other suggests that Jesus’ return will not happen right away. This difference for Ehrman constitutes a contradiction which can not be reconciled between the two letters, thus indicating that the two letters could not have been written by the same author.

Erhman’s thesis is even more intriguing in that he describes 2 Thessalonians not only as a forgery, but also as a “counterforgery.” The pseudonymous author of 2 Thessalonians was fearful that another forged letter, pretending to be from Paul, was circulating among the believers (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2). In order to counter that forgery, the pseudonymous author of 2 Thessalonians also claiming to be Paul wrote this counterforgery in order to press back against claims that the “day of the Lord has come” (Ehrman, p. 170). The reasoning is complex, but it is certainly provocative.

As noted in the first blog post in this series, what makes Ehrman’s judgment so pronounced is his adoption of the (in)famous thesis popularized by the early 20th century German scholar and progressive Christian, Albert Schweitzer, namely that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. As elucidated in his classic work, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer argued that Jesus expected that a great apocalyptic end-time event, the “Day of the Lord,’ will happen within the lifetime of his disciples. However, when the expected eschaton failed to arrive in the 1st century of the Christian movement, the cognitive dissonance this delay generated within the Christian movement forced the church to rethink the meaning of Jesus’ apocalyptic expectation. If this thesis were correct in the most contradictory sense, then this would indicate that 2 Thessalonians was most probably written by a forger, claiming to be Paul, likely sometime long after Paul’s death, urging other Christians not to get too upset about the delay associated with Jesus’ return.³

The problem with Schweitzer’s thesis is that it assumes that the delay of the great apocalyptic event, the “Day of the Lord,” was the result of some type of failure on Jesus’ part, as opposed to a biblical interpretation difficulty within the Christian community. As other scholars have argued, it is quite possible that there were indeed legitimate reasons for the delay of the Second Coming. The fact that 1 Thessalonians does not mention such factors associated with a delay, whereas 2 Thessalonians does, need not imply a contradiction between the two letters. In other words, scholars like Ehrman who reject 2 Thessalonians as a forgery do so by assuming the differences in theology between 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians to be irreconcilable contradictions. However, such differences can be reasonably resolved without resorting to an appeal to contradictory logic.

Albert Schweitzer, the famed early 20th century biblical scholar turned medical missionary to Africa, proposed the idea that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, who predicted the coming end of the world that did not come within the 1st century C.E. Schweitzer’s view helps to inform Bart Ehrman’s case for forgeries in the New Testament.

Ephesians and Colossians: Are They Forgeries, Too?: A Sample of the Evidence

What about letters like Ephesians and Colossians? Here again is Bart Ehrman in a short YouTube clip explaining the problem with Ephesians:

As with 2 Thessalonians, very similar arguments could be made to suggest that both Ephesians and Colossians were also forgeries, written by those writing in the name of Paul, without any authorization by Paul. In both letters, Erhman makes the case that forger(s) of the letter had in their mind to use Paul’s authority (or rather “misuse” it) in order to attack certain opponents. However, when analyzing such arguments it becomes clear that the evidence for contradictions between both Ephesians and Colossians and Paul’s “undisputed” letters, like Romans and the Corinthian correspondence, suffer from the same type of problems that plague Erhman’s arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians.

Take for example, one of the most controversial verses in Colossians: Colossians 1:24.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (ESV)⁴

Erhman offers his argument regarding this verse this way: “This author speaks famously of ‘filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ for the sake of the church (1:24), a shocking image for Paul; were Christ’s sufferings in some way inadequate and needed to be completed?” Ehrman contends that the pseudo-Pauline author of Colossians has “a much lower view of the efficacy of his death (1:24)” than the Paul we find in the authentic, undisputed letters  (Erhman, p. 177).

Granted, the verse is a difficult one to interpret. This verse was used by medieval Western interpreters to develop the doctrine of the treasury of merit, part of the concept of the church dispensing grace in terms of offering indulgences for now-dead believers who experience the trials of purgatory. Nevertheless, even Roman Catholic interpreters today acknowledge that Colossians 1:24 in no way diminishes the final, finished work of Christ on the cross. Furthermore, the Greek word for “afflictions” in this verse is never used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe Christ’s work on the cross. Instead, the verse is fully consistent with the understanding that Paul, along with the rest of the Christian church, continue to share in the sufferings of Christ, in the sense that the church is Christ’s body, as further fulfillment of Jesus’ messianic ministry. Paul, along with the rest of the church, shares not in the saving work of Christ on the cross which is already finished, but rather Paul and the rest of the church share in the outcome of Christ’s finished work on the cross, suffering for the sake of the Gospel.⁵

What About 1 Peter? A Forgery of the Writings of Peter?

Are there forgeries among letters and other New Testament documents not associated with Pauline authorship?

There are stronger points of evidence which Ehrman brings to bear in making his forgery claims, particularly when it comes to historical issues. But a closer examination even of these arguments show that the arguments are not as strong as he portrays them.  For example, as a part of making the cumulative case that 1 Peter was not written by Peter, Ehrman (along with other like-minded scholars) draws attention to 1 Peter 5:13, where Peter makes a reference to “Babylon,” which most commentators equate with Rome. Ancient Babylon had destroyed Solomon’s Temple, the first temple, after a deadly siege of Jerusalem, and conquering of Jewish lands, six centuries before:

Rome was thought of as (the new) Babylon because it too destroyed Jerusalem and, especially, the Temple. In other words, it is the catastrophe of 70 ce, in comparison with 586 bce, that makes the identification both obvious and palpable……. 1 Peter, therefore, could not have been written prior to 70 ce and, as a result, could not have been written by Peter, who apparently died years earlier.⁶

At first glance, the argument appears to be formidable. We have no documentation of anyone else equating Rome with “Babylon” until after the Jewish Wars had ended with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The traditional view, namely that Peter was martyred in Rome, makes sense if this was under the Christian persecution inflicted by Nero, who died in the summer of 68 C.E. This would place Peter’s death sometime in the mid-60s, before the destruction of Jerusalem. If indeed Ehrman is correct, and the reference to “Babylon” in 1 Peter 5:13 is an anachronism, it would significantly raise the prospects of 1 Peter being a forgery.

However, the Jewish Wars had begun in 66 C.E.  In 67 C.E., Vespasian conquered Galilee. Vespasian eventually handed off the leadership of the Roman campaign against the Jews to his son, Titus. In responding to the Jewish uprising in Judea, the Vespasian-Titus campaign was making their way towards Jerusalem from the north with a sizable army. This might have sounded eerily reminiscent of the Babylonian conquest of Hebrew lands centuries earlier. It should not be surprising to think that the news might have reached Rome in time for Peter to compose his letter, within a year shortly before his death, under the rule of Nero. The impending thought of the Temple’s eventual destruction would not have been very far from people’s minds. Therefore, to suggest that 1 Peter “could not have been written prior to 70 ce” by Peter himself is simply making a claim beyond which the actual facts reasonably demand.⁷

Advocates of Ehrman’s approach to forgeries in the New Testament would probably say that the faith commitment of evangelical scholars who defend authenticity of all of Paul’s letters in our New Testament prejudges the data, forcing such evangelical scholars  to conclude that they must dismiss every point of evidence being presented in favor of Erhman’s argument, in order to preserve the belief in the full inspiration of Scripture. Ehrman’s charge is that such conservative evangelical scholars are “doing theology, not history” (Ehrman, p. 212 footnote).

However, the same type of prejudice could be levied against anyone favoring Ehrman’s line of thinking. The fact of the matter is that all scholarly approaches to such historical matters, including the authenticity of New Testament documents, are shaped by the biases of the scholar making the argument. Whether secular or believing, scholars can examine the same points of evidence and come to different conclusions, based on a number of factors, typically by those presuppositions which the scholar brings to the table.

Considering the Book of Acts: A Particular Kind of Forgery…. Or Not??

For example, the Book of Acts is often regarded by certain scholars as being historically suspect because the narrative in Acts conflicts with what we find in the authentic letters of Paul. The controversy in Galatians over Paul’s understanding of the Gospel regarding the reception of Gentiles into the Christian community drives the argument against the historicity of Acts. For Paul in Galatians, circumcision and Jewish adherence to their food laws should not be a barrier for accepting Gentile believers fully into the Christian community, something that certain church leaders in Jerusalem resisted. In Galatians 2:11-12, Paul confronted Peter to his face for having denied table fellowship with Gentile Christians, after having previously accepted them, all out of Peter’s fear of the circumcision party. However, in the Book of Acts we see relatively little tension between Paul and Peter. At the risk of sounding overly flippant to make the point, Acts almost gives the impression of a virtual love-fest between Paul and Peter, with the two primary apostles getting along surprisingly well with one another.

Ehrman contends that the author of Luke/Acts, whom he judges can not be Luke, was unfamiliar with Paul’s letters. This would explain why the events in Paul’s life in Acts vary somewhat with what Paul himself writes about in his own letters (Ehrman, p. 281). For example, Galatians tells us that after the Damascus road experience, Paul only visited Jerusalem twice, leading up to the Jerusalem council meeting described in Acts 15, whereas Acts tells the reader of possibly three visits by Paul to Jerusalem, the last one being the Acts 15 council.⁸

However, what Ehrman neglects is the possibility that Luke knew full well what Paul wrote. Rather, Luke chose to employ certain compositional devices, common in Greco-Roman literature which best matches the genre of the Book of Acts, where Luke would make particular theological points, thereby not following a strict chronology on purpose. We could easily imagine that if Luke was writing shortly after Paul’s arrival to Rome, by way of Paul’s imprisoned escort from Jerusalem, Luke might have been aware that certain believers were concerned about an on-going rift between Paul and Peter. In order to demonstrate that the rift between Paul and Peter, as expressed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, had been healed, Luke might have purposely crafted his historical narrative in Acts to emphasize the unity between Paul and Peter.

We need not deny that there is some difference between how the Paul-Peter relationship is portrayed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians and Luke’s presentation of Paul and Peter in Acts. Nevertheless, as a number of scholars tend to do, in view of the presuppositional posture of the Walter Bauer thesis (mentioned in the first blog post in this series), these differences are accentuated to the point of being irreconcilable with one another. The Bauer thesis contends that irreconcilable diversity in theological thought characterized the earliest followers of the post-resurrection Jesus. Bart Ehrman is certainly one scholar among others who sees the New Testament as abounding in such internal contradictions.

Do we have forgeries in our New Testament?  Veracity investigates the claims.

2 Peter:  Yet Another Forgery, According to Bart Ehrman??

Ehrman also argues that a letter such as 2 Peter was a forgery written to make Peter sound more Pauline than he really was. To Ehrman, the author of 2 Peter writes glowingly of the letters of Paul as “Scripture” (2 Peter 3:15-16), so as to smooth over the differences between Peter and Paul. Likewise in Acts, Ehrman sees an attempt to rewrite the history of the early Christian movement in yet a more thorough attempt to obscure the rift between Peter and Paul. Bart Ehrman identifies the themes of Acts like this:

…..the suffering of the Christians at the hands of antagonistic outsiders and the far-flung unity of the church, seen in particular in the harmony between Paul, the ultimate hero of the account, and the Jerusalem apostles, especially Peter, who dominate the action in the first third of the narrative. The latter theme begins to appear almost immediately after Paul’s conversion in chapter 9. After leaving Damascus, he heads directly to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles and, with Barnabas’s assistance, becomes their close associate (Acts 9:26–29). It is in the next chapter that the law-free Gospel for the gentiles is revealed in a vision—not to Paul, but to Peter, who acts on his new knowledge and converts gentiles in the Cornelius episode. It is Peter, then, who announces to the Jerusalem apostles that gentiles have received the spirit and been “given repentance unto life” (11:18). Paul’s views are not controversial in this book. They are the views of the apostles before him, who act out their convictions of the law- free Gospel to the gentiles even before he is on the mission field, and who, most famously, endorse his own missionary activities at the climactic Jerusalem conference in chapter 15. Here Paul scarcely needs to defend himself, as Peter, Barnabas, and James all unite in affirming his mission to the gentiles in the most emphatic terms (Erhman, p. 263).

In a future blog post in this series, we will return to 2 Peter, but for now it is sufficient to consider whether the Book of Acts is really designed to smooth over the differences between Peter and Paul.

More on the Supposed Galatians/Acts Contradictions

In contrast, Paul’s letter to the Galatians does not have Peter and Paul sitting around the fire singing kumbaya, for Ehrman. Instead, Paul’s rebuke against Peter is stinging and irreconcilable in Galatians. But is Acts in such an irreconcilable state with respect to Galatians? Luke in Acts might have indeed sought to emphasize the unity of Paul and Peter, but it need not be understood that Luke rewrote history, thus distorting the actual state of affairs between Paul and Peter. It can surely be argued that Paul and Peter did have a falling out at one point, but this need not rule out the idea of an ultimate reconciliation between Paul and Peter.

Luke could easily have written about the visit of Paul to Jerusalem in Acts 9:26-29, not in an attempt to contradict the narrative which Paul presents in Galatians. Instead, it is quite plausible that Luke employs a compositional device, consistent with other similar literature within the Greco-Roman genre of bios, to write of Paul’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 9:26-29 with Paul’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11:27-30 as the same event, but told in manner to serve a more rhetorical purpose. Acts 9:26-29 could be like a “flash forward” to the visit described in Acts 11:27-30. While we can not be completely sure about this, Luke could be rhetorically signaling to the reader that Paul was more in sync with the Jerusalem apostles than what one gets from the general perspective gathered from Galatians, where Paul was more at odds with Peter. Time had surely passed long enough after Galatians had been written and before Acts was written to allow for the two great apostles to mend their differences.⁹

All of this is presented to show that while Bart Ehrman goes to great lengths to argue for the presence of forgery in the New Testament, there are other ways of evaluating the data. The data can be understood in a way which does not require one to conclude that 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, or Acts must have been forgeries. However, when it comes to the three pastoral letters, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, Bart Ehrman can make a stronger case for forgery, which will require another separate blog post to look at, unpack, and respond.

Notes:

^{1. A classic 20th century reference work which proposes much of the same arguments presented by Bart Ehrman in Forgery and Counterforgery is Werner Georg Kümmel’s Introduction to the New Testament, 1973, translated by Howard Clark Kee, 1975. Kümmel’s work was a standard textbook used in mainline seminaries in the 20th century, and in evangelical seminaries that sought to engage with critical studies. Like Ehrman, Kümmel dismisses numerous letters of Paul as being inauthentic. However, in contrast to Ehrman, Kümmel accepts 2 Thessalonians and Colossians as authentic. Consider this statement from Kümmel  in contrast to what Ehrman says about 2 Thessalonians: “Arguments against the authenticity based on the difference of the expectation of the End in 1 and II Thess cannot be regard as valid… There is nothing surprising about the alleged tension between 1 Thess 5:2, where the parousia is expected to come like a thief in the night, and II Thess 2:3ff, where the anticipatory signs must first occur (apostasy, disclosure of the great transgressor…..); it must be recalled that both conceptions– the End is coming suddenly, and it has historical antecedents — occur together in the apocalyptic of Judaism and early Christianity, and lie within the same perspective” ( Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 265-266.). So while the rough critical consensus suggests that only 7 out of Paul’s 13 letters are authentic, it is crucial to note that not all critical scholars make the exact same judgments. Kümmel had a German Jewish background, which he managed to hide from the Nazis, though he might be best considered to be a messianic Jewish Christian, albeit a rather progressive one. I read Kümmel’s work at Fuller Seminary in the early 1990s as an engagement into the world of critical scholarship, offering a critique without endorsing it. ↩}

^{2. Ehrman, pp. 161-162. While the vocabulary of “eternal destruction” is unique to 2 Thessalonians, Paul uses other compatible terminology in his other letters to address the destiny of the lost. I am largely ignoring an engagement with Ehrman’s ideas about style and vocabulary, as any competent evangelical study Bible, such as the one’s for the English Standard Version, the New International Version, and the Christian Standard Bible, will cover these ideas sufficiently. What is often lacking in most evangelical study Bibles is an effective, detailed engagement with issues surrounding theological content. ↩}

^{3. See review of Bart Ehrman, Heaven and Hell, in a previous blog post on Veracity.  The main thrust of Ehrman’s argument in Heaven and Hell is that the doctrine of eternal conscious torment was devised by early church leaders as a theological means of reinterpreting the supposed failure of the parousia (Greek term normally associated with Jesus’ Second Coming) to materialize within the first generation of Jesus’ followers. Evangelical advocates of the doctrine of conditional immortality might find some sympathy with Ehrman’s reading of the New Testament, but Ehrman’s point is much stronger, arguing that much of the concept of hell, whether it be evangelical understandings of conditional immortality or conscious eternal torment do not ultimately go back to the teachings of the historical Jesus.  ↩}

^{4. A critique of Ehrman’s views on Ephesians and Colossians as forgeries was already covered by an earlier Veracity blog post on Ephesians and Colossians and the claim of non-Pauline authorship. ↩}

^{5. See Veracity blog post on the treasury of merit Roman Catholic doctrine and Colossians 1:24. See also John Piper’s exegesis of the verse, in his Look at the Book YouTube series. Phil Thompson at the Gospel Coalition offers another perspective ↩}

^{6. See Ehrman, p. 241-242. Ehrman in this passage is relying on the argumentation provided by Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, “Babylon als Deckname für Rom. und die Datierung des 1 Petrusbriefes,” in Henning Graf Reventlow, ed., Gottes Wort und Gottes Land (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965), pp. 67–77. ↩}

^{7. See also Veracity blog post on 2 Peter. In my view, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was a type of “Second Coming” event meant to prefigure the future anti-type, or real Second Coming event that has yet to materialize in earthly history. This typological understanding of Jesus’ prophecy is perfectly consistent with Jewish interpretation of Old Testament prophecy common during the Second Temple period. ↩}

^{8. See blog post regarding Paul’s travels out of Thessalonica. Erhman’s claim that the author of Luke/Acts was unfamiliar with Paul’s letters is even more puzzling when compared to claims of other, more radical scholars, who place the authorship of Luke/Acts well into the 2nd century. It is difficult to conceive how a 2nd century author of Luke/Acts would be so ignorant of Paul’s writings, as there were certainly collections of Paul’s writings circulating within the early church community of the early 2nd century.    ↩}

^{9. See Veracity blog post on different ways the narrative of Galatians can be harmonized with the narrative in Acts.  See and listen to my critique of the Walter Bauer thesis, in an episode of the Chapel Institute podcast.  ↩}