Is it possible for a letter to be written under the name of a famous person, sometime after the death of that famous person, and yet it NOT be considered a forgery? In this fourth post in our Veracity blog series reviewing Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery, we explore the concept of “allonymity” as a benign alternative to “forgery” to describe certain pseudonymous writings within the New Testament. If you think this is a mouthful of “intellectual-speak,” I will try to unpack all of this here.
In previous posts in this series, we have explored the controversy over “forgeries” in the New Testament in an introductory manner. Secondly, we have examined more closely the kind of arguments Bart Ehrman uses to identify the existence of “forgeries” within the New Testament. Thirdly, we looked at the special case of the pastoral letters; 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, which are Pauline letters in the New Testament that are often deemed as inauthentic by scholars like Ehrman. In this post, we consider one particular alternative to the pejorative use of the term “forgery” to describe a pseudonymous New Testament document.
One of my New Testament professors at Fuller Theological Seminary, Donald Hagner, now emeritus, has made a positive case for a category of pseudonymous writing, one that lacks the negative stigma associated with the more pejorative term of “forgery.” In his The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction, Donald Hagner accepts a number of arguments presented by those like Bart Ehrman, who suggest that certain New Testament writings were not actually written by the ascribed author. However, in contrast to Ehrman, Hagner suggests that such examples of pseudonymity in the New Testament are not deceptive in character. Therefore, we should treat such New Testament writings more fairly and not consider them to be forgeries.1
Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics argues that up to 70% of the New Testament writers are actually forged documents. How well do the claims of Bart Ehrman stand up to scrutiny?
A Benign Alternative to “Forgery” to Describe Certain Pseudonymous Writings?
Donald Hagner acknowledges the despised practice of morally culpable forgeries, which the church rightly rejected when considering possible works to be included in the New Testament:
The early church rejected pseudonymous writings that were late and had no real connection with the persons under whose names they were written. These they rightly classified as forgeries and as morally culpable. Thus Eusebius records that at the end of the second century Serapion, bishop of Antioch, rejected The Gospel of Peter with these words: “For our part, brethren, we receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ, but the writings which falsely bear their names we reject, as men of experience knowing that such were not handed down to us” (Hist. eccl. 6.12.3, trans. Oulton). Another example usually cited in this connection concerns the elder who “out of love for Paul” wrote the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which included a letter called “3 Corinthians,” and who was deposed from his office for having done (Hagner, p.430).
In other words, there were genuinely forged documents which some mistakenly believed to have been authentic, but the most competent of the early church fathers recognized such writings to be inauthentic, and rightly rejected their inclusion within the New Testament. However, Donald Hagner notes that there are also cases in ancient Greco-Roman literature where a well-known author would grant permission for an associate or disciple to write something like a letter in the name of the well-known author. Such writings fit within the positive category of “allonymity,” as opposed to having a negatively pseudonymous character to them.
Examples of this practice can be seen from Cicero in the first century BC: “If there is anyone to whom you think a letter ought to be sent in my name, please write one and see that it is sent” (Hagner, p. 429).
Hagner further suggests this:
In order to avoid the idea of deceit, Howard Marshall has coined the words “allonymity” and “allepigraphy,” in which the prefix pseudos (“false”) is replaced by allos (“other”), which “will refer more positively to the activity of writing in another person’s name without intent to deceive.” (Hagner, p. 431).
In defense of this concept of “allonymity,” Hagner continues:
It seems advisable, therefore, to defuse the issue of pseudonymity for those who are nervous about it. There is nothing crucial at stake here for those who, like myself, treasure the NT as Scripture. The acceptance of this kind of pseudonymity, based on actual association with and dependence on Paul or other Apostles, should in no way threaten the canonical authority of these documents. As Tertullian says, although admittedly in a different connection, “It is permissible for the works which disciples published to be regarded as belonging to their masters” (Marc. 4.5.4, trans. Evans). (Hagner, p. 431).
Bart Ehrman, in turn, acknowledges the evidence from Cicero that Hagner cites. However, Ehrman argues that we have no evidence of letters actually being written in an “allonymous” manner with respect to Cicero. In effect, Ehrman dismisses Hagner’s argument as a case of “wishful thinking.” (Ehrman, p. 221ff)
….what might we conclude about the evidence for the secretary hypothesis put forth by commentators wanting to affirm the authenticity of the Deutero-Pauline or Petrine letters of the New Testament? It is thin at best, almost nonexistent. (Ehrman, p. 222)
But is this indeed merely a case of “wishful thinking” as Ehrman suggests? For how would one go about determining if a letter written by an associate or secretary of Cicero, in the name of Cicero, could actually be discovered? Indeed, if a secretary could mimic the style and vocabulary of the author, how could one effectively know the difference, particularly if the pseudonymous author was intimately familiar with the thought and/or written work of his mentor/teacher?
U.S. Presidents typically use speech writers, but if a speech writer does their job well enough, it might be hard to tell the difference between something actually composed by the President and the speech writer. Aside from certain kinds of physical evidence, such as handwriting style, which is completely lost to us from the first century, the best effective argument for discovering forgery would be the presence of content which does not accurately reflect the views of the author being imitated, along with substantial differences in literary style and vocabulary.
However, Bart Ehrman makes great use of what he sees as theological content differences between authentic New Testament documents (such as Galatians) versus what he calls out as “forgeries” (such as 1 Timothy). But if a pseudonymous author, operating under authorized permission, can effectively replicate the thoughts of the ascribed author, it would be difficult to identify such a work as being a forgery.
Donald Hagner’s The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction is a survey by a veteran moderately conservative evangelical scholar, which addresses many of the concerns raised by Bart Ehrman about the possible existence of forgeries in our New Testament. A highly recommended treatment of the issues which does not shy away from historical criticism.
Allonymity Versus Forgery
This is the key distinction to be made between what might be considered as “benign” pseudonymity versus outright “forgeries.” The former category acknowledges that certain elements of style and vocabulary would indicate that another writer was heavily involved in the actual transcribing of the letter, while noting that the actual theological content is consistent with the mind and thought of the assigned author. No polemical motive can be found to try to twist the meaning of the letter to go against the mind and thought of the assigned, well-known author. However, in the latter category, a polemical motive can be identified, where the fame and stature of the assigned author is misused in order to advance the theological agenda of the pseudonymous author. This latter category would match up with Bart Ehrman’s definition of “forgery,” whereas the former would not.
What students of the New Testament should be wary of are attempts to avoid the label of “forgery,” while simultaneously arguing the presence of a polemical agenda. Bart Ehrman is correct to call out other scholars for being duplicitous in this respect. On the other hand, we should also avoid the tendency to try to find such a polemical agenda in New Testament writings, where none actually exists. We can acknowledge certain tensions between certain New Testament writings, with certain nuances of emphasis, without advancing a fully polemical thesis.
Paul’s message of the centrality of faith in his letters versus James’ emphasis on the necessity of works in his letter comes to mind as a well-known example. Clearly, there is a tension here, otherwise there would have been no need for a Martin Luther to regard the letter of James as an “epistle of straw,” standing in tension with Luther’s famous doctrine of justification by faith and faith alone. But to suggest that the letter of James itself was a forgery, or more exactly, a “counter-forgery” against the message of Paul, as Bart Ehrman suggests, is not warranted by the evidence. Was there tension between Paul and James, the brother of Jesus? Yes, but we need not conclude that their differences were so irreconcilable that necessitated a pseudonymous author to use the name of James to launch an attack on the authority of Paul.2
There are examples, such as previously discussed with the Gospel of Peter and Third Corinthians, where the early church did call out and dismiss certain works that vied for New Testament authority as being forged, and therefore ineligible to be included within the New Testament canon. But it could equally be said that once a forgery is identified, the intellectual temptation to want to find the presence of forgery in otherwise legitimate, authentic works is enhanced. In other words, the proclivity towards “wishful thinking” can work both ways.
The pivotal question is not only about the possible intent to deceive, on the part of the secretary or would-be forger. It is also about whether or not the well-known author would have actually granted permission to the secretary to write something in the name of the well-known author. For if permission was not given, then Hagner’s allonymity thesis admittedly hangs by only a thin thread, even if there was no evidence of tampering with the content of the message, for the sake of deceiving the intended audience. But if indeed permission was granted by the well-known author, it seems reasonable to accept that if the secretary was acting in good faith to accurately represent the teaching of the well-known author, There would be no harm done by such pseudonymity, even if such a work was not completed until after the death of the well-known author/mentor/teacher.
2 Peter and the Case for Allonymity
Consider the special case of 2 Peter. Aside from questions about Revelation and Hebrews, 2 Peter has been perhaps the most disputed of all of the New Testament documents regarding its authenticity. Even today, many conservative evangelical scholars are willing to admit, along with the 16th century John Calvin, that 2 Peter could not have been written during the lifetime of the great apostle. Would this not mean that 2nd Peter was a forgery?
Not necessarily. Consider the strong possibility that Peter had begun to write 2 Peter while being imprisoned in Rome, awaiting his execution. In not being able to complete the letter, Peter could have easily granted permission to an associate, like a Silas or a Mark, to take the rough first draft of the letter, place it under safe-keeping even for a number of years, before eventually completing the letter, under the good faith direction of the now deceased apostle.
As Ehrman often seeks to do, he looks for divergences in theological emphasis between 2 Peter and certain letters claimed to be written by Paul, but which Ehrman dismisses as forgeries. This is consistent with Bart Ehrman’s adoption of the Walter Bauer thesis, which views theological diversity to be an early feature of Christianity even in the apostolic age of the first century. For example, Ehrman suggests that 2 Peter 2 was dismissing the moral degeneracy of the false teachers, having possibly in mind the idea taught in Ephesians 2:8-9 or Titus 3:5 that faith is only required for justification and not in doing “good deeds” (Ehrman, p. 261). Could it be that 2 Peter was writing against a kind of “freedom from the Law” (2 Peter 2:19) that the authors of the disputed Pauline material were championing, thus making 2 Peter into a “counterforgery,” a kind of forged document whose purpose was to serve as a polemic against another forged document, or set of forged documents?
But such supposed disagreements between 2 Peter and the disputed Paul merely amplify the nuances in the respective theological messages in an unnecessary way. It could equally be said that 2 Peter’s condemnation of licentiousness fairly echoes the same sentiment we find throughout the whole of the Pauline corpus. Just as Paul condemns licentiousness throughout his letters, so does Peter condemn licentiousness as well. To try to pit a Paulinist pretending to be Peter arguing against another author pretending to be Paul is quite a complicated proposal being advanced by Ehrman.
All in all, attempts to try to show that the theology of 2 Peter diverged from what we might know of the historical Peter have not proven persuasive. Since we only have two letters within our New Testament associated with Peter, we do not have sufficient information to be able to adequately determine at what points 2 Peter might have departed from the historical Peter. Tradition holds that the Gospel of Mark might have been produced from sermons given by the Apostle Peter. Yet it is difficult to find conclusive signs of incongruity between Mark and 2 Peter. Nothing in the theology of 2 Peter indicates anything definitively out of step with the rest of the New Testament.3
Do we have forgeries in our New Testament? Veracity investigates the claims found in Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. … Some evangelical scholars suggest that the concept of “allonymity” explains why certain New Testament documents appear to have the characteristics of being forgeries. Other evangelical scholars dismiss the concept of “allonymity” as being unnecessary in defending the traditional authorship of such New Testament documents.
But Is the “Allonymous” Proposal Even Necessary?
Furthermore, it might also be argued that the “alloymous” solution offered by Donald Hagner may not be necessary, as several disputed points of evidence do not require 2 Peter to have been completed somewhat late, some ten to even twenty-five years after Peter’s death. It has been suggested that 2 Peter is attacking the Gnostic heresy, which did not arrive in full force until the second century. However, none of the features of full-blown second century Gnosticism can be clearly identified in 2 Peter. Furthermore, scholars like Ehrman have argued that with 2 Peter 3:15-16 there is a claim that the writings of Paul were considered to be “Scripture,” which would have been too early during the 60’s C.E., as a full collection of Pauline letters would not have been available by then and in full circulation within the early church. But as Thomas Schreiner, a New Testament scholar at the Southern Baptist Seminary, has pointed out, 2 Peter:
…..does not indicate that all of Paul’s letters were collected and considered to be canonical. Peter obviously knows some of the Pauline letters and thinks they are authoritative, but that should not be equated with a collected canon of Pauline writings.”4
Certain scholars like Ehrman have claimed that 2 Peter 3:4‘s reference to the “fathers” who have died would have been the generation of Jesus’ earliest apostles. Since some of these apostles lived on, like John of Patmos, to the 90s of the first century, this would likely push the writing of 2 Peter into the second century, from Ehrman’s viewpoint. But it is quite possible to understand the “fathers” to be the patriarchs of the Old Testament instead.
I am not inclined to accept this, but this need not be troublesome. For surely, there could have been other apostles aside from Peter who died before Peter did. One of them could have been Paul! Acts 12:1-2 tells us that James, son of Zebedee, was martyred around the year 44 C.E. The reference to the “fathers” need not be inclusive of all of the apostles who witnessed the risen Jesus. It could easily just have referred to those deceased apostles the audience of 2 Peter would have been most familiar with. In short, while 2 Peter is the most likely letter in the New Testament to fit within the alloymity category, being completed after Peter’s death, there is nothing in 2 Peter which fully requires that. It could have been the last thing Peter tried to dictate to a secretary before his final execution, sometime during the mid to late 60’s C.E. 5
Furthermore, similar arguments can be raised to eliminate the necessity for Hagner’s “allonymity” proposal regarding the authorship of the pastoral letters. For example, Thomas Schreiner again suggests that the leadership structure of the church as found in the pastoral letters was not as developed as the writings of the apostolic fathers at the close of the first century, which would suggest an earlier date for the pastorals, perhaps within the waning years of the Apostle Paul.6
Addressing Erhman’s Primary Objection to Allonymity
While Bart Ehrman has a point to make that we have no definitive “allonymous” letters outside of our New Testament, dating back to the first century period, that does not fully demonstrate that such letters did not exist and found their way into the New Testament. The concept of “allonymity” is far from being defeated by Bart Ehrman. Nevertheless, some scholars on the more conservative side of the spectrum suggest that the category of “allonymity” is not even completely necessary in order to explain the presence of possible benign pseudonymous writings appearing to be present within the New Testament. In other words, while “allonymity” is still a worthy category for preserving both Pauline or Petrine, etc. authority and pseudonymity together for certain New Testament documents, there is still space to argue that Paul, Peter, etc. actually had a stronger hand to play in writing some of these disputed New Testament documents.
Unfortunately, the lack of enough surviving papyrus from the first century makes the task of settling the matter once and for all extremely problematic. More evidence would be required to fully establish the presence of forgery within the New Testament, and we simply do not have the type of wealth of sources from the first century period to make any definitive judgment on the matter, in order to sufficiently conclude that the early church erred in its recognition of the full New Testament canon catalog. Giving the full New Testament the benefit of the doubt is a perfectly reasonable alternative to Bart Ehrman’s skepticism.
But one can still play devil’s advocate: From the most disadvantageous perspective of historically orthodox Christianity, what would be the impact on Christianity if Bart Ehrman was right, or merely partly right? This subject brings us to our next and final post, coming out within a few weeks.
Notes:
1. Professor Hagner did not develop this idea on his own, but rather he has taken the thesis proposed by the late Scottish evangelical New Testament scholar, Howard Marshall, and made it more accessible to an American audience. Donald Hagner’s The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction is the book I wish I had as a college undergraduate taking a New Testament religion class. Dr. Hagner’s moderate critical approach strikes the right balance between an evangelical approach to the Scriptures, which sometimes tends to fall into ideological blind alley-ways, and a skeptical critical approach, like one would get with either Bart Ehrman, or a similar text written by Norman Perrin, which I had navigate through as an undergraduate. “The Hag’s” book probably deserves its own book review, but since so much of the crucial material deals with issues that Bart Ehrman raises in Forgery and Counterforgery, I decided to just bring out the highlights in the midst of this multi-part blog posts review of Ehrman’s book. The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction is one of the best, one-stop shop type of books for advanced study of the New Testament. It is a highly recommended introduction to the New Testament, by one of my all-time favorite professors. Subsequent references to The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction in this blog post will be cited as Hagner. A more conservative New Testament introductory text would be Andreas J. Köstenberger’s (editor) The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament. Köstenberger and his team of scholars probably find no need to assert an “allonymous” case for the authorship of the pastoral letters, placing the writing of these three letters more firmly in the hands of the Apostle Paul, prior to Paul’s death in the 60’s C.E. However, I have not had the opportunity to review Köstenberger’s work prior to publishing this blog post, so I am refraining from trying to comment further on this alternative evangelical approach to the New Testament, though this work as well comes across as highly recommended. ↩
2. Ehrman, p. 283ff. John S. Kloppenborg notes that there were early church fathers who were not convinced by the authenticity of James. Furthermore, the earliest mention we have of the letter of James is in the east by Origen, in the early second century, and we have not mention of James in the Western textual tradition. Not until Hilary of Poitiers in the mid-4th century do we have any mention of the letter in the Christian West. But not all critical scholars reject the traditional view of James’ authorship. On p. 290, even Bart Ehrman acknowledges the work of Luke Timothy Johnson who favors the letter of James as genuine, and not a “counter-forgery.” “Luke Johnson has made a strong case that there is no hard evidence of real animosity between the historical James and the historical Paul, basing his argument in large measure on Paul’s neutral references to James in 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19, 2:9, 2.12; and possibly 1 Cor. 9:5.” See Nijay Gupta’s interview with Luke Timothy Johnson where he criticizes the academic consensus that only seven of the thirteen letters associated with Pauline are authentically from Paul. ( See part 2 of the interview). Note that Luke Timothy Johnson is not a conservative evangelical scholar acting as an apologist. Now professor emeritus at Candler School of Theology, Johnson has recently released an autobiographical reflection on his scholarly life, The Mind in Another Place. Johnson has a Roman Catholic background, leaving the Benedictine order to get married, while rejecting the biblical teaching against the traditional Christian view on marriage (one-man, one-woman). See Eve Tushnet’s response to Johnson. ↩
3. To gain some insight into why certain critical scholars reject Ephesians as being non-Pauline, see previous blog post on the topic. Evangelical scholars like N.T. Wright and Michael Bird affirm that 2 Peter offers a kind of summary of belief held in common by the earliest Christians. See Veracity blog post on 2 Peter. On this point, evangelical scholars like Donald Hagner (Hagner, p. 689ff), who see 2 Peter as a kind of “testament” belonging to someone who was soon to die, and Thomas Schreiner (Christian Standard Bible Apologetics Study Bible, study notes for 2 Peter) agree that efforts to make 2 Peter sound “non-Petrine” are overblown, though Hagner and Schreiner disagree over whether or not “allonymity” accurately describes the nature of 2 Peter. I should note that Tom Schreiner earned his doctorate under the tutelage of Donald Hagner at Fuller Seminary. For a good video treatment offering a critique of Bart Ehrman’s theses regarding 2 Peter, you might find the following video from Erik Manning on the Testify YouTube channel to be of interest. This video is followed by another Testify YouTube video regarding the authorship of Ephesians and Colossians (Watch this video interview by Michael Licona interviewing Lynn Cohick on why we can safely regard Ephesians as NOT being a forgery.)
4. It is commonly accepted that 1 Thessalonians was written about 49 C.E., and the Corinthian correspondence within the following decade. It is not unrealistic to think that such letters could have been considered as “Scripture” within the following decade after that, while the status of the Pastoral letters was unknown at that point, by the mid to late 60’s C.E. Regarding the Gnosticism element: “Gnostics posited cosmological dualism, rejected the material world, and had a defective Christology. None of these elements is clearly present in 2 Peter. ” See Thomas Schreiner (Christian Standard Bible Apologetics Study Bible, study notes for 2 Peter). Schreiner is probably more inline with Andreas J. Köstenberger’s (editor) The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament. See Schreiner’s review of Köstenberger. ↩
5. See Hagner, p. 715. See my attempt to ground the authorship of 2 Peter under the direct supervision of Peter in his lifetime. Hagner’s view is that a number of New Testament books fall within the category of benign pseudonymity; that is, allonymity, including Ephesians, 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus. Interestingly, contra Ehrman, Hagner accepts Colossians a fully Pauline, and not allonymous. Note some of Hagner’s quotable selections found in The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction:
What Andrew Lincoln rightly concludes about Ephesians also applies to the Pastoral Epistles and 2 Peter: “There should be no suggestion that to decide that Ephesians is pseudonymous is somehow to detract from the validity or authority of its message as part of the NT canon.” (Hagner, p. 432)
AGAINST PSEUDONYMITY The contrast is much overstated. There are clear signs of church organization in the undisputed Pauline Letters (Rom. 16:1; Phil. 1:1; 1 Thess. 5:12; cf. in the disputed letters, Col. 1:7, 25; 4:7; Eph. 6:21) and in the book of Acts (e.g., 14:23). The terms “elder” and “overseer” appear to be interchangeable (compare Acts 20:17 with 20:28), and there is no evidence of a monarchical bishop or of the developed hierarchy that marks the second century. The most that may be fairly said is that Paul addresses the subject of church order directly here in a way that he does not in the undisputed letters. The present situation called for such emphases, whereas the earlier situation had not. (Hagner, p. 618)
Without doubt, the personal notes in the Pastorals (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:14–15; 4:13; Titus 3:12–15; and most famously 2 Tim. 4:9–21) constitute the greatest problem for those who deny their authenticity. (Hagner, p. 624)
6. See Thomas Schreiner’s introductory notes for 1 Timothy in the Christian Standard Bible Apologetics Study Bible. ↩
Veracity 
What do you think?