Did Paul really write 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus? Or are they forgeries? Or something else?

In this third blog post reviewing Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery, we examine what is perhaps the most difficult and controversial authorial issue in our New Testament, at least regarding Paul’s letters, that of the author or authors of the pastoral letters:  1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.  All three of these letters contain statements within them which indicate they were written by Paul.  But is the traditional claim that these letters are truly Pauline based on a lie?

Bart Ehrman holds to the view that all three of these letters were written decades after Paul’s death by someone claiming to be Paul, making certain alterations to Paul’s message in the process. Disturbingly, there are also progressive Christian scholars who make the same type of arguments, several of which will be analyzed in this blog post.

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

The Authenticity of the Pastoral Letters Being Challenged

All three of these letters, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, have been considered by a wide range of scholars over the past several hundred years as part of the same group, aptly named the “Pastoral Letters,” for each letter is addressed to a specific person, known to have exercised pastoral responsibilities over particular Christian communities. Each letter roughly begins the same way:  “I, Paul” write “to Timothy” or “to Titus.”

In some cases, certain scholars will distinguish between the letters, in a way that breaks up the collection. For example, the British New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says “as to the Pastorals, 2 Timothy may well be by Paul, writing in a different mood and context,” as compared to 1 Timothy and Titus. Yet the broad consensus today is that all three letters represent a collection of Paul’s pastoral thought, written by the same author or using the same secretary.¹

Unfortunately for defenders of an historically orthodox approach to the New Testament canon, the three pastoral letters have the unhappy distinction of being considered the least Pauline of any of the thirteen letters specifically attributed to Paul in our New Testament, among numerous scholars. Several reasons are often cited to demonstrate that Paul did not write any of these three letters.

First, very few, if any, of the details of Paul’s various journeys with respect to Ephesus, in the case of Timothy, and Crete, in the case of Titus, can be synced with anything written in the Book of Acts. Secondly, the style and vocabulary of these three letters are substantially different from the established Pauline writings, more so than even 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians. Thirdly, more questions were raised about the authenticity of the pastoral letters in the early church than any of the other Pauline letters found in our New Testament. Fourthly, the claim is made that the theology and message of the pastoral letters differ so much from the rest of Paul’s letters that they could not have been written by Paul himself.

The following are two short YouTube clips explaining Ehrman’s view of 1 Timothy:

Answering Objections to Authenticity of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus

But how strong are these objections to the authenticity of the pastoral letters? Responses to the first three challenges to Pauline character of these writings can be summarized here: First, it must be noted that the Book of Acts does not give us a complete history of the early church movement, including the story of Paul. Acts makes selective use of historical events in the life of the early church to suit the purposes for the book, and could easily skip over details of Paul’s life which are not covered within the pastoral letters. It is possible that the biographical events of Paul’s life and journeys in the pastoral letters were simply omitted by the Book of Acts. Many conservative scholars today contend that the Book of Acts stops short in describing the final outcome of Paul’s life. Acts concludes with Paul making his ultimate appeal to the emperor, with Paul awaiting that meeting while being under house arrest in Rome. End of story. Acts leaves us wondering what happened next.

On the other hand, a number of historians are loath to think that Paul was in some type of “catch and release” program with the Roman prison system. If such historians are correct, Paul’s 2-year time of imprisonment in Rome, where Acts 28 leaves the narrative unresolved, is the end of the road for Paul.

Yet it is quite plausible that Paul’s life did not end in Rome right away, just after the end of the narrative in Acts. He could have been acquitted in Rome and continued on with his missionary journey to Spain, as Paul intended as described in his letter to the Romans. He could have also made certain trips as described in the Timothy and Titus letters, before finally returning to Rome, getting into trouble again, to subsequently face his final imprisonment and execution. We can not simply rule out these details found in the pastoral letters in Paul’s life simply because the Book of Acts omits them. Acts was never meant to give us an exhaustive history of Paul’s life after his conversion to Christ.

As to the unique style and vocabulary of the pastoral letters, it is curious to note that these letters use more unique Greek words for important ideas that are not found elsewhere in Paul’s writings. The phrase to “pursue righteousness” as found in 1 Timothy 6:11 and 2 Timothy 2:22 is never found elsewhere in Paul, a phrase that at first glance might seem at odds with Paul’s teaching on justification. The word for “babble” in 1 Timothy 6:20 and 2 Timothy 2:16 is never used anywhere else in the New Testament. The hugely controversial word commonly translated to “have authority” or “assume authority” in 1 Timothy 2:12 (authenteo) is only found here once in the entire New Testament, whereas a different word for “authority” is found elsewhere in Paul.

Yet as suggested before, such uniqueness in vocabulary can be explained by Paul’s use of a specific secretary who accompanied him, who chose to express Paul’s teaching with a different vocabulary thought to be synonymous with Paul’s earlier teaching, acting in good faith. Or it could have simply been the exact words Paul wanted to use in these letters, which gives us a greater richness to the entire corpus of Paul’s thought. In other words, if the pastoral letters represent the final expression of Paul’s thought before his death, it should not surprise us to think Paul’s thought had developed over time, resulting in certain style and vocabulary differences from earlier writings, particularly if a secretary was involved.

A third objection raised is that these letters were late in being accepted as truly Pauline, by the early church. The 2nd century heretic Marcion was a vigorous supporter of Paul, but Marcion neglected to include 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus in his canon of acceptable, New Testament books. Nevertheless, the 2nd century apologist Tertullian argued that Marcion knew of these letters, but instead desired not to include them within the Marcion canon. The famous early fourth century copy of the Bible, Codex Vaticanus, lacks the pastoral letters, but it also lacks Philemon, which is well regarded as being authentic, suggesting that Codex Vaticanus simply left out Paul’s personal correspondence with individuals while retaining those letters addressed to church communities (e.g. Romans, Galatian, etc.).  The 2nd century Assyrian Christian Tatian was skeptical about the authentic status of these letters as well, and in particular Origen observes that some Christians were skeptical about 2 Timothy, due to the mention of the magicians Jannes and Jambres in 2 Timothy 3:8, names of persons not found in the Old Testament.  But by the end of the 2nd century all three letters were universally accepted as Pauline and remained that way for centuries. Serious doubts about the authenticity of the pastoral letters only re-emerged in the beginning of the 19th century . ²

Among British New Testament scholars in 2011, a poll was taken asking if a particular letter attributed to the Apostle Paul was really written by the Apostle Paul. The Letter to the Hebrews lacks any formal attribution to Paul, but what is remarkable is that at least half of the scholars surveyed seriously doubt that Paul really wrote any of the pastoral letters: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, or Titus. Bart Ehrman would say that these three letters were all forgeries.

Does the Theological Content of the Pastoral Letters Contradict the Genuine Paul?

By far the strongest component of Ehrman’s argument against the Pauline authenticity of the pastoral letters has to do with the theological content of the letter. The claim is that the theological teaching in these letters is so different that it makes it difficult to accept the idea that Paul really wrote these letters. For example, in the undisputed letters of Paul, the term “faith” means the kind of trust a person must have in Christ in order to bring about salvation through his death, as we find in passages like Romans 1:12; Galatians 2:16. However, in the pastoral letters, “faith” means something different; that is, the body of teaching which defines historically orthodox Christianity. This notion of “faith” developed later in the church, according to Ehrman, in response to various heretical movements, like Gnosticism. The term “righteous” in the undisputed letters refers to having a right standing before God, as in Romans 2:13, whereas in the pastoral letters, “righteous” now refers to the morality of an individual, as in someone who is “upright” (see Titus 1:8).

Contra Ehrman, the problem with this argument is that “faith” does at times refer to the substance of Christian doctrine ( 1 Cor 16:13; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 1:23; Phil 1:27) in Paul’s undisputed letters.  Plus, the word “righteous” sometimes has an association with morality in the undisputed letters. True, it would be fair to say that the emphasis changes in the pastoral letters, but the concepts are not mutually exclusive from one another.  This does not sufficiently demonstrate that the content of the pastoral letters contradicts or undermines the teaching in the undisputed letters.³

Ehrman also suggests that the pastoral letters focus on the qualifications of elder/overseer in the church, and other features of church structure, as found in the pastoral letters, is completely missing in the rest of the Pauline correspondence. This would indicate that the organized structure of church offices arose later in the history of the church, and did not overlap with the time of Paul. For Ehrman, this is in contrast with a more organic concept of Christian leadership marked by a sense of urgency concerning the expected apocalyptic end-time event coming within Paul’s lifetime, that did not materialize, along with a freer sense of the gifting of the Holy Spirit which empowers a person for Christian ministry.

Yet again, we see that Erhman’s argument ignores, or at least sidelines, the presence of overseers and deacons in Philippians 1:1, one of Paul’s undisputed letters. Erhman’s case also sidelines the contribution of the Book of Acts, in Acts 20:17-38, whereby Paul summons the elders of the church in Ephesus to come and meet him in Miletus. How could any of these references to “elders” during Paul’s lifetime make any sense if no such office of “elder” had yet existed? However, if we are to understand that the pastoral letters were some of Paul’s last writings before his death, it would certainly be a concern of Paul’s to write specifically about the need to have proper oversight within the church, to carry on Paul’s mission after his death, particularly when the undisputed Pauline material is concerned about false teaching creeping into the church during his lifetime, as Paul extensively writes about in letters such as Galatians.⁴

Women in 1 Timothy: In Contradiction With the Message of the Genuine Paul?

Even more scandalizing to modern sensibilities, Bart Ehrman argues that 1 Timothy in particular takes a somewhat disparaging view of women. In contrast with the undisputed letters of Paul, which affirms women as leaders in the early church, 1 Timothy takes a different view according to Ehrman, now that Paul had been long dead and the next generations of the church had to grapple with the delay of the Second Coming, and prepare for the existence of the church over the long-haul:

“The women who once exercised authority in the church through their teaching and prophesying needed to be brought to bay now that the church needed to be seen as a respectable institution. The leaders needed to be upright men admired even by those on the outside” (Ehrman, p. 204).

Essentially, Bart Ehrman is saying that the pseudonymous author of 1 Timothy has sufficiently altered the teaching of the genuine Apostle Paul so as to domesticate his earlier message. Gone is the more egalitarian approach to men and women in the ministry of the church, and now it would appear that Paul has either changed his mind, or the pseudonymous “Paul” has manipulated Paul’s message to fit more within patriarchal social patterns of late first century or even second century Greco-Roman culture.

Another version of Ehrman’s argument regarding 1 Timothy is best summarized by John Barton, a progressive Christian scholar in the U.K., in a book which receives Ehrman’s enthusiastic endorsement, A History of the Bible:

…..the structures of the church that are implied in the Pastorals resemble much more those of the second century than those of Paul’s day. In Paul’s letters, as we have seen, church order is still inchoate; in the Pastorals there is a Christian polity, with bishops who have some standing in society in general and who are supposed to be heads of a family; and there is an order of widows in which elderly women can be enrolled (1 Timothy 5:3–16). The position of women is clear: they are to be subordinate to men:

Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. (1 Timothy 2:11–12) (see Barton, A History of the Bible, p. 182)

There is no hint from either Ehrman or Barton that the teaching regarding women was with respect to some particular situation in the church of Ephesus, or some temporary injunction. Rather, the pseudonymous author of 1 Timothy has radically altered the authentic Paul’s teaching on the relationship between men and women in the church. But have Ehrman and Barton overstated their argument? Neither Ehrman nor Barton consider the possibility that the application for 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is expounded in Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, which specifically teaches that the office of elder/overseer in the church is restricted to only qualified men, for the sake modeling fatherhood for Christian families, while permitting both men and women to serve in other capacities in the church, specifically as deacon (1 Timothy 3:8-13, Romans 16:1).⁵

If Ehrman (or Barton’s) position is correct, it is exceedingly difficult to avoid the charge of forgery with respect to 1 Timothy, and by implication 2 Timothy and Titus as well.  However, as I have argued elsewhere, the charges of misogyny against the Paul of 1 Timothy have been greatly overblown and distorted. Paul is not prohibiting women from any and all kinds of leadership within the church. Rather, women are only being asked not to serve specifically as “elders/overseers.” The community of the church, which is supposed to be a priesthood of all believers, where all Christians are called to minister for the sake of the Gospel, male and female, does not need an army of elders/overseers to effectively spread the Gospel. Rather, the office of “elder/overseer” represents but one function within the body of Christ where ministry and leadership can exist in a myriad of ways.

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., …. which have been advanced by certain progressive Christian scholars as well.

Progressive Christian Adoption of the Forgery Thesis

What many Christians may not know is that a number of progressive Christian scholars, such as John Barton, accept the cumulative case articulated by a Bart Ehrman to be compelling enough to conclude that Paul did not write any of these pastoral letters. As another example, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, an associate professor of New Testament at Campbell University, in North Carolina, finds the evidence against Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus to be convincing. In fairness, Dr. Bashaw readily admits that it is really impossible to know for sure if Paul wrote these letters or not. Nevertheless, she also states that “We should never make Pauline authorship of the pastorals a litmus test for faithfulness.”

It makes one wonder what Dr. Bashaw actually means by “faithfulness.” For if someone claiming to be Paul, without any direct knowledge or association with Paul, fabricated these letters and subtly altered the theological content to stand in opposition to certain teachings the authentic Paul did advocate, then it would appear that the label of “forgery” should readily apply to these letters. If we really have such forgeries in our New Testament, the canonical status of such forgeries would be in clear jeopardy, and any scholar who accepts the claim of “forgeries” should reject such writings in “faithfulness” to the truth. How “forgery” and “faithfulness” appear to be congruent with one another is quite a mystery, at least to me. How then does Dr. Bashaw define the category of “pseudonymity?”

In an article for “The Bible for Normal People” podcast, Dr. Bashaw argues that ancient authorship is not what you think: “There were several levels of authorship considered authentic in the first century—the author could dictate or commission a letter for an amanuensis to write …., there could be co-authors either named or unnamed (which is the case in several Pauline letters), a disciple could write in a teacher’s name with or without the permission of the teacher, or an admirer or later disciple of a person could write a letter in the style of that author and use his name (often posthumously).”

Dr. Bashaw is surely correct about the use of a secretary (or amanuensis), and/or co-authors, in ancient letter writing. The particular case of a disciple writing in a teacher’s name with the permission of the teacher will be addressed in the next blog post in this series. However, as to the other situations Dr. Bashaw describes, that of a disciple writing in a teacher’s name without permission of the teacher, or a later admirer writing a letter in the style of the author, and using his name, Bart Erhman explicitly argues against this view, and his arguments are formidable.

For Ehrman, the use of a person’s name without permission in writing a letter would be just as objectionable in the ancient world as it is in our contemporary world today. Even if a later admirer without permission, having no immediate contact with the supposed author, would write a letter pseudonymously, and even express many of that famous author’s ideas correctly, it would still be rejected as forgery.

Strikingly, while a number of progressive Christian scholars will accept the basic reasoning advanced by Bart Ehrman that letters like 1 Timothy, etc. were forged, these same scholars will reject the use of the label “forgery” because to them it sounds too negative. Ehrman is frustrated by this response, and for good reason. This short YouTube clip demonstrates this frustration:

Eusebius records that the Acts of Paul and Thecla and Third Corinthians were written by persons “out of love for Paul,” with much of the theological content contained within those letters to be in alignment with Paul’s known thoughts. Yet in the case of both of these documents, they were rejected from being eligible for containment within canonical New Testament Scripture because of the deceitful authorship. The actual authors of the Acts of Paul and Thecla and Third Corinthians lived long after Paul was dead, and so had no direct contact with the Paul of history. Such documents are useful in helping us understand the shape of Christian history and doctrinal development. But as authoritative sources for New Testament life and teaching, the early church resoundingly rejected such writings.

The case is even more damaging for popular writings which invariably distorted the teachings of the famous author being misrepresented, despite what some might consider to be good intent. Eusebius recalls that the late second century Serapion, bishop of Antioch, rejected the Gospel of Peter as not being truly New Testament Scripture:

“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“.⁶

Is “Paul’s” Letter to Titus Incurably Racist, So Much So That We Should Deny It Ever Being Written By the “Real” Paul?

Dr. Bashaw is not alone in her views. I know of yet another progressive Christian scholar, who shall not be named, who believes that Paul did not write the letter to Titus, while still insisting that the pseudonymous character of the letter need not be labeled pejoratively as a “forgery.” In Titus 1:12, the author quotes Epimenides, most likely, when he says “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” However, this scholar states that for Paul to have referenced this quote is actually something the genuine Paul would never do. Presumably, this scholar believes that this negative reference as to the Cretans being “liars” is a kind of ethnic slur that would have been unbecoming of the Apostle Paul. Others who accept this interpretation would either be forced to conclude that Paul completely erred in making such a racist comment, or that indeed, the “real” Paul never had anything to do with writing this letter to Titus. It was the work of an imposter!

However, this scholar whom I shall not name misunderstands the context for this quotation. Just prior to the Epimenides quotation, Paul acknowledges that there are members of the “circumcision party,” otherwise affiliated with the Judaizers of Galatians, who were deceiving Gentile Christians to think that they must become circumcised in order to become fully Jewish and fully follow Christ. Paul urges Titus that such false teachers should be silenced (Titus 1:10-11). Paul’s use of the Epimenides quote was not being used as an ethnic slur, so as to slander all Cretans. Rather, Paul is referencing the supposed immoral reputation of the Cretans in order to describe in particular these false teachers who were, in fact, lying to the Gentile Christians.

Nevertheless, it is important to state that the argument in defense of Paul in Titus is even stronger than that! Paul was giving an illustration of a well-known logical paradox to show that the false teachers in the church were misusing language in order to deceive believers: the so-called “liar’s paradox.”

The key to understanding the “liar’s paradox” is grounded in the fact that Epimenides himself was from Crete, a Cretan making a supposedly true claim that all Cretans are liars. If “Cretans are always liars,” would you really believe a Cretan, like Epimenides? Paul’s sarcastic expression in the next verse, verse 13, “This testimony is true,” is tongue in cheek, underscoring how logically deceitful the false teachers of Crete really were. Paul is using a famous quote familiar to the Cretans, to illustrate the logical inconsistency of the false teachers in Crete. Therefore, to classify Paul’s use of the Epimenides quote as a kind of broadly ethnic slur is to distort the rather sophisticated context in which Paul was using it. It is an unconvincing argument to make if one wishes to attribute Titus to have been written by someone other than Paul.⁷

To claim, as this scholar appears to suggest, such a pseudonymous writing is somehow still not a forgery, after making such a stinging critique about the use of the “Cretans are always liars” quote is quite baffling. For if the author of Titus would misrepresent the authentic Paul so badly, then this only reinforces the argument that Titus is indeed a forgery. Such a line of thinking appears to be more like a form of “wishful thinking,” a vain attempt to somehow retain the use of Titus as genuine Scripture for the Christian by somehow pretending that the letter is not a forgery, while at the same time making an argument which actually suggests that Titus is indeed a forgery!! How astonishing and perplexing can such scholarship be?

Frankly, Bart Ehrman’s rejection of this kind of fallacious thinking is far more convincing than the case made by this progressive Christian scholar to somehow “save” Titus from the jaws of “forgery” status. It is far more convincing to either reject Titus as being forgery altogether, or else accept Titus as being fully and authentically Pauline. Such alternatives are more plausible than this kind of convoluted, progressive Christian logic. Better yet, it makes better sense to say that indeed the early church got it right in judging Titus to be an actual letter authorized by the Apostle Paul.⁸

This same progressive Christian scholar, who still is not to be named, holds to the belief that the Bible allows for women to serve as “elders/overseers” in a Christian church. However, this scholar is not an evangelical egalitarian; that is, one who believes that the teaching regarding women in 1 Timothy is only addressing a particular historical, culturally-limited situation in Timothy’s church in Ephesus, and therefore, is not applicable to churches today. Instead, this scholar quite frankly acknowledges that the author, whom this scholar claims is pseudonymously writing under Paul’s name, in 1 Timothy 2-3 is restricting the office of “elder/overseer” to that of being a qualified male, in very much a universalizing sense. As a result, this scholar contends that this message in 1 Timothy goes against Paul’s established teaching elsewhere in his truly authentic letters.

If this scholar is correct, does this not indicate a blatant contradiction in the New Testament? How could it be fully asserted that a supposedly pseudonymous work like 1 Timothy be still accepted within the New Testament canon, and not call it a deceptive forgery?

Remember Dan McClellan? : A Better Answer to the “Scholarly Consensus”

In the first blog post in this series reviewing Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery, I brought up a short YouTube video where skeptic-leaning biblical scholar, Dan McClellan, dismisses the pastoral letters as having been written by the Apostle Paul, citing the “scholarly consensus.” As explained in  Forgery and Counterforgery, Bart Ehrman concludes that these three letters are assuredly “forgeries.”

At this point, after reviewing the data thus far, it might be good to return to McClellan’s videos on this topic (he has done several, much of them repeating the same types of arguments), and make a summary response to McClellan’s claims. Thankfully, Erik Manning from the YouTube Testify channel, has done that for me. Erik has done a nice job drilling down on the details with a 13 1/2 minute video responding to McClellan’s claims:

Frankly, it is embarrassing to think that so many progressive Christians are taken in by the skepticism along the lines of a Bart Ehrman or a Dan McClellan. Sadly even more so, such progressive Christians continue to push these types of narratives in their respective churches, without acknowledging other viable ways of interpreting the data, more inline with historic orthodox Christianity.

However, suppose someone is still not honestly convinced that Paul really wrote 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, or Titus. I mean, how can someone argue against such a broad scholarly consensus? Nevertheless, there is still yet another way to think about the authorship of the pastoral letters.

Is There Yet Another Defensible Approach to the Pastoral Letters as Being Truly Pauline?

Evangelical Christians still continue to debate how to interpret provocative statements, like in 1 Timothy 2:11-12, where the author says that a woman is not to teach or have authority over a man, and what the exact qualifications for elder/overseer are in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. But to argue as some progressive Christians do that 1 Timothy is making a universal prohibition against women serving as elders/overseers in a local church, while still saying that this irreconcilably contradicts Paul’s teachings in his other letters, does not demonstrate a high level of confidence in the integrity and inspiration of the New Testament writings as a whole. There are better answers to this claim that the authentic Paul of the undisputed Pauline letters is at irreconcilable odds with the pseudonymous “Paul” of the letters to Timothy and Titus.⁹

Nevertheless, some scholars suggest that there might be cases where a pseudonymous work might still be received as inspired Scripture, without the negative stain of deceptive forgery.  In other words, a case can be made to suggest something else, that a disciple of Paul could have written the pastoral letters, or at least, completed them after Paul’s death, while still acting in good faith under Paul’s apostolic authority.

This thesis requires a bit of unpacking and will be discussed in the next blog post in this series. But I will take a break from this topic for a few weeks and pick this series back up again in the New Year of 2024.

Notes:

^{1. See N.T. Wright, Paul and the Righteousness of God, p. 61 ↩}

^{2. Ehrman brings out a number of these arguments on p. 198, and elsewhere, which I try to answer in this paragraph associated with this footnote.  For a YouTube summary of Ehrman’s views, see this YouTube Q&A session on the History Valley channel where I queried Dr. Ehrman.  See also Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 370 ff.  Dan McClellan offers additional points of evidence against Pauline authorship of the pastoral letters, namely that up to a third of the vocabulary found in the pastoral letters never shows up in Paul’s undisputed letters. The theology of being “in Christ” is presented differently than what we find in the undisputed letters. The emphasis on the body (soma) which is so prevalent in the undisputed letters is entirely missing in the pastoral letters.  McClellan notes that the emphasis of the time being short, as found in the undisputed letters, is missing in the pastoral letters.  But this latter point can be adequately addressed by noting that if these letters were written late in Paul’s life, he probably had come to the realization that there was indeed a delay in the parousia (popularly known as the “Second Coming of Christ”), which would probably not occur within Paul’s own lifetime. These objections do cause some difficulties, but they are not insurmountable.  ↩}

^{3. See  Christopher M. Date, “By Command of God Our Savior: A Defense of the Pauline Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles”, in Diligence: Journal of the Liberty University Online Religion Capstone in Research and Scholarship: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 5., p.8., for further exploration of this critique of Bart Ehrman’s argument.  ↩}

^{4. It should be noted that many critical scholars dismiss a great deal of historical accuracy with respect to Acts, and some even suggest that Acts was written well into the second century, which puts Acts out of range of being authored by .  Nevertheless, even if one does not consider Acts, Philippians is sufficient to demonstrate that church structure, for the sake of guarding against false doctrine, would have been a legitimate concern for Paul. Ehrman provides some pushback (Erhman, p. 210) by noting that the word for “elders,” Greek, presbyteroi, is not present in any of the authentic letters. However, most scholars acknowledge that the category of “elder” (presbyteroi) and “overseer” (episcopos) are interchangeable.Therefore, this is a weak argument presented by Ehrman.  ↩}

^{5. In Forgery and Counterforgery, Ehrman views the pseudonymous author of 1 Timothy to be misogynistic. Furthermore, Ehrman argues that attempts by evangelical egalitarian scholars to try to “get Paul off the hook” fail in that there is no indication in the text that the author had some type of local situation in mind, nor any specific thought of addressing a particular feature of the Artemis cult seeping into the Ephesian church (see the question I asked Dr. Ehrman in a YouTube Q&A session on the History Valley YouTube channel). According to Ehrman, attempts to say that the author is only talking about the relationship between husbands and wives, in that wives are not to have authority over their husbands (1 Timothy 2:11-12) likewise fail as the very next set of verses in 1 Timothy 3 speaks of men and women, not husbands and wives, thus making such an interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 “implausible” (Erhman, p. 375). Some suggest that the pseudonymous author of 1 Timothy is trying to elaborate on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 about the silence of women in the churches, thus reinvigorating the argument with more force. Ehrman views Gordon Fee’s argument that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is a later interpolation, and not original to Paul, as a “rather weak argument” (Erhman, p. 377). However, Ehrman does not consider the possibility that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 might be an example of quotation/refutation rhetorical device at work. Nor does he consider any sacramental understanding of 1 Timothy 2:8-15 at work as a counter-argument to the supposed misogyny of the “Pauline” author.  See previous Veracity blog posts. ….. As I have argued elsewhere, a more sacramentalist approach to eldership can help us to understand why the New Testament puts “eldership” into a category different from other roles in church leadership. Evangelical egalitarians propose a different way of understanding Paul’s comments about women in 1 Timothy, in that Paul has in mind a specific situation in Ephesus, as opposed to a universalizing command which does not permit women to serve as elders in a local church. However, numerous critical scholars are not convinced by this reasoning, arguing that evangelical egalitarians follow this line of thinking as somehow a failed attempt to “rescue” Pauline authorship of the pastoral letters. By accepting the same argument made by critical scholars that 1 Timothy 2:8-15 appears to contradict Paul’s teaching in his authentic, undisputed letters, evangelical egalitarians have placed themselves in the same position as more secular-minded critical scholars, thus forcing them to reach for alternative readings of the pastoral letters, which secular-minded critical scholars do not find to be convincing. Evangelical complementarians, on the other hand, do not have the same problem, as they do not ultimately see a fundamental contradiction between what we have in general statements about women in the pastoral letters versus what we have in Paul’s undisputed letters.  See blog post reviewing Andrew Bartlett’s book.  For an interview with Oxford scholar and Anglican priest John Barton by Islamic YouTube apologist, Paul Williams, elucidating his perspective, see the following video:}

^{Below, Daniel McClellan critiques a view by an evangelical egalitarian pastor who claims that the restriction against women as elders in 1 Timothy was simply something in reference to a particular situation in Ephesus.}

^{While friendly to the thesis regarding 1 Timothy and women, McClellan is skeptical about whether or not we actually have data to support this thesis, and I would actually agree with McClellan here. In particular, the evangelical pastor being interviewed makes the claim that there was a deity figure in Ephesus (Artemis) who was a “fertility goddess” (about the 3:30 minute mark).  This designation of Artemis as a goddess of fertility has been proven patently false, yet many evangelical egalitarian scholars/pastors continue to repeat this falsehood. S. M. Baugh argues that “Artemis of Ephesus in Pauline Ephesus was a state goddess cast in the form of the classic virgin huntress….. We looked at some of the positive evidence from Ephesus to show that the priestesses of Artemis—wrongly thought by many today to be a fertility or mother goddess—were no more than daughters of noble families, whose terms of office involved them in the honorary public roles and the financial obligations which typified priestly offices in Greek state cults. A priestess of Artemis compares better with a Rose Bowl queen or with Miss Teen America than with a cult prostitute.”  Artemis was a virgin, NOT a fertility goddess. (see S.M. Baugh, “Cult Prostitution in New Testament Ephesus: A Reappraisal”, JETS 42/3, September 1999, p. 459-460). We should take McClellan’s critique more seriously on that particular issue, yet there is more to consider here. While McClellan’s reasoning about 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is not entirely wrong,  a quotation/refutation view of the passage is the more plausible.  Either way, it is fair to say that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 does not accurate reflect Paul’s actual views about women. Also, McClellan argues that with respect to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, this passage is “no where argued to be deutero-Pauline.” yet as I reviewed in the Veracity blog series on head coverings, McClellan is factually incorrect, as there are scholars who indeed make that very argument. I offer a better reading of that passage. However, McClellan lumps this concern about misogyny, along with Paul’s teaching about slavery, and Paul’s call for celibacy in the authentic letters as things that we no longer as moderns accept, and that such texts as 1 Timothy can be simply “renegotiated” as not applicable to our day and time. However, McClellan sets up a number of false dichotomies in this video that should be rejected, for several reasons: (a) having only men serve as elders in churches is not inherently misogynistic. It is no more misogynistic than it is to say that only having Levites serve as priests in ancient Israel somehow demonstrates the supposed inherent superiority of the Levites over and against other Israelites. It does not. (b) while Paul in places appears to approve of the current Greco-Roman slavery system, so as to not impede the spread of the Gospel, and does not explicitly come out and condemn slavery, Paul’s letter to Philemon indicating that he treats Onesimus, a runaway slave, as like a brother or son is a radical departure from the Greco-Roman thinking about slavery, which did not view slaves in such a familial way, thus sowing the seeds for the later abolitionist movement (see this video by Dr. Bill Mounce), (c) Paul’s call to celibacy is not absolute as McClellan tends to imply, as even in 1 Corinthians 7, he does allow for marriage. If one takes Ephesians and Colossians to be authentically Pauline, the case for Paul and marriage is strengthened as both of these letters are strongly pro-marriage. See my previous blog posts about women in the church and slavery for more detail.}

^↩

^{6. Eusebius citation of Serapion as found in, Donald Hagner, The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction, p. 430..  ↩}

^{7. Interestingly, Bart Ehrman acknowledges the possible presence of the “liar’s paradox” in Titus 1:13 (Erhman, p. 373). Contra to Philip Towner in  Letters to Timothy and Titus, New International Commentary, Kindle location 14059, whose reasoning is sympathetic yet weaker here, the evidence for this “liar’s paradox” is in the text. R.L. Thomas and Andreas Köstenberger write: “Paul’s citation taps into the common Greek convention of the “liar paradox,” as though one were to ask, “Everything that I say is a lie: is this true?”’ (See Thomas and Köstenberger Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Titus, p. 418). According to tradition, the Cretans claimed that Zeus was not only born in Crete but that his tomb was in Crete as well.  Greeks outside of Crete viewed the claim of Zeus’ tomb as a pure lie. Some scholars, such as Craig Keener, contend that the Epimenides quote was “so common that logicians played with it: if Cretans are always liars, then Epimenides was lying, but if he was lying about this, then the saying was untrue and Epimenides need not be lying. [With respect to Paul’s use of :] evil brutes, lazy gluttons. Thinkers called unreasoning people brutes (cf. 2Pe 2:12); gluttons were associated with the base pursuit of pleasure (cf. note on Php 3:19)” (See Keener, NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, p. 10630).  This would indicate that Paul was using the Epimenides quote to ridicule the false teachers in the Cretan church, as such false teachers were making false claims about the Gospel, while contending that what they said was true. Anthony Thiselton argues in a similar manner: “The paradox in Titus is clear: a Cretan is quoted as saying that Cretans are always liars. If he was telling the truth then his claim is false for as a Cretan himself he too is a liar and cannot be trusted. But if he was not telling the truth then his claim that Cretans are liars is a lie—in fact they speak truthfully. But then he too would be speaking truthfully. A paradox! What Paul is doing, I shall argue, is using this paradox to talk about right use of language” (See Thiselton, Puzzling Passages in Paul: Forty Conundrums Calmly Considered, p. 117).    Titus 1:16 suggests that the false teachers “claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him.” (Thiselton, p. 117).  In other words, the false teachers of Crete were misusing language just as the Epimenedes’ quote misuses language. Paul was using a familiar logical paradox in order to urge the elders of Crete to instill sound doctrine within the church, so as to encourage the believers to faithfully obey God. Paul’s use of the quote had nothing to do with making some kind of ethnic slur. The title of Thiselton’s chapter in his book regarding this topic is: “Is the epistle to Titus incurably racist?” We can answer this question with a confident and resounding, “NO.” ↩}

^{8. See Barton, p. 185, admits the problem.  “Liberal readers of the Bible may either consciously or subconsciously take less notice of the pseudonymous texts, while still being interested in their content and open to finding aspects of them illuminating; but for more conservative readers the problem is acute, since they are committed to the full inspiration of these texts.” ↩}

^{9. See early Veracity blog posts on complementarian/egalitarian debate. For further evangelical views on authorship of the pastoral letters, see these lectures by Fred Sanders, and these lectures from Stephen Boyce.  ↩}

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?

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Is it possible that some of the books found in our Bible were actually literary forgeries, deceptively written books snuck into the canon of Scripture, unbeknownst to unsuspecting leaders in the early church?

Understandably, most Christians shrink back in horror or disbelief at the very thought, as such a suggestion might shake their faith in the trustworthiness of Scripture. If such an accusation were true, the consequences for the Christian faith would be significant. Nevertheless, a number of critical scholars today have been exploring that very question, a question that has consumed a lot of ink since the days of the 18th century Enlightenment.

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

Is the “Historical Criticism” of the New Testament a Threat to Christianity?

About seven years ago, I partnered in a discussion with one of my pastors, Hunter Ruch, in front of our congregation, to answer the specific objection raised by critics that the Apostle Paul never wrote 2 Timothy.  2 Timothy 3:16 has a very well known verse of the Bible which I memorized years ago, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness (CSB).” The video itself is no longer available, but my aim in that discussion was so that our confidence in the integrity of Scripture might be affirmed.

But not everyone received it that way. After the service, one very distraught gentleman confronted me and asked why I even bothered raising the topic in a church worship service. In his mind, this gentleman believed that we should simply take the Bible for what it says to be true, and that should be the end of it. A full consideration of the evidence was a waste of time.

Apparently, this gentleman did not see the value in studying Christian apologetics. He was also unaware of what is being taught in hundreds of religion departments in secular, and even some Christian universities, to thousands of students on a yearly basis.

His advice to me also indicated that he was unfamiliar with something called “social media,” through Tik-Tok and YouTube Short videos. This gentleman was clearly old enough to have teenage children, and yet as he walked away from me I kept wondering if his child possessed a smartphone with ready access to an Instagram or Facebook account.

The following 2-minute YouTube video was recorded by a credentialed, skeptic-leaning biblical scholar, Dan McClellan, just a few thumb clicks away from any smartphone in the hands of a teenager. How would you respond to this?

The onslaught of skepticism about Christianity in the age of the Internet is relentless. Granted, parents or anyone else can feel overwhelmed when faced with these challenges which seem almost endless. However, there are some basic-level apologetic tools available that can assist believers in having greater confidence in their faith.

Daniel McClellan is an accomplished scholar in the area of “historical criticism,” with some helpful videos, addressing dubious claims in popular preaching today, as well as exposing complete nonsense. But a number of Dr. McClellan’s other claims deserve better scrutiny. Several things that are said here in the particular video shown above are contentious, and a couple of them are worth commenting on.

Dr. McClellan’s second point can be addressed first: Dr. McClellan makes the assertion that Paul could not have authored 2 Timothy because it was written decades after his death.This raises the whole spectre of forgery as to what we find in our Bibles, which will be the subject of this and subsequent blog posts in this series.

On the first point in the video, when many Christians read 2 Timothy 3:16 talking about “all Scripture is breathed out by God,” they often think this is a reference to the Bible as we have it now, the Old Testament and all 27 books of the New Testaments combined. However, Daniel McClellan is mainly right here. With respect to the Old Testament, the Jewish community in the time of Paul was not entirely in agreement with what constituted the boundary for the Old Testament writings. While the 39 books within the Protestant canon of the Old Testament were well established, a debate continued for perhaps another several hundred years or so as to whether or not there were more books within that canon of Old Testament texts. Protestant Christians typically associate these debated extra books with the “Apocrypha.”

Regarding the New Testament,  even if you take a very conservative view as to the dating of when 2 Timothy was written, it probably could not have meant to include the whole of the New Testament as “Scripture” as we know it today, as the letters of Paul are generally considered to be the earliest writings found in our New Testament. For example, it is difficult to conceive how Paul might have had the Gospel of John included in his mind as “Scripture,” if it had not been written yet!

Most Christians today retrospectively conclude that 2 Timothy 3:16 can now be taken to mean not just the Old Testament writings as “Scripture,” but the entire collection of New Testament writings as well. Yet this raises the question as to how all the books of the New Testament eventually became regarded as “Scripture,” which theologians define as the development of the “canon” of Scripture or “rule or faith,” long after 2 Timothy was originally penned.

A knee-jerk reaction to Dr. McClellan might be tempting, but he does raise some important questions.

The Development of the New Testament Canon

So, how did we get the exact books which make up our New Testament? An often related question gets asked a lot: “Who chose the books of the New Testament canon?”

It is an understandable question, but it is also a misleading one. Dr. Michael Kruger, the president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, suggests that the idea of who “chose” the books of the New Testament canon “conjures images of some meeting, or council, where people voted on books—some books making the cut, and others left out.” But this simply is not the case. The historical record shows a much more organic process to the development of the canon of Scripture:

“If you had lived in the second century and asked the average Christian on the street, ‘Why did you guys pick Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?,’ I think you would have received some very strange looks. Indeed, I don’t think the question would have made any sense to the average Christian. They didn’t view themselves as choosing anything……”

“….. asking Christians why they chose the Gospels would be akin to asking someone why they chose their parents. No one chooses their parents. They were just kind of ‘there’ from as far back as they can remember.”¹

Nevertheless, some people still have questions. I remember a high school friend of mine telling me when he realized that as a young teenager, his parents were not his “real” parents. Instead, he learned that he was adopted at a very young age. It was quite upsetting for him to hear this truth. But it did make me wonder about my own history. When I asked my mom about it, she pulled out a copy of my birth certificate, and that pretty much settled the matter right then and there. All it took was some direct evidence to answer my question.

What evidence then do we have for the New Testament?

Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest copies of the Bible, including the New Testament.  But how much of it was written by the people who claimed to have written it?  (credit: bible archaeology.org)

Bart Ehrman and the Issue of Forgeries(???)  in Early Christianity

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, professor Bart Ehrman, who is a professional skeptical scholar like Dan McClellan in the above video, is considered to be one of the most well-known critics of historically orthodox Christianity. In 2011, Ehrman published Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, a book written for a popular audience that addresses the problems associated with the canon of the New Testament. Ehman claims that between 8 and 11 of the 27 books of Christian New Testament were written as “forgeries.” This would include the longest book of the New Testament, the Book of Acts, effectively saying that up to 70% of the New Testament is made up of forged documents.

This is a startling claim for Christians unfamiliar with the modern discipline of New Testament studies, as taught in hundreds and hundreds of universities today. However, anyone studying religion at the college level will probably hear such a claim being made in the classroom. Some variation of this claim has been promoted in academia for roughly 200 years, going back at least to the time of the early 19th century German biblical scholar, Ferdinand Christian Baur. The ubiquitous character of social media in the early first quarter of the 21st century only makes such challenges ever ready and accessible to the modern smartphone user. Even more disturbing, such ideas have even found their way into the church, through the door of “progressive Christianity.”²

Bart Ehrman is a New York Times bestselling author, having published over a dozen books like this which challenge historic, orthodox Christian views of the Bible. His videos on YouTube regularly receive each thousands of views, driven mainly by an audience with a skeptical outlook upon the Bible and rejection of conservative evangelical Christian faith. His Misquoting Jesus YouTube podcast, launched just a year ago, has already received well over a million views on social media.

Despite significant disagreements between scholars like Erhman and conservative evangelical scholars, both Erhman and conservative evangelical scholars reject the misguided notion of so-called “Jesus Mythicism,” an avant garde intellectual movement popular in certain atheistic circles which denies the existence of Jesus of Nazareth as an historical figure. Disagreeable as Dr. Ehrman will sound among conservative Christians, Bart Ehrman is not an extremist. With this background in mind, it is important for Christians to understand the types of arguments which Dr. Ehrman brings to the table. Interestingly, long before Bart Ehrman became a household name in the secular media, the Dr. Kruger mentioned above had Bart Ehrman as a religion professor when Kruger was an undergraduate student at Chapel Hill.

In 2012, Ehrman wrote a more academic treatment of the same topic of New Testament origins, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics., which is the subject of this book review. My aim is to offer an analysis of Ehrman’s primary claims, and address these issues of the canon of the New Testament and its integrity from an historically orthodox Christian perspective.

Last year, I read Bart Ehrman’s popular level book addressing the issues regarding the afterlife in the Bible, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. In that Veracity book review, I identified several presuppositions which undergird Dr. Ehrman’s approach to these topics, framing his overall mode of analysis, and guiding him towards his conclusions. I would urge readers to review that blog post as that will aid the reader to understand the big ideas that Bart Ehrman brings to the table, ideas which also undergird his arguments as found in Forgery and Counterforgery. While it is too much to go into here about where Ehrman gets these from, the two primary presuppositions summarized are:

(1) The Bible is inherently a collection of writings which possess a wide range of differences in these texts. However, not only can these differences not be reconciled with one another, the student of the Bible should not try to harmonize such differences as such harmonizations essentially alter and obscure the true meaning associated with these texts. This inherent contradictory nature of the Bible stems from the fundamental diversity present in the Christian movement from the very beginning of Christianity. This essential and irreconcilable diversity is supported by a thesis proposed by an early 20th century German Bible scholar, Walter Bauer.³

(2) Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. He predicted that a great, cataclysmic end of the world would happen within his generation, but that Jesus’ prediction failed to materialize. The shape and character of our New Testament, as well as that of Christianity more broadly, grew out of the Christian movement’s attempt to rethink the teachings of Jesus, in view of this failure of prophecy. This understanding of the apocalyptic character of Christianity was popularized by the famous early 20th century Bible scholar, Albert Schweitzer.

If you are looking for Bart Ehrman’s quick “hot take” on these points, here are a couple of YouTube “shorts,” videos that rarely last more than 1 minute each, which briefly summarize the key elements to these two ideas which undergird Ehrman’s work.  The first video is a quick summary of the Walter Bauer thesis, namely that Christianity was highly diverse, even more-so than what we find in Christianity today, right from the very beginning. The second video argues that the three earlier Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, has Jesus predicting a great, catalclysmic end of the world happening within a generation of Christ’s earliest disciples, as argued by Albert Schweitzer, whereas this apocalyptic message essentially disappears in the Gospel of John, which is generally thought to have been written last, perhaps towards the end of the first century. The implication drawn from this suggests that the great cataclysmic apocalyptic event which Jesus predicted never materialized:

A Thumbnail Sketch of the Walter Bauer Thesis

A Thumbnail Sketch of the Albert Schweitzer Thesis

Both of these governing ideas drive the argumentation which Dr. Ehrman presents in Forgery and Counterforgery. That being said, there are elements of Bart Ehrman’s thesis which deserve careful consideration. Despite my disagreements with Dr. Ehrman, he is nevertheless a very accomplished, world-class scholar, an excellent communicator, and he comes across to me as quite likable in his interviews.

So, I want to try to interact with Dr. Ehrman’s book both fairly and generously, as much as possible. Due to the length of the book, over 600 written pages, which I listened to for nearly 26 hours through an Audible audiobook, this book review will be split up over multiple blog posts, each with a central nugget of digestible thought. I will not even try to critique everything Bart Ehrman says, since that would probably end up being another big book in and of itself!

This first post will be introductory in nature, discussing some of the fundamental ideas in Ehrman’s book, focusing mainly on the difficulty in defining what is a “forgery.” For some readers, this blog post will be sufficient to offer a rough outline of a response to Forgery and Counterforgery.

In the second blog post, we will examine some of the specific arguments used by Ehrman which attempt to demonstrate that forgeries exist within our New Testament. Reading this will give you a flavor of the method Ehrman uses to draw his conclusions.

The third blog post will examine the particular issues associated with the most controversial of the Pauline letters, what is known to be the “pastoral letters,”  1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. I will also show how some “progressive Christian” scholars echo some of the same arguments advanced by Dr. Ehrman.

In the fourth blog post, we will consider the concept of allonymity, used by some conservative evangelical scholars to explain how certain pseudepigraphical writings in our New Testament can still be accepted as being authoritative, without succumbing to the negative assessment associated with the category of “forgery.”

In the fifth and last blog post, we will engage in a thought experiment: What if Bart Ehrman is correct about forgeries in our New Testament? What would be the consequences to Christian faith if a number of Ehrman’s arguments proved to be correct? At the end of that post, I will offer a summary response to Forgery and Counterforgery.

Bart Ehrman (Agnostic critic of the Bible)

What is the Definition of “Forgery?”

What is a “forgery?” The definition of “forgery” is a crucial question to address at the outset. A basic definition which Bart Ehrman uses is “a book written with a false authorial claim.” Some object to the use of the term “forgery,” in that it has negative connotations. Some prefer a more neutral, if not obfuscated word to use, such as “pseudepigraphy,” or “pseudonymous.”

A “pseudonymous” writing can have a broad range of meaning associated with it, where such a work may not necessarily suggest morally objectionable intent. For example, consider the use of pen names. Samuel Clemens famously used the pen name “Mark Twain” to sign his literary work, and yet lovers of great literature see the use of a pen name here more in a benign sense, as opposed to a purely deceptive sense. Some associate the concept of “ghostwriting” with this concept of a more benign sense of pseudonymity, whereby a well-known author hires another writer to produce written material which matches the content, and even the vocabulary and style of the well-known author, with the full acknowledgement and permission of that well-known author. Several contemporary and famous Christians authors, including the late Billy Graham and the late Tim LaHaye, have made use of ghostwriters in their many written works. In contrast with these more benign type of writings, Ehrman links his use of the term “forgery” to a more specific sense of pseudonymity, that of “pseudepigraphy,” whereby “a book appears under the name of a well-known person who did not, in fact, write it.”⁴

The term “counter-forgery” is related to “forgery,” as Ehrman uses it. A “counter-forgery” acts a forged document written as a polemic against another forged document.

Other scholars will challenge Ehrman’s strict, if not completely synonymous link between “forgery” and “pseudepigraphy.” For example, the well-regarded conservative evangelical scholar, D. A. Carson argues:

A literary forgery is a work written or modified with the intent to deceive. All literary forgeries are pseudepigraphical, but not all pseudepigrapha are literary forgeries. There is a substantial class of pseudepigraphical writings that, in the course of their transmission, somehow became associated with some figure or other. These connections between a text and an ancient figure, however fallacious, were judgments made with the best will in the world.⁵

The late Old Testament and conservative evangelical scholar, Michael Heiser, offers several examples of pseudepigraphy in the Old Testament, whereby a particular name was attached to a book, despite the fact that no “no evidence exists that their namesake did any of the writing.” Such books include Job, 1 and 2 Samuel, and Joshua. Even though the Book of Joshua became associated with the name of the great military leader and successor to Moses, there is no sense of deceit involved. Technically, the Book of Joshua is pseudonymous, in that Joshua did not himself write the book, but there is no indication that ascribing Joshua’s name to the book was meant to deceive.⁶

Even in the New Testament, we have evidence that certain New Testament books quote from other pseudepigraphical works. In particular, the Book of Enoch, is both quoted and alluded to in Jude and Peter. Early church fathers praised much of the theology as found in the Book of Enoch, while still acknowledging that Enoch could not have possibly written that book itself, even though the name of Enoch is attached to it.⁷

Likewise, the conservative evangelical and New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington clarifies the distinction between a falsely written versus a genuine letter of the New Testament:

“The real dividing line between a genuine letter and a pseudepigraphon is whether the material comes from the mind of particular person, not whether it fully reflects that person’s grammar and syntax and vocabulary. To this I would add that a genuine letter comes not only from the mind, but also from the hand, of the author, or is inscribed upon the author’s request or behalf.”⁸

Witherington’s point is that in an age where the art of writing was more of a professional endeavor, when papyrus was less flexible than the use of modern paper, and illiteracy in the Greco-Roman world was very high, the use of secretaries to produce literary work was actually quite common. Authors could give their professional scribes great leeway in their writing, which can account for variances in grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. In other words, an author could “authorize” a secretary to express their ideas in a manner more fitting to the purposes at hand.

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.

“Pseudepigraphy” versus “Forgery:” What is the Difference?

It would therefore appear that the definition of pseudepigraphy is the subject of some dispute, as there are cases where such a possible work might have certain suspicions surrounding it, while still being held in high esteem in the Bible, depending on the circumstances. So, are there other cases where an alignment between “pseudepigraphy” and “forgery” are less clear?

For example, there are no known New Testament scholars, conservative or liberal, who dispute that Paul wrote the Book of Romans. Nevertheless, Romans 16:22 explicitly states that “I, Tertius, wrote this letter.” Clearly, Tertius was Paul’s secretary but he was writing under the full supervision of the great Apostle.

Bart Ehrman disputes the claim that the use of secretaries among ancient writers accounts for variations of style and vocabulary as supposed by evangelical Christian apologists, who seek to defend the inspiration of Scripture. But he also acknowledges that in and of themselves, literary style and vocabulary alone is insufficient to fully demonstrate that any particular writing is a forgery. What ultimately matters is the actual content and message of the literary work itself.

The problem is complicated by the fact that there are books in our Bible which lack a clear, undisputed author standing behind the work. The classic New Testament example of this is the Book of Hebrews. One will search the pages of Hebrews looking for the name of the author, but this is nowhere to be found. Some have claimed that Paul wrote Hebrews, while others say Luke wrote it, and some have speculated that a woman, Priscilla, wrote it. We may never know on this side of history who was the genuine author of Hebrews.

Nevertheless, the lack of a clear authorial attribution for Hebrews did not deter the early church from recognizing the book’s apostolic authority and authenticity. It was sufficient enough for the early church to acknowledge that an inspired New Testament book must have been written either by a well-known apostle, such as Paul or Peter, who is claimed to have had a particularly close, earthly encounter with Jesus, either before and/or after the Resurrection of Jesus. Or the early church also acknowledged writings from someone who traveled within that early apostolic circle, such as Luke.

Luke never had a close, earthly encounter with Jesus. But he was a well known traveling companion with Paul. Furthemore, for the early church fathers, the content of any authentic New Testament writing must have been theologically in tune with those early teachings of Jesus and his disciples. This theological consistency and coherency was known as “the rule of faith.” Therefore, even though Hebrews lacked a definitive authorial designation, the theology articulated in that letter was acknowledged to be fully inline with “the rule of faith,” as preached by the early church.

However, how did the early church know if a particular book met such qualifications of authenticity? Is it possible for a deceptively pseudonymous writing of some sort to have been accepted anyway into the New Testament?

Christian Use of the “Noble Lie”

Some speak of the concept of a “noble lie” as a justification for some types of pseudonymous writings, or certain speech acts in general. The Bible famously includes as one of the Ten Commandments the command to not “bear false witness against one’s neighbor.” Telling the truth is an essential moral rule which the Bible unequivocally elevates as being most important. At the same time, we read of the story of Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho, who famously lied to her fellow Canaanites, telling them that the Hebrew spies hiding in her house had already fled the town (Joshua 2). In acknowledgement of this deceitful bravery, which would have cost her life, not to mention the lives of the Hebrew spies she was protecting, if her lie had been discovered, she was nevertheless recognized and celebrated in Jesus’ genealogy (Matthew 1:5).

Jerome, an early church father and the great translator of the Latin Vulgate, believed that in Galatians 2:11-14, when Paul rebuked Peter publicly for not eating with Gentile believers, that this incident was actually a version of the “noble lie.” Ehrman writes about this:

In Jerome’s well-known position, Peter and Paul did not actually have a falling out. They put on a show, in a double act of dissimulation: Peter “pretended” to be subject to Jewish dietary laws for the sake of the brethren, knowing that he was not really subject to them, and Paul, cognizant of the true state of things, “pretended” to rebuke Peter in order to show the gentile Christians that he was on their side so as to keep from giving offense. (Ehrman, p. 453).

Saint Augustine, a contemporary of Jerome’s, was not impressed by Jerome’s interpretation of Galatians 2, as Augustine was known to be skeptical of the concept of the “noble lie.” Nevertheless, other examples of such lying are recorded in Scripture, where those who were in on the lie were celebrated for their actions.The Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh, and protected the lives of baby Hebrew boys, and the Bible honors them in their bravery through the telling of their lie (Exodus 1:15-22). Michal, David’s wife, lied to David’s pursuers, thus saving the life of the future king (1 Samuel 19:11-18).

While some Christians like Augustine balk at the use of the “noble lie,” other Christians have defended its use and honor those who participate in such deceptions. Ehrman even acknowledges that another well-regarded church father contemporaneous to Augustine, John Cassian, disputed Augustine’s rigid view against the “noble lie,” suggesting that even the Bible, as in the case of Rehab lying to protect Hebrew spies, approves of it (Ehrman, p. 538-539).

In more recent times, Corrie ten Boom, in her classic work The Hiding Place, tells about deceiving the Nazi’s who occupied her Dutch town by offering sanctuary to hundreds of Jews fleeing Nazi oppression. Countless other Christians during the Nazi era did the same, saving the lives of many, many Jews. Numerous Christians in the armed forces during periods of war have participated in espionage activities, thus deceiving their enemies, earning accolades from fellow Christians for these acts of bravery. The well-known and highly respected theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, and was eventually arrested and executed for his deceptive acts.

Imagine you were a Christian living in Nazi-held Europe in the 1940s, and some Jews were seeking refuge from the Nazis, and you put them up for the night in your home. The next day, the Gestapo knocks on the door and asks, “Are there any Jews in your house?”

Would you really respond with something like this?: “Why, yes. There are Jews here. Since I am a Christian, and Christians are not supposed to lie because of the Ninth Commandment, I am compelled to tell you that the Jews are down the hallway on the right. Not the first door on the right, but the second door on the right. If you look over this way, you can see them climbing out of the window right now. If you act quickly, Mr. Gestapo-person, you might still have time to catch them. In giving you all of this information, I now feel satisfied and self-vindicated that I have kept God’s commandment not to lie.”

Hopefully, the absurdity of such a response is apparent. If a Christian quarterback on a football team were to throw a no-look pass, would he need to repent of his deceptive “sin” after the game?

Again, it should be evident that not everything that falls under the category of “deception” would be a violation of the Ninth Commandment. As the late Dr. Michael Heiser has written,

“The command ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’ refers to uttering words, and, in context, in a courtroom setting (the biblical ‘by two or three witnesses things will be known’ idea). …..Undoing or forbidding acts of heroism and courtesy is NOT the purpose of the ninth command. The command was not given to allow evil to proliferate, to have others suffer, to have children lose innocence, or to compel people to be rude.”

True, such an exception could easily be misused to justify the actual sin of bearing false witness against one’s neighbor. Delilah badgered Samson to reveal the truth about the source of his strength, and then deceived Samson by using that knowledge to betray Samson to the Philistines (Judges 16:19).

We should also remember that Ananias and Sapphira deceptively hid the fact that they withheld part of the proceeds of the sale of some property from the church, an example of bearing false witness which resulted in their immediate deaths (Acts 5:1-11). God takes truth-telling seriously. So, it does raise a good question as to when such deception fits into some category, like the “noble lie,” versus an act of deception intent on distorting the truth for self-gain, or some other corrupt motivation. Where is the line between the two?

A good argument can therefore be made to suggest that given the right circumstances, a type of pseudonymous writing might have made its way into the canon of Scripture, under the full inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Here is similar example: For if we have purposely fictitious stories called “parables,” which Jesus used as teaching tools in the Gospels, it would be difficult to completely rule out all fiction in the Bible as being inherently contradictory with the notion of Scriptural inspiration.

On the other hand, there are other cases where the presence of pseudepigraphy within the canon of Scripture would be disastrous for our understanding of the integrity of the Bible. For if an unscrupulous author were able to fake their identity in their written work, taking upon themselves the false claim of being Paul or Peter, for the purpose of misleading their readers, in order to promote an agenda contrary to that of the original apostles, then such pseudepigraphy would compromise our confidence in the Bible as truly being the Word of God. Therefore, discerning the difference between these two categories is essential.

A fragment of the Gospel of Peter found at Akhmim, in 1886. This copy has been dated to about the 8th or 9th century, C.E. The Gospel of Peter was rejected as being apocryphal by the early church, and therefore not appropriate for inclusion in the New Testament. It is most known for a reference to a “talking cross,” following the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel of Peter is not simply a pseudonymous writing, it is specifically a forgery.

The Prevalence of Forgery and Pseudepigraphy in the Ancient World

There is no doubt among scholars, across the academic spectrum, that the problem of forgery existed within the early Christian movement. Forgery was a serious moral issue more broadly within the world of classical thought across the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus. Ancient authors often complained that other unscrupulous writers would write literary material in the name of another well-known person to give such work credibility and added authority. Nevertheless, we possess a variety of works from the ancient Greco-Roman world which are not regarded as forged, such as the historical writings of Suetonius and Plutarch. In some other cases, certain non-Christian pseudepigraphical works have survived which lack a definitive negative moral taint to them, despite disputes about their authorship.

For example, Aristophanes wrote his early plays under the names of the persons who directed his plays. Xenophon’s Anabasis was written in the third person, a kind of pseudepigraphic writing style, which most scholars today still attribute to the ancient Greek soldier and writer Xenophon. Even Bart Ehrman acknowledges cases where there were concerns to “protect the identity of the real author, in cases in which the safety or other personal concerns were an issue,” such as with the 5th century C.E. Archbishop Nestorius writing in the name of Heraclides in his Liber Heraclidis.⁹

Within the early Christian movement in particular, we face a similar situation. Numerous writings were clearly forged in the name of well-known Christian figures. Such works include:

• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of James
• The Gospel of Philip
• The Gospel of Peter
• Third Corinthians
• Paul’s Letter to the Laodiceans
• The Apocalypse of Peter
• The Apocalypse of Paul

All of the above writings among certain early Christian readers were assumed to be authentic at various times. However, in each case, the collective mind of the early church ultimately dismissed each one of these documents as forgeries, and therefore, ineligible to be included within the New Testament canon.

This did not mean that all Christians stopped reading such books once the canon was firmly established. As late as the 17th century, some Quakers adopted Paul’s Letter to the Laodiceans and considered that forged document to be on par with the rest of the New Testament. But for all practical purposes, the current list of 27 books of the New Testament remains the standard canon for all historically orthodox Christians.

What were the motivations behind such forgeries? In some cases, an over enthusiastic curiosity to explore unexplained events within the New Testament led to such writings. In other cases, a famous person’s name was used to write a polemical message, leveraging the authority of an apostle to spread a different teaching. Other writings could have been written with the possible intent to express an apostle’s teaching for a new generation of readers, and yet the forgeries were written so long after the death of the apostle that it would have been impossible to securely establish a valid reason for the pseudonymity.

Bart Ehrman’s view in Forgery and Counterforgery is that:

“in every instance of forgery that I discuss, the intention of the forger was to deceive his readers into thinking he was someone other than who he was; his motivation was not only to receive a simple hearing of his views (although certainly that) but also to authorize his views through the authority provided by the status of his falsely assumed authorial name. His goal was to advance his own polemical agenda” (p. 153).

The Progressive Christian Attempt to Justify Forgery in the New Testament Without Calling it “Forgery”

Therefore, when it comes to the books that actually made it into our New Testament, the charge of forgery is quite serious, and yet some progressive Christian scholars do not seem too bothered by this.  A number of progressive Christian scholars today will argue that having the presence of certain dubious pseudonymous works in our New Testament is not problematic for our New Testament canon.  They would argue that while such works are indeed pseudepigraphy, using the name of a well-known Christian authority in a deliberate attempt to change the teachings of that authoritative person, they would hesitate to use the terminology of “forgery” to apply in such a situation.

Such logic is fallacious. This is one area where conservative Christian scholars can agree with a skeptic like Bart Ehrman. Ehrman convincingly demonstrates that in the classical world, a lie was considered as a lie, and the same type of logic applied to the thinking of the early church. As theologian Michael Kruger states in his review of Ehrman’s work,

“It is fashionable today to suggest a ‘middle way’ where the pseudonymity of some NT books is affirmed and the canonicity of those books is also affirmed. However, Ehrman is absolutely correct that early Christians simply did not see it this way. To them, forgery was a lie, plain and simple. “¹⁰

There are legitimate reasons in certain cases, which we will cover in future blog posts, where a genuinely authentic, non-forged New Testament work might still have some characteristics of pseudonymity. However, it can be fairly stated that if someone tried to produce a New Testament writing that sought to twist and distort the teaching of someone like Paul, in an effort to deceive the reading audience, it should indeed be considered as a forgery. If that is the case, it would be better to be honest about the failure of the New Testament canonization of Scripture process.

However, as this review will attempt to do in subsequent blog posts, there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the integrity of the New Testament canon. We can still have confidence that every book of the New Testament is truly the Word of God and not a forgery. But a careful examination of the evidence is required to substantiate the argument.

See you in the next installment of this multi-blog-post book review of Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery.

Notes:

^{1. See Michael Kruger’s “Canon Fodder” blog.   ↩}

^{2. Ferdinand Christian Baur (F.C. Baur) took an even more radical view of the New Testament, particularly that of Paul’s letters. Baur’s research suggested that “only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans can be confidently used as sources” for Paul’s theology (Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History, p. 14). “Baur had distinguished three classes of Epistles. In the first he placed, as beyond doubt genuine, Galatians, [1 & 2] Corinthians, and Romans; Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians, and Philemon formed the second class, being considered uncertain; the Pastoral Epistles formed the third class, and were regarded as proved to be spurious.” (Schweitzer, p. 25). While the so-called Tübingen school which Baur was associated with has been superseded in the academia, more refined critical views, like that of Bart Ehrman, continue to dominate secular academia. See this discussion on progressive Christianity.  For more on the history and role of “historical criticism” in the study of the Bible, see this Veracity blog series.  ↩}

^{3. See extended video discussion about the Walter Bauer thesis. ↩}

^{4. Forgery and Counterforgery, Bart Ehrman. p.29ff. Further citations will be in the text as “Ehrman.” ↩}

^{5. See D. A. Carson, “Pseudonymity and Pseudepigraphy,” ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter, Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, as quoted in Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ, p. 13 ↩}

^{6. See Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon. p. 13. See also Heiser’s blog post on “Lying and Deception.” ↩}

^{7. See Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon. p. 216ff. See blog post on head coverings. ↩}

^{8. See Ben Witherington, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1-2 Timothy and 1-3 John, p. 26 ↩}

^{9. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery. p. 46-47. In the case of Xenophon’s Anabasis, Ehrman holds the judgment that Plutarch did as well, that this style of writing was “not innocent at all.” But does this mean that Xenophon’s work should be thoroughly discredited? Few historians would agree with that. As to the notion of protecting the identity of the real author, a case could be made this might be why the Book of Hebrews contains no acknowledgement of the author’s name, as various scholars contend that Hebrews was written during a time of persecution. It is reasonable then to assert that the lack of naming the author of Hebrews was done intentionally, in an effort to protect the identity of the author and/or the Christian community or communities such as author was hoping to encourage in a time of persecution. ↩}

^{10. See Michael Kruger’s review of Forged in the Themelios journal. The work of progressive Christian scholar John Barton is an illustrative example of how an attempt is made to say that some unknown writer ascribed the name of Paul to certain letters, in an effort to domesticate or substantially change the message of the great apostle, and yet still suggest that the inclusion of such a work in the New Testament may be of no great consequence, at least among some Christians. “The Pastorals [1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus] have no place in attempting to reconstruct the thought of Paul, but there is nothing to prevent our studying the thought of the Pastorals, and finding it interesting and perhaps persuasive……Are Paul’s letters authoritative because they are by Paul? If so, then establishing that one of them is in fact pseudonymous presumably reduces or even annuls its authority. Or are they authoritative because they are in the Bible? If so, the question of who wrote them might be regarded as irrelevant. For most Christians, the answer is probably a blend of both factors, though this is arguably incoherent.” To be “arguably incoherent” on this latter point is an understatement here. Contra Barton, if the early church truly erred in falsely ascribing a New Testament document as being authentic, this would only bring great shame upon the Christian movement. John Barton, A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, p. 186-187. See Veracity book review for more details. ↩}