Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics Read Free Page B

Bammel, “Ignatian Problems,”
JTS
n.s. 33 (1982): 66–97; Mark J. Edwards, “Ignatius and the Second Century: An Answer to R Hübner,”
ZAC
2 (1998): 214–26; and Andreas Lindemann, “Antwort auf die ‘Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochien’,”
ZAC
1 (1997): 185–95.
    8 . See, for example, M. de Jonge,
Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature: The Case of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Greek Life of Adam and Eve
(Leiden: Brill, 2003). The only exceptions to my rule—e.g., the Sibylline Oracles—involve corpora that include originally Christian productions as well.

PART I

Forgery in the Greco-Roman World

CHAPTER THREE

Terms and Taxonomies
    M any scholars, especially Neutestamentlers, object to the use of the term
forgery
for the phenomenon I have so far described: a book written with a false authorial claim. 1 This is because of its negative connotations, sometimes asserted to be a modern and thus anachronistic imputation. I will deal with these objections in detail in Chapter Four . For now, it is enough to say that the terms used in antiquity were just as negative or even more so. What we call forgeries—books with false authorial claims—were typically called deceits, lies, and bastards.
THE TERMS OF FORGERY
    Before discussing ancient terms, I need to clarify how I will be using modern ones. Those who object to the term
forgery
typically prefer to speak of pseudonymity or pseudepigraphy. Often these two terms are used synonymously, but that can lead to confusion, since other scholars, especially German and French, draw a clear distinction between them. Consider the differentiation of Eve-Marie Becker: “The terms pseudepigraphy and pseudonymity should not simply be used synonymously. In the case of pseudonymity, a fictitious author is chosen, in the case of pseudepigraphy, the work is ascribed to a real author.” 2
    Rather than considering the two terms as categorically distinct, however, I prefer to see one as a subset of the other. For the purposes of this study, I will be using the term
pseudonymous
in a broad sense to refer to any writing that appears undera name other than that of the author. Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of pseudonymity. Some books, past and present, are written under a fictitious pen name. In modern times one naturally thinks of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) or George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans). The question of the “innocence” of the fiction is often open, even with the use of pen names. Evans chose a male name, in part, to facilitate the publication of her work. It was not a purely innocent act, but a closely reasoned one intended to effect a desired result. Even so, it was not “deceptive” in the way it would have been if she had written a novel claiming to be Jane Austen. In the ancient world there are examples of fictitious pseudonymity as well, as I will discuss later in this chapter: Xenophon wrote the
Anabasis
under the name of Themistogenes (a not altogether innocent choice, as we will see) and Iamblichus, in a different era, wrote his
Mysteries
as Abamon.
    The other form of pseudonymity occurs when a book appears under the name of a well-known person who did not, in fact, write it. It is for this kind of pseudonymous writing that I will be using the more specific term
pseudepigraphy
. And so, all pseudepigrapha are pseudonymous, but not all pseudonymous writings are pseudepigraphic, as I am using the terms. Writings that appear under a false (known) name are again of two types. First, there are books that were originally published anonymously (or under a homonym) that were later ascribed by other writers, editors, scribes, or readers to well-known persons who did not actually write them. This kind of false ascription is not to be laid at the feet of the author, who produced the work without attaching any name to it (or simply his own name, which he happened to share with a