New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus, is once again raising questions about the Bible’s trustworthiness in his new book, Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (HarperOne, April). Ehrman argues the authors of at least 10 books of the New Testament likely tried to deceive readers by signing someone else’s name to them. RBL contributor G. Jeffrey MacDonald reached him at his University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill office.
RBL: The idea that certain books of the Bible don’t bear the names of their actual authors has been widely accepted among scholars for decades. So is your book just a popularization of conventional wisdom in academe?
Ehrman: I think it’s doing two things. It’s making accessible to the general public what scholars have long said about the New Testament. But unlike a couple of my earlier books, this one is actually advancing scholarship.
RBL: How?
Ehrman: Scholars have typically been reluctant to call this kind of phenomenon ‘forgery’ because they don’t like the connotations of lying and deceitfulness. I show in this book that it’s an appropriate term because ancient people considered this type of literary activity ‘lying’ and talked about it as being deceitful. It wasn’t sanctioned. It was seen as illicit and was widely condemned.
RBL: Which reputable scholars are we talking about? Who has taken that position that you’re aiming to debunk?
Ehrman: Just about every scholar. They call it ‘pseudepigraphy’ when you write under another person’s name because the term is more antiseptic than ‘forgery.’ Raymond Brown, a very famous and very competent New Testament scholar, claims that pseudepigraphy was widely practiced and was not widely condemned. And that’s just absolutely false.
RBL: What evidence says this practice was more widely condemned than we’ve been taught?
Ehrman: Two things. When someone comments on the practice, they almost always condemn it, in ancient Greek and Latin sources. It’s also clear in the words [that ancients] use to describe it. A book that is written like this is either called ‘pseudos’, which is the Greek word for ‘lie’, or ‘nothos’, which means ‘bastard.’ They’re called ‘lies’ because they’re lying about the person’s identity. And they’re called ‘bastards’ because they don’t belong to the person who’s reputed to be the author.
RBL: What about the idea that these books get their authority, not from which apostle did or didn’t write them, but from the fact that they were chosen over time to appear in the biblical canon?
Ehrman: That’s a key question and a good point. Early church fathers would not accept a book into the New Testament if it was known to be written by somebody other than an apostle.
RBL: Your argument seems to suggest that people who see the Bible as trustworthy are foolish because many of the writers are lying about who they are.
Ehrman: Well, Paul likely didn’t write the book of Ephesians. In the ancient world, this would have been considered lying and deceitful. And people should certainly take that into account when they’re reading Ephesians.
RBL: Take that into account and do what with it?
Ehrman: If they’re fundamentalists, they need to stop being fundamentalists. In fact, Ephesians was probably not written by Paul, so the author lied about who he said he was. And somebody who is not a fundamentalist needs to recognize this is a very human book we’re dealing with. One of the reasons for stressing this is because people have taken the Bible and used it for all sorts of harmful, hurtful, and oppressive purposes over the years by saying it is absolutely perfect with no mistakes in it. If you recognize it as a human book with human problems, then you’re less likely to use it as some kind of absolute authority and lord it over people.
G. Jeffrey MacDonald is an independent journalist and author of Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul (Basic Books, 2010).
