Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha

Abstract

N 1950 the Catholic Biblical Quarterly published the Greek text, with an English translation and philological commentary, of what the author, the late Paul R. Coleman-Norton, at that time Associate Professor of Latin at Princeton University, entitled, "An Amusing Agraphon."l According to the highly circumstantial account in the opening paragraphs of the article, in 1943 during the Second World War the author was stationed with the U.S. armed forces at Fedhala in French Morocco. Here one day in the town's Mohammedan mosque he was shown an Arabic codex in which was "a single unnumbered page of Greek, sandwiched between two tracts on materia medica." The contents of the page, as was disclosed later when the author studied the transcript which the imam had allowed him to make, turned out to be a fragment of a Greek translation of the Latin Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, which is a collection of homilies on chs. 1-13 and 19-25 of the Gospel according to Matthew. At the conclusion of Matt 24:51, which in the canonical text refers to the judgment when "men will weep and gnash their teeth," the fragment continues with the question, raised by one of the disciples, how these things can be for persons who happen to be toothless. Whereupon Jesus replies, "Teeth will be provided." However amusing one may regard this account, there is no doubt at all that the agraphon is a forgery-whether ancient or modern, opinions may differ. For the present writer, at any rate, it is difficult not to think that it is a modern forgery, for prior to World War II in a class of Latin Patristics Professor Coleman-Norton regaled his students (of whom the present writer was one) with a witticism about dentures being provided in the next world so that all the damned might be able to weep and gnash their teeth. The story of the "discovery" of the agraphon adds one more instance to an *The Presidential Address delivered October 29, 1971, at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, held in the Regency Hyatt House, Atlanta, Georgia. 1CBQ 12 (1950) 439-49.

What is in a Name? The Hermeneutics of Authorship Analysis Concerning Colossians

“…The underlying presumption by scholars in favor of viewing Colossians as pseudonymous, perhaps, is that these early theologians were incapable of analyzing texts on such a level. However, Metzger argues that ‘scholars in antiquity were able to detect forgeries, using in general the same kinds of tests as are employed by modern critics’ (1972: 13). He gives the example, from the third century ce , of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, who argued that the book of Revelation was not written by the fourth evangelist in view of differences of style and vocabulary!…”

“…Somewhat tentatively, after surveying the matter of why writers may author a document as if written by another, Bruce Metzger concludes that, if it was a standard way to communicate in that time, there is nothing unethical about such a practice as it pertains to the New Testament documents. He writes, ‘Whatever idiom or mode of expression [any given writer] would use in ordinary speech must surely be allowed him when moved by the Holy Spirit’ (1972: 22). D.A.…”

Discursos sobre falsificaciones arqueológicas 

“…Este es el caso de las epístolas paulinas incluidas en el canon católico, de las cuales solo las siete autógrafas son consideradas auténticas en la actualidad. El resto, denominadas las epístolas deutero-paulinas, pertenece a discípulos que usaron el nombre de Pablo de Tarso por considerar que el contenido de esas cartas respondía al pensamiento paulino (Metzger 1972;Bassler 2010). Como se ha señalado con carácter general para los textos sagrados antiguos, la superchería es un recurso habitual para la construcción del relato sagrado (Alvar et alii 2006(Alvar et alii -2008.…”

Pseudepigraphy and the Petrine school: Spirit and tradition in 1 and 2 Peter and Jude

“…Religious pseudepigrapha were an exception; they were not meant to deceive but were looking for authority (Speyer 1977:195-263). Metzger (1972) identifies eight motives, three of which are negative (financial gain, pure malice, forgery), two are positive (love and respect to honour a revered teacher or school, modesty), and three are neutral (dramatic motives [speeches attributed to orators], accidents in copying, and anonymous writings attributed to important figures in antiquity).…”