Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (117 page)

Manfred Hornschuh provided the pivotal study of the text in 1965.
⁸¹
Notwith-standing his many stunning insights, some of Hornschuh’s overarching claims appear today rather quaint, if not quite bizarre, especially his contention that the Epistula “cannot be understood either as a document of ancient Christian origins nor as the gnosis of early Catholicism.” For Hornschuh, the document is not “early Christian” because it has a divergent understanding of the person and work of Christ (in his view, the Christology is ultimately docetic, even though the
polemic is anti-docetic)
⁸²
; it is not “early Catholic” because it assigns no significance to the church and church offices. The book instead reflects a situation in which the author belongs to a minority anti-Gnostic group that has been forced out of the larger (Gnostic) community.

Hornschuh is certainly right in his stress that the book is anti-Gnostic. But there is no reason to see the book as a secessionist document or to deny its essentially proto-orthodox orientation. Apart from the now obsolete construction of “Frühkatholizismus,” Hornschuh’s view does not consider the wide range of possibilities open to a proto-orthodox author. Not everyone had to obsess over church hierarchy and offices. Moreover, the book goes out of its way to stress important aspects of the emerging regula fidei, as we will see.

The book is presented as a revelatory letter that “Jesus Christ revealed to his disciples” (
ch. 1
).
⁸³
It does not assume the form of an epistle, however, but of a postresurrection dialogue, known now so well from precisely the kinds of Gnostic texts to which the book sets itself in opposition. Its pseudepigraphic character, in any event, is clear from the outset. It is a letter describing the experiences of the eleven disciples with the risen Christ after his death and resurrection, written in the first-person plural. The eleven are named and, as has happened before, both Peter and Cephas are said to belong to the apostolic band, as are both Nathaniel and Bartholomew.
⁸⁴

The occasion of the letter is the teachings of “the false apostles Simon and Cerinthus.” The writer stresses that “in them is deceit with which they kill men.” The alternative views of the forger are stated at the outset, as he assures his readers in the names of the true apostles that “we have heard and felt him after he has risen from the dead” and that he “has revealed to us things great, astonishing, real” (
ch. 2
). The author then launches into a proto-orthodox regula: “Christ is God and Son of God, who was sent from God, the ruler of the entire world, the maker and creator of what is named with every name. …” The bulk of the book provides an account of Jesus’ teaching to the eleven after appearing to them in his resurrected body, prior to departing from them in the final chapter. That the teaching
is needed because of dangerous heresy is reiterated in Jesus’ final words to his disciples: “There will come another teaching and a conflict; and in that they seek their own glory and produce worthless teaching an offence of death will come thereby, and they will teach and turn away from my commandment even those who believe in me and bring them out of eternal life.” Both the teachers and those who heed them “will be eternally punished.”

That the form of this revelation is closely related to what can be found in Gnostic “secret revelation” resurrection dialogues was recognized early on, by Schmidt himself.
⁸⁵
Schmidt, however, maintained that the book was not meant to attack Gnostics, but to confirm the “catholics” in their faith.
⁸⁶
Hornschuh, on the other hand, rightly saw that this is a false dichotomy. The Epistula Apostolorum confirms “catholic” views precisely by contradicting the views of their opponents: “One can scarcely deny that the important parts of the letter are to be understood in no other way than as a refutation of the Gnostics.”
⁸⁷

Hornschuh notes comparable motifs in such Gnostic works as the Gospel of Mary, the Apocryphon of John, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, and the Pistis Sophia. More could easily be named.
⁸⁸
The conclusion is near to hand: the author took up the weapon of his enemies in order to fight against them.
⁸⁹
One major difference, as Hornschuh notes, is that whereas for Gnostics the revelations made by the resurrected Jesus entailed esoteric knowledge for insiders, for the author of the Epistula Apostolorum they are for broad publication. Here they are given in a letter for universal distribution: “As we have heard it, kept it, and have written it for the whole world” (
ch. 1
).

Of yet greater moment is the substance of the teaching. And in this book, it is all about substance: the flesh of Christ, the fleshly nature of his resurrection, and the fleshly character of the believers’ resurrection yet to come. Even though the incarnation is described in a Gnostic-like account (though see Melchizedek and the Ascension of Isaiah) of the descent of Christ through “the heavens” (
ch. 13
),
in which he passed by “the angels and archangels in their form and as one of them,” becoming “like an angel to the angels,” when he went “into Mary” he “became flesh” (
ch. 14
). And this was not an appearance. He was flesh and he remained flesh, as emphasized throughout the account. After his resurrection his disciples “thought it was a ghost” but he demonstrated to them that “I am he who spoke to you concerning my flesh, my death, and my resurrection” (
ch. 11
). At his insistence the disciples feel him and his wounds; and he tells Andrew “look at my feet and see if they do not touch the ground (Ethiopic: leave a footprint). For it is written in the prophet, ‘The foot of a ghost or demon does not join to the ground’ (Eth.: “leaves no print on the ground”).

This passage provides a stark contrast to the docetic Acts of John, and its famous passage in which the apostle realizes that Jesus did not have a real body and notices to his amazement that the resurrected Jesus leaves no footprint:

I will tell you another glory, brethren; sometimes when I meant to touch him I encountered a material, solid body; but at other times again when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and incorporeal, and as if it did not exist at all. … And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see if his footprint appeared on the ground—for I saw him raising himself from the earth—and I never saw it. (Acts of John, 93)

Not so with the
Epistula Apostolorum
. After Jesus’ resurrection, “we felt him, that he had truly risen in the flesh” (
ch. 12
). As Jesus later stresses, “I have put on your flesh, in which I was born and died and was buried and rose again” (ch. 19). Moreover, just as Christ rose “in the flesh” so too “you also will arise” (ch. 21). For indeed: “The flesh of every one will rise with his soul alive, and his spirit” (ch. 24; repeated in chs. 25 and 26). Moreover, those who teach “another teaching” will experience real punishment involving physical pain in the afterlife (ch. 29); those who suffer physical persecution in this world, on the other hand, will receive a heavenly reward (ch. 38).

Clearly in the Epistula Apostolorum we are dealing with a counterforgery on numerous levels. In the weak sense, it is a book that counters widespread and popular views that claimed that Christ did not really and permanently come in the flesh. More specifically, it is countering such notions as found in the book’s generic parallels in the Gnostic revelation dialogues. This would include such a writing as the Nag Hammadi letter of Peter to Philip, which also records a (non-pseudepigraphic)
⁹⁰
postresurrection revelation of Christ. Here, though, Christ is not a fleshly being after his resurrection; he comes to the disciples as a light and a voice. Moreover, even though he appeared to experience his Passion, it was all an appearance: “My brothers, Jesus is a stranger to this suffering” (138.21–22).

But in the strongest sense, the Epistula Apostolorum is countering views found precisely in other forgeries. Numerous striking parallels can be found, for example, with the
Book of Thomas the Contender
, discussed earlier, which contained “secret words” as opposed to those here that are to be published throughout the whole world (138:1); which insisted that salvation comes only when spirits remove themselves from the world of flesh (139.28–30); which taught that the “vessel of the flesh will dissolve and … [be] brought to naught” (141.5–8); which pronounces a woe on “you who hope in the flesh and in the prison that will perish” (143.10–11); and which ends with the exhortation “Watch and pray that you not come to be in the flesh, but rather that you come forth from the bondage of the bitterness of this life” (145.8–10).

Not so for the Epistula Apostolorum, a proto-orthodox forgery that stresses in the names of the apostles that Christ took on real flesh, remained in the flesh, rose in the flesh, and informed his followers that they too would rise, in the flesh.

The Letter of “Paul” to the Laodiceans survives in a large number of manuscripts of the Latin Bible from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries.
⁹¹
The letter is a pastiche of Pauline phrases with no obvious theme or purpose. Apart from the opening line, drawn from Gal. 1:1, the borrowings are almost entirely from Philippians. About a tenth of the letter represents “filler” provided by the author, which is also without character or color.
⁹²

Scholars have long vied with one another to see who could express the greatest contempt for the letter’s sheer banality. Thus Leon Vouaux in 1913: “It is indeed as trivial as possible;
⁹³
Karl Pink in 1925: “The letter is a pitiful concoction without any kind of personal note on behalf of the author, without a trace of heresy, without bias or purpose”;
⁹⁴
Adolf Harnack in 1931: “It is with regard to content and form the most worthless document that has come down to us from Christian antiquity”;
⁹⁵
and most recently Régis Burnet, who moves the lament to the title of an article: “Pourquoi avoir écrit l’insipide épître aux Laodicéens?”
⁹⁶
The letter
nonetheless serves an interesting historical function, as I will argue below: it appears to be a forgery meant to provide an indirect counter to those who would deny the value of the flesh.

The early references to the letter are confused and confusing. The Muratorian Fragment speaks of Marcionite forgeries of “Pauline” letters to the Alexandrians and the Laodiceans. The former no longer survives in any form; with respect to the latter, it is impossible to determine if the unknown author of the canon has our extant letter in view. If so, it is difficult to know why he would have considered it Marcionite, had he actually managed to read it.
⁹⁷
Tertullian, soon thereafter, also indicates that the Marcionites had a letter to the Laodiceans, but claims that this was none other than an edited and renamed version of Ephesians (i.e., not a separate production;
Adv. Marc
. 5. 11, 17). Epiphanius complicates matters when he argues that Laodiceans was a separate, fifteenth Pauline letter; but when he quotes from it, he cites Eph. 4:5 (
Panarion
, 42.9.12).

With just these earliest references to a Laodicean letter, then, we are left with a host of puzzles. In the early centuries was there just one letter to the Laodiceans (the one we now have) which was sometimes mistakenly identified as an edition of Ephesians by people who had not actually seen it? Or were there two (e.g., ours and one forged by Marcionites)? Or three (ours, the Marcionites’, and an edited form of Ephesians)? And just with respect to our earliest reference: Did the author of the Muratorian Fragment have our letter in mind but not realize that it was not, in fact, Marcionite? Did he have another letter in mind, and not know about our letter? Or did he have our letter and think (as later Harnack would argue) that it was a Marcionite production?

After Epiphanius, references to the letter proliferate.
⁹⁸
It is only with the Pseudo-Augustinian
Speculum
of the fifth-sixth centuries, however, that we have an actual quotation of our Laodiceans. Moreover, the author of this falsely attributed work sees the letter as canonical. This is also about the time of our earliest manuscript evidence for its existence, in the codex Fuldensis, produced by Victor of Capua in 546
CE
. The letter is now found in the better manuscripts of the Vulgate
⁹⁹
; it came to be widely respected in the West despite the condemnation of Jerome (
Vir. ill
. 5) and others. It was reproduced in German Bibles prior to Luther, for example, and in Czech Bibles until the seventeenth century, where it was placed between Colossians and 1 Thessalonians.
¹⁰⁰
But it was rejected unanimously in the Greek-speaking East, most notably at the Second Council of Nicea in 787
CE
.
¹⁰¹

There have been long debates over the original language of the letter, with Westcott arguing that it was written in Latin and his colleague J. B. Lightfoot, who provided the first full collations, arguing for Greek.
¹⁰²
Harnack opted for a totalizing view, suggesting that it was originally produced in both a Latin form (known to the Muratorian Fragment) and in Greek. That, however, is more a council of despair than a conclusion, and in any event, even with a bilingual edition, one of the two would necessarily have to have been written first.
¹⁰³
As to when the letter was produced, in theory it could have been any time before our first hard evidence for its existence—the
Speculum
—though most scholars date it much earlier, to the end of the second century, a date that makes good sense in view of its possible occasion and purpose, as will be seen.

This matter of occasion and purpose has long vexed scholars. The most common explanation is also the most obvious one, that the letter was produced by someone intent on filling the lacuna occasioned by the reference in Col. 4:16: “When this letter is read by you, see also that it is read in Laodicea and that you as well read the one from Laodicea.”
¹⁰⁴
If Paul mentions a letter sent to the Laodiceans, there must once have been one, and some unknown forger set out to create it. Burnet objects that the letter could not have been generated on these grounds, since Colossians speaks of a letter
rather than a letter
. And it is true that as early as Chrysostom it was sometimes thought that the reference in Col. 4:16 was not to a letter Paul had written but a letter Paul had received.
¹⁰⁵
But there is no reason to push the language so hard. The Colossians passage is frequently read even today as referring to a letter sent by Paul to the Laodiceans, which the Colossian church would get, therefore “from” them, and there is no reason that a forger might not have construed the passage in this way as well. It scarcely need be stressed that since Colossians itself is forged, there is no way of knowing whether the reference to a Laodicean letter indicates real knowledge of some such writing or represents, instead, a simple verisimilitude of the earlier forger.