Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (35 page)

So too Aulus Gellius, in the second century
CE,
weighed in on the question of the 130 comedies ascribed to Plautus. Noting that Varro had argued, largely on stylistic grounds, that only 21 of the plays were Plautan, Gellius himself considered that several more should be accepted, since they manifested “the characteristic features of his manner and diction” (
Noctes atticae
3.3). So too Philostratus attacks those who ascribe
Araspes the Lover of Panthea
to Dionysius of Miletus, the great rhetor, indicating that they “are ignorant not only of his rhythms but of his whole style of eloquence, moreover they know nothing of the art of ratiocination.”
¹⁴⁷
The work instead was written by Celer, “the writer on rhetoric” who was in fact unfriendly with Dionysius from their youth onward, and “was not skilled in declamation” (
Lives of the Sophists
1.22). So too in his
Life of Apollonius
,
(7, 35) he indicates that the enemies of his protagonist had forged a letter
in his name, in which it was stated that Apollonius supplicated Domitian on his knees to be released from his bonds. Philostratus had no difficulty exposing the forgery: “Certainly Apollonius wrote his own will in Ionic; but a letter of his in that dialect I have never come across, though I have made a large collection of them, and I never observed verbosity in one of the Master’s letters, since they are all brief and telegraphic.”
¹⁴⁸

We have already seen that the educated elite among the early Christians were also adept at establishing authorship on the basis of considerations of style. Origen, for example, recognized that Hebrews could not have been written by Paul (Eusebius,
H.E
. 6.25); his contemporary Dionysius of Alexandria showed that the book of Revelation was not authored by the fourth Evangelist (Eusebius,
H.E
. 7.25); Jerome pointed out that his predecessors had called into question 2 Peter because of its stylistic differences from 1 Peter (
Vir. ill
. 1); so too he could argue that Theophilus of Antioch was not the author of certain biblical commentaries circulating in his name because they “ascribed to his authorship, which do not seem to me to match the elegance and style of the previous volumes” (
Vir. ill
. 25).

In addition to stylistic variations, ancient critics were keen to detect anachronisms and other historical problems that made it impossible for texts to have been written by their alleged authors. Returning to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for example, and his criticism of the speech of Lysias about the statue of Iphicrates: not only does the speech differ stylistically from Lysias’ other works, but the statue that it praises was not commissioned until seven years after the orator’s death. Another speech in praise of Iphicrates defends its subject’s actions during the War of the Allies, which occurred twenty years after Lysias had died. Dionysius argues on stylistic grounds that both speeches had been placed on the lips of Lysias by none other than Iphicrates himself (
Lysias
12).

Somewhat later, Pliny the Elder speaks of a papyrus letter on display in a temple of Lycia which was allegedly written by Sarpedon during the Trojan war. Pliny objects on the grounds that the manufacture of papyrus in Egypt had not yet begun by the time of Homer (let alone Sarpedon), that in fact Egypt itself did not even exist yet. Since letters at the time were written on leaden tablets and linen cloths, the book cannot be authentic (
Natural History
13, 88). So too Diogenes Laertius, citing Favorinus’
Memorabilia
, indicates that a speech of Polycrates against Socrates cannot be authentic
since it mentions the rebuilding of the walls by Conon, which did not take place until some years after the death of Socrates (
Lives
2.39).

At other times anachronisms took place on the level of historical linguistics. From Jerome’s Prologue to his commentary on Daniel we learn that the enemy of the Christians, Porphyry, argued that the book of Daniel was a forgery that did not belong to the Hebrew Scriptures but was originally composed in Greek. This he deduced from the fact (which he had possibly picked up from Julius Africanus, who used it against Origen) that in the story of Susanna, Daniel uses the clever phrasing
“splitting the mastic tree … sawing the evergreen oak.” This kind of alliterative pun obviously works in Greek but not in Hebrew. The book therefore does not go back to a Hebrew prophet of the sixth century
BCE,
but was composed in his name by a forger living in Hellenistic times.

Christian authors too were concerned with anachronisms and historical problems that called into question the authenticity of writings, both those they cherished and those written to oppose them. As mentioned, Tertullian was compelled to engage in a rather elaborate set of mental gymnastics to explain how Enoch could have written the popular apocalypse circulating in his name, given the circumstance that any such book must have perished in Noah’s flood (
De cultu Fem
. 1, 3). Eusebius shows that the pagan Acts of Pilate in circulation during the reign of Maximin Daia could not be authentic, since it places the crucifixion of Jesus in the fourth consulship of Tiberius—that is, in his seventh year, whereas Pilate was not made governor of Judea, according to Josephus, until Tiberius’ twelfth year (
H.E
. 1.9). So too, as we have seen, Augustine had no difficulty exposing a letter allegedly written by Jesus to his disciples Peter and Paul, on the ground that Paul was not a follower of Jesus during his earthly ministry (
De cons. evang
. 1, 10).

At other times pseudepigraphic writings were suspect because they contradicted the statements found in orthonymous works of the same author or contained other kinds of implausibilities. Herodotus, for example, doubted the Homeric authorship of the Cyprian poems because their account of the travels of Helen contradicted what was said in the Iliad and the Odyssey (2.117). At the end of our period Augustine cited inconsistencies between the claims of Pelagius made on trial with writings that allegedly were produced by him years earlier, arguing that the books were likely forgeries in his name produced by others (
De Gest. Pelag
. 1. 19). And as he states with reference to one of his other nemeses, Faustus:

But even in worldly writings there were well-known authors under whose names many works were produced later, and they were repudiated either because they did not agree with the writings that were certainly theirs or because, at the time when those authors wrote, these writings did not merit to be recognized and to be handed on and commended to posterity by them or their friends. (
Contra faust
. 33.6)

Faustus himself claimed that it was completely implausible that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew the tax collector, given the story of the call of Matthew in
chapter 9
, which is narrated in the third person:

Hence, for the present we have allowed ourselves to do an injustice to Matthew until we prove that he did not write this but that someone else wrote it under his name. The indirect form of the same passage of Matthew teaches us this. After all, what does he say? “And when Jesus was passing by, he saw a man sitting at a tax collector’s station by the name of Matthew, and he called him. But Matthew immediately got up and followed him.” (Matt. 9:9) Who, then, when writing about himself, would say, “He saw a man sitting at a tax collector’s station, and he called him, and he followed him,” and would not rather say, “He saw me, and he called me, and I followed him.” The only explanation is that Matthew did not write this but that someone else wrote it under his name. Even if Matthew wrote this, then, it would not be true, since he was not present when Jesus said this on the mountain. For how much better reason ought we not to believe this, given that Matthew did not write it but that someone else wrote it under the names of Jesus and Matthew? (17.1)

From the Roman world we have the
Apology
of Apuleius, which, as we have seen, mentions the work of his accusers who produced a “forged letter by which they attempted to prove that I beguiled Pudentilla with flattery. I never wrote it and the forgery is not even plausible” (
Apol
. 87). For one thing, his accusers charge him with using magic to entrance the rich widow: But if he used magic, why would he have needed to write a flattering letter? And how would they have obtained such a letter, which necessarily would have been private, not published?

In addition to these sundry criteria of detection used by a range of critics in antiquity, there were two that appear to be distinctively Christian, driven, at least in part, by theological views that characterized the orthodox understanding of the faith.
¹⁴⁹

In some early Christian discussions of authenticity there appears a critical logic that might appear peculiar to an outsider observer. The logic is founded on the idea that regnant orthodox views were rooted in the beliefs and preaching of the
apostles of Jesus. Any writing that presents contrary positions could not, then, have been written by the apostles.

On one hand, this view is related to criteria mentioned earlier in which anachronisms and implausibilities can demonstrate a work’s inauthenticity. Authorship was judged, in part, on contents. But this kind of
Sachkritik
is now given a theological edge. Writings out of line with orthodox Christian thinking cannot be associated with authors who stand at the foundation of the orthodox church. The circularity of the logic may seem all too patent to outsiders: orthodox Christians may have claimed the apostles as their theological forebears, but the historical figures of the apostles themselves were not so easily tamed. Multiple groups of Christians in, say, the second, third, and fourth centuries could all aver apostolic support for their views. In fact, all the groups of Christians that we know about did so, even when their views were diametrically opposed to one another. For one group to judge the authenticity of a writing based on its own set of theological perspectives is simply another way to contend that the apostles “are ours, not yours.”