How Firm A Foundation… of Forgeries?
Bogus Letters of Paul
by Mark Smith
Anybody who’s a regular reader of their local Police report knows of people in town who’ve been arrested for forging checks. It seems a fairly common crime, not too difficult to do. Forgery, however, is not limited to local petty crooks- even passport and credit card forgery has become a problem with the advent of international terrorism and crime syndicates, resulting in ingenious high-tech means to help prevent fakes- yet fakes still occur.
One of the biggest recent fakes was when the world-renowned author Clifford Irving forged an entire autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1972. He pulled it off so well he even fooled his own publishing company of McGraw-Hill into advancing him $750,000, which company also paid to have the handwriting of certain letters purportedly from Hughes authenticated by experts. If it were not for the recluse Howard Hughes himself breaking a fourteen year public silence to soundly denounce the book as a fraud, the world might never have know any better. If only Jesus had been around to maybe do likewise when his "biographies" were "published"!!!
A more recent example of fraudulent writing came to light in May of 2003. A reporter for the most prestigious paper in the entire country- The New York Times- had been making up stories and all sorts of details to go with the stories. In four years, Jason Blair wrote 700 articles for the newspaper while he worked there. From the New York Times for May 11, 2003 we read:
The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/11PAPE.html?ex=1053316800&en=f5075a75583248bf&ei=5059&partner=AOL
If a writer in our day and age, while writing for the best newspaper in the world, could get away with such deceptions for so long, how much more so a bunch of nobodies living 2000 years ago, off by themselves, writing letters that eventually made it into the New Testament??? Examples like these really should make modern Christians stop and think seriously about the claims of Biblical Inerrancy.
What if it did turn out that within The New Testament there were fraudulent letters claiming to be from the Apostle Paul? How would we know? Paul, unlike Hughes, didn’t step forward to say which of the purported documents may or may not be frauds. Paul didn't have any editors to catch him, as Jayson Blair did. Paul claimed that 500 people saw the dead Jesus walking around (1C 15), yet cites no source and names no names. Is it reasonable, or foolish, to trust such a stupendous claim based only on the word of one man? It is hard enough to detect modern forgeries; what of forgeries composed thousands of years in the past, their pretended authors long since dead? Is there a chance such forgeries may be living between the covers of The New Testament? Indeed there is a chance- and quite a strong one.
You see, from an internal examination of The New Testament, it appears that forgery of Paul’s letters was an ongoing problem even while Paul yet lived. How many of the forgeries eventually made it into the final product known as The New Testament, no one will ever know. Which of the current Pauline letters within The New Testament are actually out and out forgeries? Again, no one can say for sure. But the likelihood that several forgeries actually made it into The New Testament is quite high. In fact, many modern theologians- skilled experts in Greek and literary analysis, have already dismissed several supposed Pauline letters for reasons too technical to cite here. Rather, we will reach similar conclusions by good old-fashioned Bible study, as we see the magnitude of the problem from within The New Testament itself.
Long before the “final edition” of The New Testament was “put to press”, Paul was expressing concerns regarding the forgeries bearing his name that were already floating amongst the various early churches. We find him giving a warning to the church in Thessalonica to be on the watch for such forgeries:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. #1
From what Paul wrote above to the Thessalonians it appears that forgeries of his letters, written by fellow Christians familiar with basic doctrine, were already being circulated among the churches. These letters would have contained heresies- that is, things that the real Paul would not agree with. We know for a fact that at least some of these erroneous epistles had already "hit their targets" for their effect (influencing beliefs regarding the end times) as seen in corrupting two of Paul's contemporaries #9 is noted elsewhere.
What Paul was dealing with was nothing new. This habit of forgery in the Bible predates the Christian era. In Jeremiah we find the prophet complaining:
How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. (Jeremiah 8:8 RSV)
Rabbi Paul's adversaries were merely following an even older Jewish "family tradition" of falsifying religious documents, that is, scripture. Within the Old Testament itself is the admission that the scribes who were responsible for passing on the scriptures were falsifying the scriptures. Keep in mind that printing presses and Xerox machines did not exist back then, and new hand-written copies of scriptures had to continually be manufactured as the older copies wore out thru use and age. The men who were entrusted with this task were the scribes; the self-same scribes the "prophet of God" accuses of corrupting the documents.
Getting back to Paul, even more disturbing in what Paul wrote is the possibility that "Christian inspiration" may sometimes come from the wrong source, i.e. a "spirit" telling lies. Paul commands the Thessalonians not to give heed even to spirits. But how would a poor fisherman back then know that the "spirit" inspiring him to write new scriptures was maybe not from who it said it was? A spirit shows up to Peter the fisherman, and "inspires" him to pen some scripture. Given this scenario, it would then be possible to have a legitimately "inspired" letter (not a forgery) from an Apostle Peter, Paul, John or even Ringo, yet the "inspiration" behind the letter may have been a "spirit" from the dark side. In that case, even proving the letter really DID come from Paul's pen (though they didn't- Paul is said to have used a scribe, and we saw from Jeremiah how unreliable those are), and even if the letter really was inspired by a "spirit", there is no guarantee that the contents are from Paul's God- the letter could just as easily be overflowing with false teachings direct from "The Father of Lies" himself. This is more than a "mere possibility", as the Bible points out it's a probability, in fact an already occurring problem by the time Paul penned his letter (if it really was from Paul). And thousands of years after the fact there is no way for modern Christians to know which legitimate books of The New Testament contain illegitimate content. A "computer virus" inserted at the letter's inception would be impossible to detect now, and modern Christians would be going on their merry way of following the New Testament "to the letter" not even realizing that those same letters may have been penned by falsifying scribes transcribing doctrines of demons direct from Satan himself.
Now, back to mere forgeries; what is of concern to us nowadays is the ease in which these forgeries could have made it into the final New Testament itself. Who can say for sure that even this very letter from “Paul” to the Thessalonians was not itself a clever fraud? The fact that Paul used the services of a scribe #21 , dictating rather than writing his letters, makes it even easier for forgeries to have been produced. Upon Paul's signing his John Hancock to the dictated letter, the original scribe could have easily added, deleted, or changed the contents.
Even more clever would be for a person forging a letter from Paul to include a warning within the forgery itself against such forgeries! Seeing how even in our modern era, with our high-tech methods of detection such as electron beam microscopes and chemical analyses of papers and inks, forgeries still manage to flourish, how much more so would they have back then. Back then the only idea Paul came up with to safeguard a document was a signature at the bottom, which as any common check forger knows, is child’s play to replicate.
But apparently easily forged signatures were the best that Biblegod could come up with to protect his precious documents. It appears that modern credit card companies, with their holographic imprints and such, know more about protecting authenticity than the supposed “Lord God Almighty of The Universe”. Paul’s Biblegod could have at least come up with what was current in his own era: envelopes sealed with hot wax bearing official impressions from authorized signet rings. Paul and his god, in apparent ignorance of this technology, in desperation to slow down the floodgates of forgeries, instead filled his letters with signatures- in a vain attempt to self-authenticate the letters.
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write. #2
The salutation with my own hand----Paul's. #3
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. #4
See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. #5
I, Paul, write this with my own hand. #6
Need I mention the uselessness of these signatures to us nowadays, as they are no longer even signatures but rather typed printed names? But then again, how could a local desert deity such as Joe Hovah possible anticipate the future invention of the printing press? Be that as it may, these attempts to safeguard the documents were all in vain. How could a church thousands of miles away, upon receiving a letter from “Paul” for the very first time, know that the signature at the bottom really was Paul’s, when they had nothing on record to compare it to? No matter how many times or how loudly the document itself claimed to be from Paul, it would have been easy for a zealous Christian, eager to promote his own views, to send out fake letters and at the end inscribe, “I, Paul, write this with my own hand”. If anything, if a REAL letter from Paul ever arrived at that same church, it would run the danger of being tossed in the trash as a forgery! The poor Apostle Paul would be left spinning in his grave in frustration.
Even if the local church back then had an authenticated notarized example of the real signature of Paul on file, the problem would still persist. An average forger would have no problem duplicating Paul’s signature on the bottom of a phony letter. Upon receiving such a letter, without the services of a certified handwriting expert to compare its signature with the signature of Paul on file, a local ancient church would be helpless to know the signature was a fake. To top it off, as we’ve already seen in the Clifford Irving debacle, even WITH certified handwriting experts, even armed with the benefits of modern science, forgeries still manage to slip thru. Again, it’s sad to watch Christians grant their imaginary Biblegod such little intelligence that he thinks signatures are the best way to protect documents. I am sure that almost any one of us nowadays could produce half a dozen better ways to do it.
In light of what forgers ancient and modern have accomplished, what great foolproof method does Paul give to these ancient churches to tell a real from a forged letter? Does he suggest, as do some in our era, to compare its contents to “orthodox” teachings? No, because his letters (or what Christianity hopes and assumes are his letters) are the very tools used to construct “orthodox” teaching. You can’t use a questionable yardstick to be the standard to which other yardsticks are compared. Does Paul maybe suggest his readers consult with the “Holy Spirit” to see if the letter in their hand is a forgery? No, he doesn’t give this as an option either; so like the Mormons found out when they got tricked into buying the Hoffman frauds, the “Holy Ghost” needs a new set of glasses when it comes to spotting bogus documents.
$
"Damn ! Where did I leave those glasses!"
"Damn ! Where did I leave those glasses!" So what then is Paul’s sure-fire method to authenticate his letters from all the frauds floating around back then? Paul suggests eyeballing the signature, and as inventing even a simple magnifying glass was beyond the even simpler intelligence of Paul’s Biblegod, that means the naked eyeball. So the best method that Paul came up with is the same method that thousands of low-life check forgers across our land routinely thwart on a daily basis.
We have all heard the saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It’s unlikely then that Paul would be providing a cure to forgeries (i.e. the signatures) unless there was already a major problem with forgeries. One does not sound a fire alarm without a fire. Therefore, even while Paul was yet alive, forgeries claiming to be from him must have already been in wide circulation. The fact that The New Testament was not put into final form until hundreds of years after Paul’s death makes it even more likely that several of these forgeries made it into the final edition. In addition to complete forgeries, unauthorized changes (such as the Apostle John warns against #8 ) were also a problem plaguing The New Testament canon. The bottom line is, how the hell would any of them or us know for sure if any particular Pauline letter in our current New Testament was the real McCoy, or merely a clever forgery?
Maybe what motivated the ancient forgers was the same thing that motivates modern forgers: money. Letters within the New Testament, claiming to be from Paul, oft times solicited money and donations #7 from the readers. Just as money motivated Clifford Irving to construct his forged autobiography of Howard Hughes, so too money may have been the motivating factor behind these early forgers. How easy it would have been for someone to pretend to be Paul, send out letters begging for money to be mailed back, and just sit back and watch the collection come in? Come to think of it, isn’t this similar to what modern televangelists do for a living? Anyway, as for us, having no sure-fire way 2000 years after the fact of ever telling a real from a forged letter, this is the “firm foundation” that Christians are basing their eternal hopes on? I, for one, would not be willing to live for, much less die for, a religion built upon such questionable documents that make up that book known as The New Testament.
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Some will quibble that Christianity's "Firm Foundation" is not the Bible, but rather Jesus. But without the written word, Christians of today would know nothing about Jesus, as Paul himself said
How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? ...So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. #19
Christians without their book would be like construction workers without a blueprint, like soldiers without their guns. Paul told his young friend Timothy that the written word was the means whereby he had been saved.
From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith... all scripture is inspired by God. #20
Christianity is and always has been a religion based upon the written word. Even the Catholics, with their tradition of traditions, are willing to admit that
Christianity is assuredly a 'Religion of the Book'. It is also quintessentially a religion of books. From the eunuch in his chariot in Acts to the young Antony in his Egyptian village church, most converts to the new religion were stirred either by their own reading or by hearing others read and explain written texts. To take perhaps the most famous example, even a casual reader of Augustine's Confessions will recognize how every step in his path to full belief was marked by the reading of a book—Cicero’s Hortensius, the libri Platonicorum, and the Letters of Paul. More generally, Christianity's use of books to refute opponents, construct or contest orthodoxy, convince skeptics, and ensure organizational and doctrinal continuity makes Christianity strikingly different from other Greek or Roman religions. #16
Others have also admitted the obvious: that Christianity is a religion of the written word:
Christianity was also a religion of the written word. It was a religion of the book. #17 Christianity itself is a religion of the book. #18
To attempt to run Christianity without its foundational books would be to jerk the rug out from underneath it. Yes, the founder of the religion is usually thought to be Jesus, but between modern Christianity and Jesus is a solid foundation of written material known as The Bible. The firmness of that foundation is critical to the validity of the religion.
Conclusion
The New Testament documents claiming to be from Paul may actually be from imposters, and even the "spirits" which could "dictate" a New Testament document that actually was from Paul may not have been from God. Then what about angels dictating documents, such as is found in Revelation 1:1, can they be trusted? According to Paul, no; not even angels #10 are trustworthy (Mormons take note!). In fact, even Apostles, according to Paul, are sometimes "not straightforward concerning the truth of the gospel" #11 while others in the stew that produced The New Testament just out-and-out distorted the gospel. #14 And if all this were not enough to cast doubt upon The New Testament, there were also "loose cannons" running around from church to church. These self-appointed do-gooders #12 were pushing their own agendas. And did I mention the false teachers #13 and false brethren #15 that were also in the mix? Given this situation, all the First Century documents upon which Christianity was founded and is now maintained by do not inspire a lot of confidence. Pure "white as snow" documents can never emerge from a filthy brown smelly sewer. And a religion or church based upon such documents, such a "foundation of sand" as The New Testament has turned out to be, is not something upon which a Christian should bet their current or hoped-for life.
In the light of what we know about forgeries alone, the fact is that corrupting the entire foundation of modern Christianity was just as easy as forging a check, and we in our era don’t even have Paul’s original signature on file to compare to! In light of this, is it reasonable for anyone to bet their life on the veracity of letters that were already being targeted by forgers before the ink on the "final draft" of The New Testament was even dry? Is it possible that the “absolute morality” Christians brag about so much is actually founded upon such questionable and unreliable documents? Scriptures potentially as corrupted as The New Testament turn out to be a foundation of sand upon which to build a religion and guide a life. This is not the firm foundation most Christians were promised they had for their faith, faith for which they are asked to live, and sometimes die for.
How firm then is the foundation that Christianity is based upon? Not very, it turns out.
#1) 2 nd Thessalonians 2:1-2 RSV #2) 2nd Thessalonians 3:17 RSV #3) 1st Corinthians 16:21 NKJV #4) Colossians 4:17 RSV #5) Galatians 6:11 RSV #6) Philemon 19 #7) 2 Cor. 9 etc. #8) Rev. 22: 18,19 #9) 2 Timothy 2:16-18 #10) Galatians 1:8 #11) Galatians 2:14 #12) Acts 15:24 #13) 2 Peter 2:1 #14) Galatians 1:7 #15) Galatians 2:4 #16) Catholic University of America: Conference on The Early Christian Book, http://arts-sciences.cua.edu/ecs/conference.html #17) The History Guide: The Church Fathers, http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture16b.html #18) University of Cambridge, England course guide, Professor R D Mckitterick, Dr R W Lovatt and Dr D Mckitterick http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/course_descriptions/themes_sources.html . #19) Romans 10:15-17 #20) 2 Timothy 3:15-16 #21) Romans 16:22} "I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord."
| NOTE: For an excellent book on just how corrupt the New Testament we hold in our hands actually is, and who did the corrupting, I recommend to all the following book by a prominent Christian scholar:The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, by Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, Oxford University Press, 1996 paperback, ISBN # 0195102797. |
St. Faustus, Fifth-Century French Bishop
Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of [Jesus] which, though put forth under his name,
agree not with his faith [Judaism]; especially since-- as already it has been often proved-- these things were written
not by Christ, nor [by] his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, nor
even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the
whole upon the names of the apostles of the [Jesus] or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they
maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them.
It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while
after them, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were
little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of the apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been
their companions, asserting that what they had written themselves was written according to these persons to whom
they ascribed it