Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (51 page)

48
. The lengths to which some New Testament commentators will go to absolve the author of any intent to deceive can be seen in the recent comments of R. McL. Wilson,
Colossians and Philemon
(London: T&T Clark, 2005):

The evidence from the ancient world makes it necessary to distinguish between dishonest forgery, undertaken for nefarious and malicious ends, and what might be described, paradoxical as it may appear, as “honest forgery” (p. 11). … It should be emphasized once again that the last option [that Colossians was not written by Paul] does not necessarily carry with it the stigma of fraud or forgery. That might apply in the case of a work written to propound some heretical doctrine, and as noted above many such works were later to be stigmatized as apocryphal or heretical, and therefore rejected. In the case of New Testament pseudepigrapha, however, the situation is somewhat different: these works came to be recognized by the Church as valid and authentic witnesses to the genuine Christian faith. … They witness to what the Church believed. (p. 31)

In this view, an “honest forgery” is one that supports the views that eventually became dominant within Christian orthodoxy. The dishonest forger, then, is one who had the misfortune of embracing alternative views.

49
. John J. Gunther,
St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background
(Leiden: Brill, 1973).

50
. Thomas Sappington,
Revelation and Redemption at Colossae
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); Richard DeMaris,
Colossian Controversy: Wisdom in Dispute at Colossae
(Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1994); Clinton Arnold,
Colossian Syncretism: The Interface between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); Troy Martin,
By Philosophy and Empty Deceit : Colossians as Response to a Cynic Critique
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

51
. For a nice listing of the traditional views, see Mark Kiley,
Colossians as Pseudepigraphy
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), pp. 61–65.

52
. Morna Hooker, “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?” in
Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament
, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 315–31; a more recent advocate of this view is Standhartinger,
Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte
.

53
. In one of the most impressive studies of Colossians and its Sitz of recent years, Standhartinger (
Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte
) recognizes that eschatology is the key, but she goes too far and in the wrong direction, coming up with a creative and imaginative thesis that is probably too imaginative by half: the author knows, as do his readers, that Paul is no longer living (thus she appeals to 4:3, 2:1, and 2:5 and cites Lohse,
Mitarbeiter
, p. 193; Charles Nielsen,
Status of Paul;
Margaret MacDonald,
Pauline Churches
, 127ff., and others; p. 3, n. 6). And so for her, he is writing a “letter from heaven” (Himmelsbrief), to encourage them in the face of his own death. What matters is not the polemic but the paranesis: be strong. As she puts it (p. 195): “the cause of the letter is not a specific theological position of a real group of opponents, but pessimism and discouragement in the face of the death of Paul.” In her view, then, “Col intends to comfort the community/ies that have been discouraged and dispersed by the death of Paul through a ‘heavenly letter’ from Paul, and to counter the process of dispersal that the author fears will take place. … The theological concept of this part of the wisdom movement attempts to encounter eschatological doubts with an ‘un-eschatological’ concept of the presentist ascent of the soul to God.” (“nicht eine bestimmte theologische Position einer realen Gegnerinnen- und Gegnergruppe, sondern Pessimismus und Verunsicherung angesichts des Todes des Paulus Anlaß des Briefes ist. … Die Intention des Kol ist es, der/den durch den Tod des Paulus verunsicherten und auseinanderlaufenden Gemeinde(n) durch einen ‘Himmelsbrief’ des Paulus Trost zuzusprechen und dem von den Verf befürchteten Zerfallsprozeß entgegenzuwirken. … Das theologische Konzept dieses Teils der Weisheitsbewegung versucht, eschatologischen Zweifeln mit einem ‘uneschatologischen’ Konzept des präsentischen Aufstiegs der Seele zu Gott zu begegnen.”) It is an intriguing position, but not probative, in my view, for two reasons. First, there is in fact nothing in the verses in question (4:3, 2:1, 2:5) to indicate that Paul is “dead.” Quite the contrary, the language of the letter strives to assert just the opposite, especially the “I, Paul” passages already noted above. Second, and of key importance, the polemical language of the letter is not actually directed toward eschatological false teachings. That is to say, the eschatology is part and parcel of the author’s discourse, but not as a response to alternative views. Instead, the author’s eschatology is used to deal with a different kind of problem (worship of angels and so on, not the death of Paul).

54
. See note 47.

55
. Standhartinger,
Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte
, pp. 15–16.

56
. Erasmus,
Annotationes in Novum Testamentum
(Basel, 1519), p. 413.

57
. Much that is “dem Apostel fremd … oder seiner nicht recht würdig scheint, in Schreib-… und Denkart.” As quoted in Michael Gese,
Das Vermächtnis des Apostels: Die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie im Epheserbrief
, WUNT 2, 99 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), p. 1.

58
.
The Epistle to the Ephesians: Its Authorship, Origin and Purpose
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).

59
. Gerhard Sellin,
Der Brief an die Epheser
, KEK (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008).

60
. Andrew T. Lincoln,
Ephesians, WBC
, 42 (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), p. xlviii.

61
. Martin Hüneburg, “Paulus versus Paulus: Der Epheserbrief als Korrektur des Kolosserbriefes,” in J. Frey et al., eds.,
Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion
, p. 390.

62
. Lincoln,
Ephesians
, p. xlviii.

63
. Ernest Best, “Who Used Whom? The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians,”
NTS
43 (1997): 72–96. For the older studies, see Victor Paul Furnish, “Ephesians, Epistle to the,” in ABD, 2. 537.

64
. Leppä,
Making of Colossians
, pp. 32–45.

65
. A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman,
Paul: The Man and the Myth
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), table 6.

66
. Markus Barth,
Ephesians
, AB 34 (New York: Doubleday, 1974); vol. 1 (Eph. 1–3), p. 49.

67
. Best tries to mute the force of this argument by pointing out that Paul too widely varies how he refers to Satan, referencing 2 Thess 3:3 “the evil one,” and 2 Cor. 6:15 “Beliar.” Does it need to be pointed out that one of these passages is forged and the other interpolated?

68
. Given the occasional reserve of the author—there is still some kind of future for this world—Lindemann may press the matter too far by claiming that the author of Ephesians has sacrificed Paul’s eschatology (
Die Aufhebung der Zeit: Geschichtsverständnis und Eschatologie im Epheserbrief
[Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975], p. 352). The Pauline eschatology has not been sacrificed; it has simply been muted and altered in a thoroughly non-Pauline direction. The view of Ephesians, again, appears to be precisely the one advocated by (Pauline?) enthusiasts in Corinth, whom Paul goes to some length to argue against.

69
. See especially Rom. 5:9–10 and 1 Cor. 3:15, 5:5. The one possible exception of Paul using “salvation” language in a past sense is Rom. 8:24; but even there the entire point is that Christians have been saved “in hope,” that is, in expectation of an ultimate event, yet to take place. This is precisely what is lacking in the Ephesians passage.

70
. Ernest Best,
Ephesians
, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 12–13. Among his arguments, Best claims that “had Tertullian been told that Ephesians had been written by a disciple of Paul he would have had no difficulty in accepting it, for he accepted the Gospels of Mark and Luke because they were written by the disciples, respectively, of Peter and Paul, saying that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters”; p. 13. This completely misconstrues ancient understandings of authorship, since, as pointed out earlier, Tertullian did not think that the author of Mark claimed to be Peter or the author of Luke, Paul.

71
. For example, John Muddiman’s recent solution to the puzzle of Ephesians (
The Epistle to the Ephesians
, BNTC, London: Continuum, 2001). For Muddiman, the letter embodies an authentic letter of Paul that has been thoroughly edited and revised, so that there are indubitable Pauline passages (3:1–4, 8; 4:20–21; 6:18–22) but also significant non-Pauline material, all together. This is an interesting attempt at a solution, but it is difficult to establish exegetically. There is no stylistic evidence in support, for example; and the problem is that the letter is thoroughly imbued with non-Pauline views. It is especially difficult to explain the parallels to the non-Pauline Colossians under this view. Muddiman claims that the differences from Colossians show that Ephesians was not modeled on it. But the question is not why they are different. They are different letters, so of course they are different. But why are they so similar? It is not convincing to argue that Ephesians cannot be a circular letter meant eventually to come back to Colossae, since then the Colossians would have been confused by the appearance of two such different letters coming from Paul. Why should we think the letter of Ephesians was meant to show up in Colossae? Or, as I have stressed, that Colossians was? But even more, the “solution” simply creates a problem of its own by pushing the problem back a stage, making the book a “redactional forgery.” Whoever added the additional non-Pauline material and rephrased the Pauline material would, in this case, have published it as if it were Paul’s letter itself. But it was not Paul’s. It was this other person’s letter, with his own ideas and thoughts (some of Paul’s retained, others of his own added) published in the name of someone who in fact did not publish it.

72
. “Paulus versus Paulus,” pp. 387–409.

73
. Pervo makes a similar argument concerning the relationship of Colossians and Ephesians, in
Making of Paul
, p. 71.

74
. A defense of the Pauline authorship of Ephesians can still be found in commentaries written, especially, by authors opposed to the notion of canonical forgery on principle. A good recent example is Harold W. Hoehner,
Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002), who points out that it would be hard to see how those “who knew Paul would have accepted this as Paul’s work so shortly after his death.” This begs the question of audience. He goes on to state that “most pseudepigraphical works are apocalyptic and not epistolary in form” (p. 43), the force of which is hard indeed to penetrate. He also stresses the problematic of Eph. 6:21–22, asking the rather remarkable questions of how the historical Tychicus could have explained that he did not carry the letter, and why a pseudonymous author would ask for prayers if he was, in fact, already dead.

I
t should come as no surprise that apostolic forgeries involving variant eschatological views continued to appear after the earliest period of the Christian pseudepigraphic tradition. Once the overly sanguine expectations of an imminent end began not just to wane in some circles, but to disappear altogether, various Christian thinkers developed a variety of eschatological views, many of which stood at odds with one another. Some maintained that even though the early time table may have been wrong—the end was not to have come immediately in Jesus’ generation—the basic scenario was right: the end was still to come right away, in their own time. Others contended that the apocalyptic scenario itself was flawed at the core: the Kingdom of God was not to be a future event to transpire literally on earth, but either a postmortem experience of the individual or a present reality in the resurrected existence enjoyed in the present, by both the individual and the collective body of the church. These alternative views found expression in the proclamation of various Christian leaders at the end of the first century and beginning of the second, and occasionally a writer would assume the guise of a prominent spokesperson, an apostle of Jesus, in order to authorize his position, as well as to polemicize against those advancing contrary positions.

One such forgery is the letter of 2 Timothy, written in part, allegedly, to oppose two teachers, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who insisted that “the resurrection is already past” (2:17–18). The authorship of 2 Timothy has become a matter of renewed interest over the past two decades, as some have argued that it, unlike its two Pastoral counterparts, should be credited as orthonymous;
¹
others, including one major commentator, have mounted a spirited defense for the authenticity of all
three of the Pastoral epistles.
²
In view of these ongoing discussions, it is important for the purposes of this study to explore at some length the question of authorship of the Pastoral corpus, before turning to the question of the eschatological polemic of 2 Timothy in particular. Later in the study we will return to the views of 1 Timothy and Titus, whose polemical concerns lie in a different direction.

The question of the Pastoral epistles, as a group, is important historically, as these were the first writings of the New Testament whose authorship was seriously questioned in modern times. It is commonly stated that doubts were first expressed in 1807 by Friedrich Schleiermacher, in a public letter to J. C. Gass,
Über den sogenannten Ersten Brief des Paulus an den Timotheus: Ein Kritisches Sendschreiben.
³
Jens Herzer has pointed out, however, that the authorship of 1 Timothy was questioned three years earlier by Johann Ernst Christian Schmidt, in his
Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Neue Testament.
⁴
The first to assert that all three Pastorals were to be considered as a group, to stand or fall together, was J. G. Eichhorn, in his own celebrated
Einleitung in das Neue Testament
. Eichhorn claimed that he had been questioning the authenticity of the books before Schleiermacher’s letter appeared; his case against all three was based on historical, rather than stylistic questions.
⁵
These were largely the bases applied by F. C. Baur as well, who maintained that the opponents attacked in the letters were second-century Gnostics and so, obviously, not contemporary with Paul. The letters were therefore pseudepigraphic.
⁶
Baur’s view moved toward a critical consensus with the 1880 commentary of Heinrich Holtzmann,
Die Pastoralbriefe, kritisch und exegetisch behandelt.
⁷
Despite the outspoken minority of naysayers, the consensus by and large holds today, with the overwhelming preponderance of critical scholars maintaining that all three letters are clearly post-Pauline.