Who Wrote the Bible & Why It Matters: Truth vs. Lies

note: this issue is particularly interesting because the practice of pretending to be a great master in China and writing under his name is SO common, that it’s accepted as a way to get your teachings accepted by a wider audience. But does the initial lie, of author’s name,corrupt the rest of the text? – Michael

WHO WROTE THE BIBLE AND WHY IT MATTERS
By Bart D. Ehrman
Huffington Post
March 25, 2011

http://nhne-pulse.org/who-wrote-the-bible-why-it-matters/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/the-bible-telling-lies-to_b_8403
01.html

Apart from the most rabid fundamentalists among us, nearly everyone admits
that the Bible might contain errors — a faulty creation story here, a
historical mistake there, a contradiction or two in some other place. But is
it possible that the problem is worse than that — that the Bible actually
contains lies?

Most people wouldn’t put it that way, since the Bible is, after all, sacred
Scripture for millions on our planet. But good Christian scholars of the
Bible, including the top Protestant and Catholic scholars of America, will
tell you that the Bible is full of lies, even if they refuse to use the
term. And here is the truth: Many of the books of the New Testament were
written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous
apostle — Peter, Paul or James — knowing full well they were someone else.
In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies
about his identity is a forgery.

Most modern scholars of the Bible shy away from these terms, and for
understandable reasons, some having to do with their clientele. Teaching in
Christian seminaries, or to largely Christian undergraduate populations, who
wants to denigrate the cherished texts of Scripture by calling them
forgeries built on lies? And so scholars use a different term for this
phenomenon and call such books “pseudepigrapha.”

You will find this antiseptic term throughout the writings of modern
scholars of the Bible. It’s the term used in university classes on the New
Testament, and in seminary courses, and in Ph.D. seminars. What the people
who use the term do not tell you is that it literally means “writing that is
inscribed with a lie.”

And that’s what such writings are. Whoever wrote the New Testament book of 2
Peter claimed to be Peter. But scholars everywhere — except for our friends
among the fundamentalists — will tell you that there is no way on God’s
green earth that Peter wrote the book. Someone else wrote it claiming to be
Peter. Scholars may also tell you that it was an acceptable practice in the
ancient world for someone to write a book in the name of someone else. But
that is where they are wrong. If you look at what ancient people actually
said about the practice, you’ll see that they invariably called it lying and
condemned it as a deceitful practice, even in Christian circles. 2 Peter was
finally accepted into the New Testament because the church fathers,
centuries later, were convinced that Peter wrote it. But he didn’t. Someone
else did. And that someone else lied about his identity.

The same is true of many of the letters allegedly written by Paul. Most
scholars will tell you that whereas seven of the 13 letters that go under
Paul’s name are his, the other six are not. Their authors merely claimed to
be Paul. In the ancient world, books like that were labeled as pseudoi —
lies.

This may all seem like a bit of antiquarian curiosity, especially for people
whose lives don’t depend on the Bible or even people of faith for whom
biblical matters are a peripheral interest at best. But in fact, it matters
sometimes. Whoever wrote the book of 1 Timothy claimed to be Paul. But he
was lying about that — he was someone else living after Paul had died. In
his book, the author of 1 Timothy used Paul’s name and authority to address
a problem that he saw in the church. Women were speaking out, exercising
authority and teaching men. That had to stop. The author told women to be
silent and submissive, and reminded his readers about what happened the
first time a woman was allowed to exercise authority over a man, in that
little incident in the garden of Eden. No, the author argued, if women
wanted to be saved, they were to have babies (1 Tim. 2:11-15).

Largely on the basis of this passage, the apostle Paul has been branded, by
more liberation minded people of recent generations, as one of history’s
great misogynists. The problem, of course, is that Paul never said any such
thing. And why does it matter? Because the passage is still used by church
leaders today to oppress and silence women. Why are there no women priests
in the Catholic Church? Why are women not allowed to preach in conservative
evangelical churches? Why are there churches today that do not allow women
even to speak? In no small measure it is because Paul allegedly taught that
women had to be silent, submissive and pregnant. Except that the person who
taught this was not Paul, but someone lying about his identity so that his
readers would think he was Paul.

It may be one of the greatest ironies of the Christian scriptures that some
of them insist on truth, while telling a lie. For no author is truth more
important than for the “Paul” of Ephesians. He refers to the gospel as “the
word of truth” (1:13); he indicates that the “truth is in Jesus”; he tells
his readers to “speak the truth” to their neighbors (4:24-25); and he
instructs his readers to “fasten the belt of truth around your waist”
(6:14). And yet he himself lied about who he was. He was not really Paul.

It appears that some of the New Testament writers, such as the authors of 2
Peter, 1 Timothy and Ephesians, felt they were perfectly justified to lie in
order to tell the truth. But we today can at least evaluate their claims and
realize just how human, and fallible, they were. They were creatures of
their time and place. And so too were their teachings, lies and all.

……………….

Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious
Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the New York
Times bestselling author of’Misquoting Jesus’ and ‘Jesus, Interrupted’. His
latest book, ‘Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors
Are Not Who We Think They Are’, is now available from HarperOne.