Forged

The books of the New Testament are generally considered to be accounts of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, as reported by members of his inner circle. However, scholars have known for centuries that not all the books in the New Testament are authentic—a loaded truth that remains largely unknown to the general public. Most of the apostles were illiterate and could not write. Books attributed to John, Peter, Paul and others were possibly (and in some cases, most likely) penned not by those men but by later writers looking to promote their own agendas. But if the Gospels weren’t written by Jesus’ inner circle, what does that say about the authority of the Bible?

According to religious scholar Bart D. Ehrman, many of the biblical authors lied about their identities in order to deceive their readers into thinking that they were disciples of Jesus. The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman is known for his provocative claims and impeccable scholarship. Now, in Forged, he reveals the truth about the authenticity of authorship of the Bible. Drawing from new research, he identifies a number texts forged in the name of Jesus’ disciples.

A popular myth holds that “writing in the name of another” was an accepted and common practice in antiquity. Not so, argues Ehrman. Forgery was both a rampant practice and roundly condemned. Forgery battles raged through the Roman Empire, where the deception was as scandalous as it is now. The climate was also ripe for forgery. Documents were copied by hand and circulated freely with little or no authorial control—a practice that bred political, historical and religious uncertainty. Without the assistance of modern forensic tools, forgeries were often difficult to identify.

In the second and fourth centuries, Christian scholars disputed a number of the books of the New Testament. The most famous is the Book of Revelation, a work attributed to Jesus’ disciple John. In the third century, a Christian scholar named Dionysius maintained that the writing style was so different from the Gospel of John that the two works could not have been written by the same person. It is an argument that modern scholars find compelling.

Because Christian texts were not sold, forgers were usually motivated by religious or personal conviction. A person with no status in the community had little hope of having his text about the apocalypse taken seriously. “[Y]ou could not very well sign your own name to the book. If you wanted someone to read it, you called yourself Peter. Or Thomas. Or James,” explains Ehrman. “In other words, you lied about who you really were.”

Incisive and thought provoking, Forged reveals why we have the Bible we read today.