I came across the following passage when looking into the question of whether a certain letter said to be by a famous ancient Roman woman was a forgery. It reminded me questions that have arisen among those debating whether a passage in Josephus is a partial or complete forgery (e.g. the Testimonium Flavianum — the passage about Jesus), or even whether entire New Testament letters are what they claim to be. The bolded highlighting and formatting is my own.
Also not unproblematic—and burdening the discussion with ambiguity—is the not uncommon tendency to handle the term “forgery” too summarily. The alternative between authenticity and forgery is too crude to capture more nuanced realities. It is also prone to introduce unchecked prejudices. The forger is often regarded from the outset as a bungler whose product reveals itself by its qualitative inferiority. While that is indeed possible and often the case, it need not necessarily always be so. The phrase “palpable rhetorical fabrication,” … is marked by its somewhat disparaging tone and is quite characteristic in this respect. On the other hand, this can lead to a situation where proof of quality is accepted as proof of authenticity—though the one by no means guarantees the other.
Finally, it must be remembered that not every literary fiction necessarily stems from an intentional intent to deceive. One need only point to speeches or letters in ancient historical works—though the same applies to rhetorical school exercises. But when a piece that was originally recognizable as fiction in its original context is removed from that context and transmitted as a fragment, it can then pose for later readers precisely the kind of problem whose complexity is no longer adequately addressed by the oversimplified alternative of authenticity or forgery.
Instinsky, Hans Ulrich. 1971. “Zur Echtheitsfrage der Brieffragmente der Cornelia, Mutter der Gracchen.” Chiron 1:177–90. https://doi.org/10.34780/HNT9-299I. pp 183f – ChatGPT translation
Neil Godfrey
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A good point that quality doesn’t mean authenticity. There’s plenty of crafters and artists who manage to improve a work they’re adapting, we should not assume edits are only made by people of lesser skill. Or less sincerity. (Even though ‘pseudo-epigraphical’ is sometimes blatantly a euphemism.)
We get this stuff on the internet every day. People are musing out loud on the internet, but wording things in ways that make people think it’s authentic information. An example of this is the ‘factoid’ that elephant brains light up when they look at us the way our brain lights up when we look at puppies. Turns out it was just made up by a woman who did not expect people to take her post as a serious fact, even though it looked like she made a meme out of a real scientific experiment.
People also seriously underestimate how much schizotypal and schizophrenic people are commenting sincerely on the internet. I know somebody who has schizophrenia, and if I didn’t know that I’d think half his posts were callous trolling. Knowing him has made me recognise other posts as potentially coming from ‘funny’ brains instead.
… 🤔 has there any study been done on the odds schizotypal people in antiquity got literate? How much would their beliefs been at odds with the rest of society?
Speaking of the Testimonium Flavianum, about a year or two ago I decided to read the passage myself, starting a little bit before that, arguing that at least if it’s supposed to be the same author and the same translator, it should feel the same. I actually got the wrong chapter and struggled through Herod’s family tree and a bit of Agrippa being bad with money (chapters 5 and 6 of book XVIII looks like) before I found the right one. But that meant I was only the more familiar with the tone of Josephus via this translator by the time I reached the passage.
Now I know this isn’t a formal argument or proper evidence of anything, but it was extremely obvious to me how different this passage was compared to the text around it. All of the detail and narrative is suddenly gone and nothing gets elaborated, and that’s plain to see even if I can’t read the original. I was prepared to not be able to say it looks different, but it does. But I know people far more qualified than I have tackled the issue already.
Everybody thinks Secret Mark is a forgery but no one has ever been able to demonstrate it or show a mistake. Bart Ehrman says it would be the most impressive show of scholarship of all time given that the author had to work in two different dialects, get the handwriting accurate for the era and perfectly imitate Clementine style. Ehrman still says Morton Smith had the chops to do it. He offers no motive, though, other than to suggest it was a prank on other scholars. I don’t know why they’re so resistant to the possibility of authenticity. I don’t think it’s likely to have been original to Mark because the reference to a “beloved disciple” clearly shows knowledge of John, but that doesn’t mean some group couldn’t have added those verse to their own version of Mark. I don’t know what could prove it was real, but if the assumption is that forgers will make mistakes then they would have to hold that the letter to Theodore must be authentic.
I also think it is a forgery but for well founded reasons. Have you read Carlson’s The Gospel Hoax? I thought that pretty well buries Secret Mark for good — demonstrating that it is a forgery. It is only natural and right for scholars to be cautious whenever new sources are uncovered. The doubts about Secret Mark have been grounded in reasonable suspicion and, especially since Carlson, sound argument, imo.
(As for Ehrman’s scholarship, his suggestion that it would be a truly remarkable achievement for a forger to work with two dialects and imitate style and even archaic lettering would be somehow “remarkable” is simply ignorance of how other writers are known to have worked, by the way. Cclassicists have long noted the way some poets worked with different dialects and imitation of the styles of archaic authors to compose certain poems, including women poets who did the same. It was easy for any educated person of the time to do and easy for anyone acquainted with the literature and language — with its various Greek dialects — of the time.)
The lack of a manuscript for SM places it outside of provable territory, much less the impossible “prove a negative” standard.