Mike S wrote:Christian writers?

Literary-wise there’s been never anything like it, fraud, invention, fabrication and forgery on an unimaginable scale, including where third-party works like Josephus or Tacitus are concerned, rendering reliance on any one single passage fraught with peril.

The very fact that early Christianity found it necessary to resort to falsifying such works, including those of Josephus, where they didn’t burn them, that is, readily demonstrates that they themselves lacked any evidence of Jesus historicity.

Yes it is a very sorry state of affairs. We don't know who wrote any of the Christian material or indeed the century of its provenance. We think we know who wrote the works attributed to the early church fathers, and other identities in the Roman Empire during the early history of the nation of Christians. But do we?

What we do know is that for almost every Christian author in antiquity, we invariably find a "Pseudo-Author".

Authors and Pseudo Authors in "Early Christianity"

Paul and Pseudo Paul
Peter and Pseudo Peter
Mark and Pseudo Mark
John and Pseudo John
Luke and Pseudo Luke
Matthew and Pseudo Matthew

Justin Martyr and Pseudo Justin
Clement and Pseudo Clement
Hegesippus and Pseudo Hegesippus
Lucian and Pseudo Lucian
Tatian and Pseudo Tatian
Irenaeus and Pseudo Irenaeus
Tertullian and Pseudo Tertullian


Eusebius and Pseudo Eusebius
Cyril and Pseudo Cyril
Augustine and Pseudo Augustine


Barnabas and Pseudo Barnabas
Polycarp and Pseudo Polycarp
Origen and Pseudo Origen
Ignatius and Pseudo Ignatius

The TF and the Agbar correspondence might permit two more:

Josephus and Pseudo Josephus
Jesus and Pseudo Jesus



EDIT: Please feel free to dig out any more !!!!

Where does this lead the historical investigator?
What provisional conclusions (if any) might be drawn from this state of affair?

Without the "Sacred Seal of the Church Industry" the entire scenario appears to have little or no integrity.

I think you're chasing a pooka. So to speak. Mostly, you are assuming, without defining for yourself, or recognizing in others who you try to study, a mutually shared motivation for research. There are actually numerous motivations, many of which are in direct contradiction with each other.

igorfrankensteen wrote:There are actually numerous motivations, many of which are in direct contradiction with each other.

This is very possible. Maybe we should make a list of these numerous motivations? What motivations should be up the top of the list in order to explain the large distribution of texts attributed to "Pseudo-X' where X is the name of some important Christian literary sources? Literary forgery?

What I was referring to, are the three general motivations:

* Believers seeking purity or accuracy of texts;

* Anti-believers, seeking to emphasize the purely human sources of the texts;

* Political Historians, seeking to use the arguments, changes, and apparent multiplicity of authors and interpretations to come to a better understanding of the politics and circumstances of life in the time of the struggle over religious authority.

The accusation of forgery has a very different function and meaning, depending on the goals and motivations of the accusers.

That's a very good answer igorfrankensteen. Thanks very much. I will meditate upon these three motivations for a while.

igorfrankensteen wrote:What I was referring to, are the three general motivations:

* Believers seeking purity or accuracy of texts;

* Anti-believers, seeking to emphasize the purely human sources of the texts;

* Political Historians, seeking to use the arguments, changes, and apparent multiplicity of authors and interpretations to come to a better understanding of the politics and circumstances of life in the time of the struggle over religious authority.

The accusation of forgery has a very different function and meaning, depending on the goals and motivations of the accusers.

A mutually shared motivation for research was mentioned in the OP with the question ... Where does this lead the historical investigator? This matches your third example above. FWIW I see myself as an amateur historian, and neither a believer nor an anti-believer. Perhaps I should be discussing this in the history section? I don't care where its discussed, I am just seeking some informed discussion on the question in the OP.

Your last comment about the accusation of forgery is echoed by Momigliano ...

But it must be clear once for all that Judges and Acts,
Heroditus and Tacitus are historical texts to be examined
with the purpose of recovering the truth of the past.

Hence the interesting conclusion that the notion of forgery
has a different meaning in historiography than it has in
other branches of literature or of art. A creative writer
or artist perpetuates a forgery every time he intends
to mislead his public about the date and authorship
of his own work.

But only a historian can be guilty of forging evidence <<====== EUSEBIUS ?
or of knowingly used forged evidence in order to
support his own historical discourse. One is never
simple-minded enough about the condemnation of
forgeries. Pious frauds are frauds, for which one
must show no piety - and no pity.

However your mention of the motivation of believers and anti-believers got me thinking about the motivation of those authors name 'X' who on the one hand produced the Christian related texts attributed to 'X', and on the other hand the motivation of those authors who have been named 'Pseudo-X', to write the texts attributed to them.

In order to answer the OP I guess each of the instances of the Author/Pseudo-Author needs to be looked at. They are all different texts for a start. So there's no simple short cut. There is also the question, for the historian, as to who it was that named "Pseudo-Paul" etc etc, and attributed to this name one or more specific texts.

There may be no one simple answer to the appearance of so many writings attributed to "Pseudo-Peter", "Pseudo-Paul" and "Pseudo-Mary". I agree with the notion that they may have written at different times with different motivations. I have seen no study on this question. I have no problem with the assumption that the believers and the anti-believers both forged manuscripts in the name of Christian identity X, which were later discovered to be forgeries, and were then associated not with Christian identity X, but with "Christian identity Pseudo-X".