Is the New Testament Actually *Filled* with Forgeries?

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Episode Outline:
0:00 How much of the New Testament is actually forged?
1:06 Bart and Megan on London, Greek philosophy, tea, and morning routines
5:29 Why forgery matters for understanding the New Testament at all
6:44 What “forgery,” “pseudepigraphy,” and “orthonymous” actually mean
9:14 Why the canonical Gospels are not forgeries in the strict sense
10:14 Which 8 books of the New Testament are really written by the people they claim
11:52 Why so many New Testament books ended up as forged writings
13:46 Why anonymous books later got falsely attributed to famous figures
15:01 What happens if you remove forged writings from the New Testament
17:32 How some forgeries affect major ethical and social debates, including slavery and women’s authority
20:07 What counter-forgeries are, and why 2 Thessalonians is a key example
23:44 James as a likely counter-forgery responding to another forged Pauline tradition
27:02 Why early Christians kept books in the canon even when they disagreed with each other
31:26 Course promo: Paul and Jesus: The Great Divide
33:03 Weekly Update: Bart’s new 8-lecture course on the Gospel of Matthew
35:10 Example from Matthew: Jesus intensifies the law rather than abolishing it
38:15 Bart’s Soapbox: why he does not want to dismiss all religion as “nonsense”
43:09 Final summary: a large portion of the New Testament is forged or falsely attributed, and that matters for interpretation

Episode Description
In our previous episodes on "literary forgery" in early Christianity, we have never yet talked about the elephant in the room: why are there so many in the New Testament? In this episode we will not be going over the old ground of what forgery is (an author falsely claiming to be a famous person) or how it was justified in the ancient world, even among writers who urge high ethical standards (!). We are instead interested in the startling scholarly claim that of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, only eight of them were probably written by the person to whom they are attributed. In some cases the attributions are made by later readers (the author of Mark does not claim to be Mark); but in many cases the authors themselves make the false claim (2 Peter claims to be written by Peter). We might understand how one or two books like this managed to get into the Christian New Testament. But nineteen?

Also watch these episodes:
Who Really Wrote the Gospel of John?
Who Really Wrote the Gospel of John?

5 Evangelical Truisms that Aren't True
5 Evangelical Truisms that Aren't True

Does the Book of James Attack the Teachings of Paul?
Does the Book of James Attack the Teachings of Paul?

Megan asks Bart:

-Why is forgery in the New Testament an important topic?

-Pseudepigraphy, forgery, and orthonymous: could you just explain exactly what those terms mean?

-The canonical gospel are pseudepigraphic, correct?

-In your book “Forgery and Counterforgery”, you write that only eight of the twenty-seven books in the NT are orthonymous, that is, they were written by the person who claimed to have written them. What are those eight books?

-That leaves 19 books that are either forgeries, or falsely attributed. Why is so much of the NT in this category?

-What about the books that are falsely attributed?

-If we take out all of the books of the NT that academics have determined are forgeries, how does that change the message of the NT as a whole?

-Would the removal of these books impact any major theological or moral debates among Christians?

-What are “counterforgeries”?

-What can the forged books of the NT tell us about the development of Christianity as a religion?

-What insight does the inclusion of some of these forgeries in the NT give about the religion the early church fathers were trying to form, as opposed to what we’d consider to be heretical beliefs?

-Why do books with conflicting views both get included in the NT?