Customer Reviews

Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

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If Ehrman's previous books, especially Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus) and Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them), are any guide, "Forged" will be dismissed in one of two ways. The more progressive Christians will say that Ehrman is not saying anything new, that they have known forever that several of the books in the New Testament were not written by who they claim to be written by. The more conservative Christian will simply dismiss the scholarship as the desperate attempt of a person who hates Christianity and God to find some way of dismissing his message. This second group will also have a mountain of shop-worn workarounds that they think plausibly answer academic scholarship.

"Forged" was not written for scholarly progressive Christians or obscurantist conservative Christians. It was written for the large number of people who more or less accept Christianity as true, or at least a pleasant and socially useful belief system, but who have some questions, perhaps some doubts, and are curious to learn more about their scriptures. Secondarily it is written for people like Erhman himself (and incidentally, me) who were evangelical Christians with a religiously inspired commitment to truth, who find that our dedication to the truth is leading us away from the religion itself. This is how Erhman starts "Forged," with another brief take on his "testimony"--a move from devout evangelical at Moody, to a skeptic at Wheaton, to a critic at Princeton. I think it's an effective reminder that sometimes, contrary to what some Christians think, it is virtue (in the form of truth-loving) rather than some vice that brings us to the point of rejecting Christianity.

Because of his history (not in spite of it), Ehrman writes with understanding and sympathy about what believers take as true about the New Testament, while pulling no punches in taking on the nature of ancient forgery, how it was viewed by scholars and the public during the ancient period, the motivations and intents that might lead to forgery, and so forth. He sets the stage with an historical perspective, then launches into punchy, popularly oriented chapters on why it is widely held that several of the books claimed to be written by an apostolic figure almost certainly were not. Selecting the most interesting and compelling bits of information for such likely forgeries as 1 and 2 Peter, the pastorals of Paul, and others, he makes a breezy but forceful case that the view of many conservative Christians is too simplistic to reflect reality.

And of course he is well-aware of how evangelical scholars have responded to the kind of case he's making (the progressives who say this is old hat are not entirely wrong--the argument has been around in one form or another for many years, but what has been largely missing is lay accessibility), and gently picks apart their apologia. He ends the book with a section that is not on forgery per se, but on the way scribal interpolations amount to sort of further dishonesty within the New Testament pages. This is followed by a reiteration of the theme that begins "Forged"--the importance and virtue of truth. It's hard not to read between Ehrman's lines the disappointment and pique of someone who for many years had been hoodwinked by pious fraud. I attended a Bible college not dissimilar to Ehrman's Moody Bible Institute, and in the course of learning about the Bible were made only dimly aware of critical scholarship--that it existed, not what it said. We were taught that criticism could only be for one reason: people were uncomfortable with the rigors and demands of submitting to Jesus and scriptural authority, and were seeking loopholes. How shocking to discover that people who should have known better, who had an avowed and radical allegiance to truth, would work so hard to distract us from a thorough search for truth and hide from us the works of those seekers who came before us. We can be grateful that Ehrman is putting this digested, reader-friendly scholarship into the hands of so many people who care enough about what's true that they're willing to challenge their own comfortable assumptions.

I don't often write reviews, but seeing how basically everyone who has reviewed it so far hasn't even read it, I thought I would help out people who were actually interested in purchasing it.

As usual, Ehrman takes a topic that could potentially bore one to tears and makes it accessible and fascinating. Like all of his popular works, this book was engaging, enlightening and very easy to read. After reading for awhile, I was always surprised how much progress I had made.

As for the content of the book, it is just what you would expect. While he does touch on forgeries a bit in other books (Jesus Interrupted, for example), he really goes into a lot of depth on what went on in the early Christian church, and how people would go about trying to get their views heard, the tricks they used, and how modern scholars work to see through the lies.

It truly is fascinating to learn about how many different viewpoints were being thrown around at that time. Apparently, forgery was so rampant, that some authors would develop little tricks to catch and dissuade forgers. But then forgers would turn around and condemn forging texts, just so people wouldn't get suspicious of their own forgeries!!

One thing that I always appreciated with Ehrman's work, is that he touches on early Christian texts that most people have never heard of. He discusses Gnostic forgeries, anti-Gnostic forgeries, as well as gospels I have never heard of. I was very amused to learn that there exists a "Gospel of Pilate" (forged of course). And it is always amusing to hear that scholars agree that some books of the Bible are forgeries, such as first and second Timothy.

Anyway, the book is filled with fascinating bits, such as ones I just mentioned, and it really helps to see just how fascinating Biblical history really is. I learned a lot, and I am very happy that Ehrman continues to write for non experts like myself. Lastly, I thank Ehrman for including an index. Jesus, Interrupted didn't have one, and it drove me nuts.

I see Ehrman has been successful at getting the Christians to post some one star reviews. Not surprising.

I have read several of Ehrman's books and have found them all to be excellent attempts at unearthing the truth. The fact that he was a devout Christian himself at one time only offers credibility to his work. If you believe the Christian Bible is the infallible and unerring word of god then Ehrman is probably not your author. Perhaps you would be better to stick with comic books and horoscopes. If, on the other hand, you are a seeker of evidence and a rational thinker then Ehrman is a great resource.

Pay no attention to the single star reviews. Believers (i.e. "make-believers") will always attempt to burn books and quell reason. If you are a make-believer and your mind is seeking some intellectual freedom and reason then buy this book. I would bet 100:1 odds that the single star reviewers never even read the book.

Keeping writing Bart and I'll keep buying your books and enlightening my mind.

I chose the title of my review, because it is simply odd (but true) to think of ancient Christians writing treatises with the intent of expounding on some profound "Truth," only to lie about who wrote their words.

Also, it is amusing to read the reviews of this book that claim Ehrman is on the fringe, or some such nonsense. The extremely conservative branch of right-wing Christianity that insists on everything being on the up-and- up with their scriptures, and can't handle it when it isn't, is the real fringe.

This is not only "modern" scholarship, either, and Ehrman is not, by far, the only one that has written about these issues. Scads of scholars over the centuries, even the centuries close to the time of Jesus, have brought up many of the issues Ehrman is writing about today -- study the scholarship on the development of the OT and NT canon (especially those by F.F. Bruce and B.M. Metzger), and you'll know what I mean. The main difference is that Ehrman is a popular writer, writing for a popular audience, not just for other scholars, as so many of his peers do.

For example, just sample The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, The HarperCollins Study Bible: Fully Revised & Updated, or The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha. These are not fringe works, but represent the bulk of scriptural scholarship in a compact form, which can be perused by the layman. There are introductions, notes, and essays in these study Bibles that address the very same issues Ehrman has been writing about for years. If you really want fringe, go to the NIV Study Bible or the Ryrie Study Bible. Everything is perfect in their world.

Now, check these out:

Ephesians
Colossians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Hebrews?
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
Jude

This is a list of 10 (or 11 with Hebrews) of the 27 books of the New Testament. These are the ones that can be seen as forgeries, because they claim to be written by someone that did not write them. One could possibly add Hebrews to this, because though it does not say it is written by Paul, it leaves little statements to imply it was.

This does not mean the rest of the books of the New Testament are fine and dandy. Oh no. Another 9 (10, if you include Hebrews in this group), we have absolutely no idea who they were supposed to be written by, anyway, because they were originally written anonymously, then attributed to some famous soul later. This is that list:

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
Hebrews?
1 John
2 John
3 John
Revelation (technically, a misattribution, since a "John" that claims to have written it may have written it, but not the apostle, and not even the same writer as the gospel by that name -- John is and was a common name)

This leaves only 7 letters of Paul, currently generally uncontested, that we know the origin of:
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
Philemon

In my opinion, the weakness of this work is that Ehrman does not keep his focus on the works that have already been accepted into the canon of the New Testament, but drifts off into many extra-canonical works. He also seems to have a weakness for writing about Gnostic works, and if one reads much of Ehrman, one may tire of this. There is so much more that could have been written about the books that have been accepted into the NT, and why he chooses to omit fuller descriptions of evidence on that count is beyond me. For example, when he mentions the "Pericope Adulterae," he omits some of the most profound evidence that it is not an original piece of the gospel of John. Why omit the evidence that is so convincing, and spend so much time talking about those works outside of the Bible?

He says in this book that it is his intention to also write a scholarly version of this book, mainly for scholars, of course. That is the book I would expect to handle the issues in the way I would have desired, and I look forward to that work.

If anyone has an interest in knowing more detail about the true nature of the Bible, I highly recommend any of the study Bibles I mentioned above as mainstream (New Oxford Annotated Bible, the HarperCollins Study Bible, or The New Interpreter's Study Bible), and I recommend all of the works by Bart Ehrman, as he is particularly adept at getting the points across, calling a spade a spade, rather than trying to be politically correct, as so many other scholars do.

It's a strong term, forgery, one that many biblical researchers hesitate, or refuse, to use. When dealing with a book such as the bible; touted to be the ultimate truth in the world, one certainly must give the use of that word serious consideration. Only the most educated, the most serious of researchers, would be qualified to make such a judgment.

Professor Bart Ehrman is such a researcher and comes right out to give us the facts. Forgery is the exact word to use for a large percentage of the new testament and large sections of the old as well. Having just finished his book, published in March 2011, and speaking as a detective of 25 years, I must completely agree.

Professor Ehrman's book is an examination of forgery in the ancient world, how it was viewed, and the repercussions for the use of forgery. Was forgery acceptable? How common was it? Was forgery used in the creation of Christian texts; both those used in the bible and elsewhere? These are questions addressed by Professor Ehrman in his usual and thorough manner.

You might think this approach unusual; the question of forgery and its acceptance in ancient society. But when you consider that new testament forgery has been widely known since the texts creations, and that since its creation apologists have been making excuses for that forgery, then Professor Erhman's questions and examinations are highly pertinent. The excuses used by apologists are examined in detail and dismissed in favor of the facts.

Spoiler alert: The new testament is crammed full of forgery, and NO, forgery (no matter how you define that word) was NOT an acceptable means of writing in the ancient world. It is and always has been a deceitful practice. A lie is, after all, just that, a lie.

So we have yet another reason why the bible cannot be used as a piece of evidence, or as a source for ultimate truth. Texts which are corrupted to this extent, manipulated and forged, are no evidence of any kind. This book provides the facts that serious seekers of truth need to sort out what is an is not fact. So, before you speak up and tell the world how to live or quote "God's Word", you might want to read up a little.

I highly recommend Professor Ehrman's book "Forged" to anyone interested in the facts, and an objective examination of the bible.

I enjoyed reading Forged so much I did not start reading any other books until I finished it. Here is what I think you will gain from this entertaining and illuminating book.
You will gain an understanding of books, writers and libraries in the ancient world as well as why people forged books. If you have ever wondered how two Bible verses could be so absolutely contradictory, this book will enlighten you regarding how those differences came to be.
Forged will whet your appetite for authors like Eusebius, Jerome, and Tertullian as well as modern scholars, who like Ehrman, will expand your knowledge of how the books of the Bible came to be.
I am from the same fundamentalist background as professor Ehrman and it was drilled into me from an early age that the books of the Bible were all somehow magically preserved from error by God. I realized they were not perfect many years ago, but Ehrman does a great job of explaining why and how this collection of books came to be written by people who wanted to present their version of the "truth".
I found Professor Ehrman's book Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament a good companion to this book.

There are many excellent reviews of Bart Ehrman's latest book, Forged, so I won't attempt that here. Instead, I wish to anticipate one objection that arises when word counts are used to demonstrate two documents were authored by different people (as in the NT). There is a tendency for people unacquainted with quantitative analysis to distrust its use, especially on texts having great cultural and historical significance, such as the Bible. To help allay these concerns, I wish to relay one example where such analysis clearly worked. (I used this example every year for 30 years in an undergraduate statistics course I taught.)

Historians had long disputed the authorship of several of the Federalist Papers. The papers in question had been authored by either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton, but an analysis of the content of the papers did not yield a clear consensus. However, a simple statistical analysis of word frequency (for example, of the incidence of the prepositions "to" and "by") by Mosteller and Wallace (1964) unequivocally demonstrated that Madison was the author of the disputed papers. This has been more recently confirmed by Fung (2003). Such is the power of numbers! A little counting can go a long way.

References:

Fung, Glenn (2003). The disputed federalist papers: SVM feature selection via concave minimization, New York City, ACM Press.
Mosteller and Wallace (1964). Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

I believe this book adds to the search for truth that benefits open religions.

I'm a graduate of a conservative christian seminary and now must confess I have been a Recovering Fundamentalist for about 10 years. In my pastoral counseling I noticed that the parishioners with the most intractable psychological problems were usually rigid fundamentalists. They tended to be angry and controlling, and blind to their condition!

By contrast, clients with "fruits of the spirit" seemed to have learned self-reflective openness to change, including with their theology. They flexed when necessary, and compromised with one another in the service of love. And progress.

Given the Fundamentalist wars that are ongoing around the world, I long for greater understanding between the world's religions-- as great-great grandsons and granddaughters of Abraham- why can't we all just get along? In that regard, I'd like to offer a kinder more inclusive title to Ehrman's book-- "How Early Christians Tried To Help By Creatively Bolstering Their Case For Christ". Oh-oh, too wordy? :)

But seriously, it seems possible that all inclusive versions of major world religions are saying the same thing; all revere stillness, peace, and love of neighbor, for example. And they all value meditation and reflection. Eckhart Tolle seems to catch this modern trend, and is spending his life learning it and teaching it.

Thirty years ago I would've "humbly", "prayerfully", and piously attacked this "secular humanism" and relegated it to Hell. Now, in old age, I'm finally enjoying a life of quiet heaven. I refrain from the Brand Name religions and their proprietary and divisive terms, and enjoy a stance of "joyful interrogation". The Bible is Eastern, and as an Eastern scholar put it, "Human life is joyful interrogation. Any answer is blasphemy".

Enjoy the questions--this book helps that process, I believe.

By now, Bart Ehrman has hit on a winning formula: Take some views on the New Testament that are widely accepted by scholars, but not well known to the general public, add a dollop of new research, give the result a provocative title, and--voila--another best seller is born. In this case, Ehrman's main point has been known to scholars for a very long time: With the exception of some of Paul's letters, the books of the New Testament were not written by the people whose names are on them. Some books--notably, the four Gospels--were originally anonymous, but decades after their first appearance had the names of authors attached to them. Others, though, including several of Paul's letters, were written by people falsely claiming to be someone other than who they were.

What should we make, for instance, of 1 and 2 Timothy or Titus, letters that claim to have been written by Paul, but that most scholars believe were written be someone else? Ehrman argues that in modern times we would have no problem labeling these books as "forgeries." Apparently, though, most scholars have resisted using this term. They have argued either that writing in someone else's name was not considered to be forgery in the ancient world or that the books would have been understood by their first readers as being written under the influence of or in the style of the named author, rather than actually being written by the named author. Ehrman's scholarly contribution--or so he claims; I lack the expertise to evaluate the claim--is to show that people in the ancient world had no more tolerance for authors falsely claiming to be someone else than we do today. In other words, forgery was well understood in the ancient world and was condemned. In addition, he debunks the idea that readers would have understood that books like 1 and 2 Timothy were not actually written by Paul, even though they claimed to be.

Overall, I find Ehrman's argument convincing. The letters now thought not to have been written by Paul certainly read as if the author wants readers to believe that he is Paul. It is hard not to draw the conclusion that conscious deception was involved in composing and circulating these writings--however noble the intentions of their authors might have been.

I think Ehrman's great commercial success is based on several factors: First, he is an excellent writer. His books are easy reads and he avoids getting bogged down in minutiae or in rehashing controversies with other scholars. Second, there is a significant audience out there that is familiar with the New Testament, but not familiar with the findings of recent scholarship. So, repackaging that scholarship for the average reader has been a successful strategy. Finally, he is willing to draw conclusions that are striking--and will seem even more striking to the average reader. Like most people with some interest in the text of the New Testament, I knew that some of Paul's letters and some of the other books included in the New Testament were not actually written by their supposed authors. But labeling these books as being forged and discussing the implications of that labeling is striking. (Note, by the way, that Ehrman does not label the four Gospels as forged because the texts of these books do not include a claim of authorship.)

I do have some quibbles, which reduces my rating to four stars. First, like many books these days, this book is marred by more typos than is necessary. It used to be that in reading a book from a major publisher, you would be surprised to find even a single typo. This book seemed to have 15 or 20. Second, and more importantly, Ehrman is given to overstatement. Taken together, Ehrman's writings make it clear that the text of the New Testament has changed over time--possibly in ways meant to reinforce orthodox views--that there were alternative versions of Christianity in the first centuries that were eventually suppressed, and that the line dividing which early Christian books were included in the New Testament and which were excluded was drawn somewhat arbitrarily. Still, a key point that can be lost in reading Ehrman is that the truth or falsity of the Christian message doesn't depend on these points, it depends on the essential truth of the four Gospels and Paul's genuine letters. These are, by all counts, the earliest Christian documents and all were written by the end of the first century. I think that in fairness to his readers, Ehrman ought to mention this point. In addition, in this as in other books, a casual reader might believe that the text of the Gospels as we have them now is vastly different from the original text. In fact, though, he never quite spells out his views on this question. Instead, he relies on a few anecdotes. For instance, he has discussed multiple times that the story in John's Gospel about the woman caught in adultery ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.") is now considered by scholars to be a later addition. I don't understand why he keeps going back to this story. Its importance to the Christian message is minor at best. So, whether it was originally in the Gospel or added later is of no real consequence. Perhaps Ehrman believes that because the story is so well known, the average reader will be shocked to find out that it was a later addition. But shocking the average reader should not be his goal--although it surely helps in selling books!

All told, then, if you have an interest in the text of the New Testament or have enjoyed Ehrman's earlier books, you will probably find this one to be worth reading.

Bart Ehrman has emerged as a scholarly "enfant terrible" of the biblical scholarly set, writing book after book that challenge long-held beliefs about the Bible and those who wrote it. In his new book, he dares to use the F-word ("forged") to describe the authorship of several of the New Testament books.

It is long been known that certain books of the New Testament were not written by the purported authors. I learned this during my masters studies at a middle of the road seminary. The Pastoral Epistles, written in Paul's name, are known to have been written by authors claiming to be Paul. Often, this seeming fraud is explained as more or less harmless - the authors were writing in Paul's name as an homage, or in the spirit of Paul. And anyway, this sort of things happened all the time in the ancient world, right? Ehrman demolishes this point of view in two ways. One, by showing that the authors writing in Paul's name taught in contradiction to Paul's known teaching. The real Paul taught that in Christ, there is no male or female. The pseudo Paul wrote that women should not teach in the assembly. The true Paul taught that all are saved by faith in the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The pseudo Paul wrote that women are saved only by bearing children. Clearly, the person who forged letters in Paul's name was not doing so in the spirit of the true Paul! Ehrman also explodes the pious myth that the ancients had no problem writing in another's name. He provides example after example of ancient writers who excoriated those who wrote falsely, calling them thieves and bastards.

Ehrman even goes after the book of Acts, a surprising target, which purports to be the story of the early church. In many instances, Acts contradicts information in Paul's known letters. Paul says he consulted with no one after his conversion; Acts says he went right to Jerusalem to consult with the Apostles there. Paul goes to pains to show that he needed no apostolic authority other than his personal commission from Jesus Christ. Acts shows him submitting meekly to the Jerusalem authorities. Acts seems to have an agenda, and twists Paul to meet it. Though Acts is not forged, in the sense that it does not falsely claim authorship, it does falsely lay out facts to achieve an aim at odds with the truth.

What made "Forged" disappointing was not its subject matter, nor its approach. Ehrman is ever the careful scholar, and bases his conclusions on strong logic. It's just that the book seems so quickly written and shallow. There are few deep explorations of texts. Examples, when given are few and short. Then, Ehrman doesn't give us a way to interpret the mass of distortions, forgeries and lies that made it into the New Testament. Neither does he explore the rationale behind those who wrote the dueling forgeries that supported or attacked some teacher or point of view. What made the early church so ugly? Was it a systemic problem? Or one limited to a few cranky groups? Is there a way to salvage some value from this humanly-formed book? Or does Ehrman intend to reject it all?

"Forged" breaks little new ground. But its use of the provocative title word may get some scholars to be more truthful about the subject they are studying. That would be a good thing. If only the book were more interesting.