I recently picked up a “Collector’s Edition” of U.S. News & World Report titled “The Real Jesus”. The articles cover a number of interesting subjects, including Christmas, Jesus’ trial, archaeological discoveries, and Mary and Martha. Towards the end of the magazine is an excerpt from Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them). I haven’t read the whole book, but the excerpt is about forgeries in the New Testament world. Ehrman gives some background on forgeries and some reasons why they happened. Then on page 80 of the magazine, he makes this statement:
“From a historical perspective, there is no reason to doubt that some forgeries very well could have made it into the canon. We have numerous forgeries outside the New Testament. Why not inside? I don’t think one can argue that the church fathers, starting at the end of the second century, would have known which books really were written by apostles and which ones were not. How would they know? Or perhaps more to the point, how can we ourselves know? This might sound a little strange, but it is easier for us today to detect ancient forgeries than it was for people in the ancient world.”
Wait…what?
It’s easier for us who are farther removed in time from the writings to tell which writings are forgeries than it would have been for people who lived closest to the time they were written? Huh? The church fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries couldn’t have known which books were written by the apostles? Really?
Ok, the 2nd and 3rd centuries span 100-299 AD. So, let’s explore Ehrman’s statements a bit. Jesus died in the 30s. Tradition holds that Paul was beheaded in the mid-60s during Nero’s reign. Mark probably lived until a similar time. It’s likely that the Apostle John himself lived until 100-110 AD. So we have one of the Apostles himself living until the beginning of the 2nd century, which means his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, etc. could have lived well into the 3rd century. So, Ehrman’s claim that nobody during that time could have known which books were written by the Apostles is a bit hard to swallow simply because relatively close family members of the Apostles would still be alive at that point.
We have more evidence than this, though. Ehrman’s claims center on the church fathers not knowing which books were written by the Apostles. There’s one major problem with this. The church fathers were students of the apostles. Ignatius of Antioch who lived until 110, was a student of John. Polycarp of Smyrna, who lived until 155 AD, was also a student of John. So we have students of the apostles living until the middle of the 2nd century. Clement of Rome even mentions some of Paul’s writings in his letter to the Corinthians, which is dated around 96 AD, a mere 30 years after Paul died.
Could the church fathers have known which books were actually written by the Apostles? Yes, they could have. Relatives and students would still have been around in the time period Ehrman is speaking of. Not to mention the fact that the non-canonical forgeries Ehrman speaks of (and uses as implicit evidence that New Testament books could have been forged) were not even written until into the 2nd century.
Ehrman does get one thing right, though. “This might sound a little strange…” It does, Dr. Ehrman. A little strange, indeed.
