For the sake of completeness I should mention two books, both by Bart D. Ehrman, which address this topic of "lying for Jesus" but which I did not use.
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics
Ehrman's focus is different than mine. You might say that I have been looking at lies directed largely outside the Christian community, presumably in the interests of evangelism, e.g. telling fictions about the conversion of a prominent atheist or going right back to the gospels claiming that Jesus was born of a virgin. Ehrman looks at lies told within the Christian community, specifically literary forgeries, spurious claims of authorship by an authoritative figure.
In the first book Ehrman is concerned specifically with material which made it into the canon of the New Testament. Only 7 or 8 books of the NT are regarded as being produced by the author whose name they bear. That would be 7 of the 13 epistles attributed to Paul and possibly Revelation, whose author makes no claim except that his name is John.
In the second book Ehrman reviews the forgeries in the New Testament (pseudepigrapha to use the polite scholarly word), but he goes much farther and looks at forgeries attributed to prominent Christian figures such as Tertullian, Origen, Augustine. It would appear that the different schools of Christian thought lied as readily as our modern politicians.
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics
Ehrman's focus is different than mine. You might say that I have been looking at lies directed largely outside the Christian community, presumably in the interests of evangelism, e.g. telling fictions about the conversion of a prominent atheist or going right back to the gospels claiming that Jesus was born of a virgin. Ehrman looks at lies told within the Christian community, specifically literary forgeries, spurious claims of authorship by an authoritative figure.
In the first book Ehrman is concerned specifically with material which made it into the canon of the New Testament. Only 7 or 8 books of the NT are regarded as being produced by the author whose name they bear. That would be 7 of the 13 epistles attributed to Paul and possibly Revelation, whose author makes no claim except that his name is John.
In the second book Ehrman reviews the forgeries in the New Testament (pseudepigrapha to use the polite scholarly word), but he goes much farther and looks at forgeries attributed to prominent Christian figures such as Tertullian, Origen, Augustine. It would appear that the different schools of Christian thought lied as readily as our modern politicians.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
