I have finally ploughed my way through Ehrman's longer book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, admittedly skipping many of the Greek quotations and all of the German footnotes.
It's hard not to conclude that lying and forgery were endemic among the early Christians. Three interesting examples:
The stories about martyrs. For instance, whoever wrote the Martyrdom of Polycarp professes to be an eye witness, but it's clear enough from internal evidence that he was not.
In the 4th century someone created a fictional correspondence between the apostle Paul and Seneca, the foremost Roman philosopher of his era. The 14 letters (8 "from" Seneca and 6 "from" Paul) have nothing of substance to say. They appear to have been created solely to pretend that the great pagan philosopher was impressed with Paul's writings.
The Sibylline Oracles (sometimes called the "pseudo-Sibylline Oracles") are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. (Wikipedia) Several chunks of the oracles are forgeries by Christians and also Jews, pretending that these pagan prophetesses either endorsed the monotheism of the Jews or foresaw the coming of Christ. More than one passage has a neat little acrostic in which the first letters of successive lines spell out Jesus Christ Son of God Savior ICTHYS (or fish) in Greek. Both Jerome and Augustine were taken in by the forgery.
It may be true that many early Christians were ready to die for their faith, but it is also true that many Christians were ready to lie for their faith.
It's hard not to conclude that lying and forgery were endemic among the early Christians. Three interesting examples:
The stories about martyrs. For instance, whoever wrote the Martyrdom of Polycarp professes to be an eye witness, but it's clear enough from internal evidence that he was not.
In the 4th century someone created a fictional correspondence between the apostle Paul and Seneca, the foremost Roman philosopher of his era. The 14 letters (8 "from" Seneca and 6 "from" Paul) have nothing of substance to say. They appear to have been created solely to pretend that the great pagan philosopher was impressed with Paul's writings.
The Sibylline Oracles (sometimes called the "pseudo-Sibylline Oracles") are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. (Wikipedia) Several chunks of the oracles are forgeries by Christians and also Jews, pretending that these pagan prophetesses either endorsed the monotheism of the Jews or foresaw the coming of Christ. More than one passage has a neat little acrostic in which the first letters of successive lines spell out Jesus Christ Son of God Savior ICTHYS (or fish) in Greek. Both Jerome and Augustine were taken in by the forgery.
It may be true that many early Christians were ready to die for their faith, but it is also true that many Christians were ready to lie for their faith.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
