The use of the term “forgery” in such a connexion ought to be avoided.! In the first place, the expression is an entire misunder- standing of the origin of much of the pseudepigraphic literature of the time, and on other grounds the term is equally objectionable. It is, in effect, an attempt to browbeat the judgment into the acceptance of such books as genuine, on account of the difficulty of believing that the Church could accept into the Canon what is supposed to be the product of fraud and deceit. The question of pseudonymity cannot be settled “by a profession of moral indignation”. The idea that literary property is guarded by ethical considerations is essentially modern. “Believers frequently borrowed from the books of other believers or of unbelievers, without mentioning any source, and with- out considering themselves in any way as thieves.” “ With the best intentions and with the clearest consciences they put such words into the mouth of a revered Apostle as they wished to hear enun- ciated with Apostolic authority to their contemporaries, while yet they did not regard themselves in the smallest degree as liars and
1 Zahn, who himself upholds the Petrine authorship, says ‘‘ The mere occurrence of Peter's name in an ancient writing is no proof of authorship ”’ (Introd.,\ii., p. 270).
deceivers” (Jiilicher, Introd., E. Tr., p. 52). The standard of genuineness applied to the early Christian writings, and especially in the formation of the Canon, was their conformity to the teaching of the Church. Were they orthodox or heretical? A case in point is the story related by TERTULLIAN (De Baptismo, xvii.) of the writer of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, who was compelled to give up his office “on the ground that he imputed to Paul an invention of his own” (quasi titulo Pauli de suo cumulans). He defended himself by saying that he wrote out of regard for Paul, and that therefore he had not an evil conscience. The plea was evidently accepted, and he was convicted, not of literary fraud as such, but because he dared to advocate the heretical view that women had a right to preach and to baptise. We must also take into account in our estimate of pseudepigraphy what Jiilicher calls “the boundless credu- lity of ecclesiastical circles to which so many of the N.T. Apocrypha have owed their lasting influence”. Eusebius (H. Ε., 1. 13) quotes as genuine an Epistle purporting to be written by Christ to Agbarus. «It is evident,” says Mayor (p. xxv., note 1), “that there were among the early Christians good and pious men who had no scruple about impersonating not saints alone, but the Lord of saints Himself. We should gather the same from the readiness with which the orthodox worked up and expurgated the religious romances by which the heretics sought to popularise their doctrines.”
The practice of pseudepigraphical writing is exemplified in the O.T. in Ecclesiastes, and in the apocryphal books of Wisdom, Esdras, Baruch, Enoch, and the Sibylline Oracles. The second century produced many pseudonymous books, such as the Gospel of Peter, which, after being read in the churches of Cilicia for some time, was at length forbidden by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, about the end of the century, on account of its docetic teaching. The unknown writer of 2 Peter made use of the name of St. Peter, both in order to mark his views as important, and because he believed them to be in accordance with what would have been St. Peter’s teaching under similar circumstances.
(c) The foregoing may enable us to rid our minds of prejudice when we come to consider the question as to whether any genuine teaching of St. Peter is contained in this Epistle. Are there con- tained in the Epistle any actual reminiscences of St. Peter’s teaching, and is the work written by a disciple of St. Peter?! No attempt, of course, can be made to disentangle from the rest of the writing