Forgeries in the New Testament? (Part 2)

For this blog I would like to finish up a chapter in Questioning God by Jonathan Morrow. He was dealing with the issue of whether there were forgeries in the New Testament.

One question he considers has to do with whether forgeries now exist in the New Testament Canon. He says skeptics talk about stylistic/literary problems, historical problems and theological problems. Because this book is a brief overview, the author focuses only on the stylistic/literary arguments concerning Paul and the pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus).

First, some argue that the style, vocabulary, and grammar of these epistles are different from those of the accepted letters of Paul. But Morrow notes that it's hard to come up with an accurate statistical analysis since the sample is so small. Secondly, he says stylistic arguments are highly subjective and dependent on what kinds of assumptions the critics are using. Third, he says the purpose of writing is what determines the style used, which can vary along with the vocabulary that Paul wanted to use on that occasion. In addition, the style could have been affected by the use of a hired scribe that Paul may have used. For example, we know from the book of Romans that Paul used Tertius as his secretary. We also know that Silas (Silvanus) was involved in the composition of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Morrow ends this argument by saying the early church fathers did not doubt that Paul authored these books and that Pauline authorship of them was not seriously questioned until the 19th century.

One other question he deals with has to do with authorship of the four "anonymous" Gospels. Technically they are anonymous because there are no definitive statements about who wrote them. Morrow suggests that even if we later discover that someone else wrote what we know as the gospel of Matthew, that would not mean there was an error because no claim of authorship was technically made in the document. He says that very fact that there is a title means that it became necessary to distinguish between early gospel accounts. The unusual form of the titles and the universal use of them as soon as we have any evidence suggests that they originated at an early stage. The existing manuscripts that we have demonstrate the authority given only these four Gospels. We possess no instance where an apocryphal gospel is joined with these four Gospels within a single manuscript. I think a key point is that the true identities of the authors of the four Gospels were never in question historically. From the very earliest witnesses and Church Fathers, we find the authors' names associated with each gospel. Consider this – it is difficult to conceive why Christians as early as the second century would ascribe these otherwise anonymous Gospels to three such unlikely candidates as Matthew, Mark, and Luke unless it was a certainty that they were the authors. If you were going to forge documents, you would most likely pick better-known apostles like Peter and Thomas to act as authors.

Again, there's a lot of good info here, so I'm  going to stop so people can think these points over.