WHY SOME NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS MUST BE ADMITTED TO BE FORGERIES

I recommend Bart Erhman's work on this subject.

Christians today know that some New Testament writings and Old Testament writings are not really the work of the people they say they are. Christians try to make out that it was okay to write in the name of x if you were a disciple and in a position to know the teaching and what he would write. They say it was accepted and nobody thought of that is forgery or lying.  2 Thessalonians considered a forgery itself warns that fake letters from the apostles were going around.  Even if normally a letter not written by Paul could be treated as an authority and not a forgery this problem rules that out.

The evidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really wrote the gospels is inconclusive.  The evidence that John wrote John is appalling and thin.  Forged speeches from the apostles appear in the Book of Acts.  Some letters of Paul are not real.  2 Peter is suspected of being a forgery in the name of the apostle Peter.  We don't know who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews.  So we have documents with problematic origins and they often contain material, eg Jesus' sermons, that were clearly made up.  We have forgeries within forgeries.

Then why is it so prevalent?  There is simply too much of it!

Nearly every time New Testament and early Church writers need a text from God's word to advance a teaching or doctrine they use the Septuagint not the real version, the Hebrew.  It has gone to the extreme where a Jewish rabbi, Jesus, trained in the latter, using the latter for worship is made to speak as if he only had the Septuagint.  That is forgery and deception too!  Jesus did not minister to non-Jews - one or two exceptions makes no difference - so he had no need for the Septuagint and its fantasy translation of the Hebrew Bible.  Yet he had the nerve to say that the text of the Old Testament would never pass away and was sacred down to the very iotas.

The Christians give no evidence that if this tradition that you could write in your masters name as him existed that the New Testament people respected it.  As lies were strictly banned in Christianity, the Church would find it too hard to explain if accused of lies so it would not allow the tradition to be upheld.  So if the tradition did exist it barely did for there is no evidence. It is just an excuse for trying to say the Bible is reliable even if Peter and co did not write any of it. It accuses God of divinely inspiring lies. It accuses the apostles of being liars and they had to be that if they spawned too many liars in their church.

Matthew’s gospel was not really written by Matthew but it pretends it is without saying it outright. Other books do the same thing.  Giving a false impression amounts to lying.

The Second Letter of Peter claims to be penned by Peter which is a blatant lie.  It states that, "I am writing you this second letter" - 3:1. Clearly it alleges that it comes from Peter himself. The letter is riddled with judgment and bigotry and warnings about divine vengeance. Whoever wrote it knew about the first letter. But was the first letter really Peter's only letter? Letters of Paul were lost so why not Peter's? If Peter only wrote one letter then he was not much of a pope! Popes need to write to live up to their claim to feed the flock with correct doctrine.

2 Peter is believed by most mainstream scholars to have been written by somebody pretending to be Peter. Yet it is supposed to be the word of God. If Peter was the pope, could you imagine God inspiring a pseudo-Peter to write the letter? Pseudo-Peter certainly did not think Peter was head of the Church. If he had, he would have had something like this in the letter, "I, Peter, in humble submission to God, am chief among the elders and bishops of the Church". He didn't. It would be an unimaginable omission if Peter was the pope. And especially as we see, the letter warns readers not to be led astray from the security given by faith in the writings of Paul. He is not worried at all about the security lost by those who turn their back on the direction given by the pope. He writes as one whose death is not far off so he wants to give guidance before he goes. He urges the readers to recall what he writes frequently after his departure (1:14,15). Does not sound like he expected another pope to take his place!

This Peter is giving the impression of writing only to people in Pontus, Galatia, Cappodicia, Asia and Bythynia as well as he says, "I am writing you this second letter" - 3:1. And he is not far from death. He was not in Rome. He didn't even include Rome. He would have done had he been there.

Hardly any forgers in those times were found out. Most of the time that was because they were able to do a good job and plus it was easy to fool even the experts who did not have the tools or knowledge we have today.  Why put any effort in in sounding like the real person unless you are trying to deceive?

The true authors were hard to find which gave forgers an advantage. 

It is said that we should not call the writers of the New Testament forgers as they did not write for a market and were not paid. How do you know they were not paid? Bribed even? Scrolls must have been sold for the gospels and so on to eventually survive.

Tertullian tried to explain how the forged book of Enoch could have survived so long and is real. He thus refuted the notion that certain religious books can be made by people who speak in the name of somebody and that is enough. It is not enough.

What gives the game away is that if you had the handwritten originals you would not then be saying that it is okay for a letter to claim to be penned by Paul if it is not. The more copies are made and when the original is gone it is easy then to forget we are talking forgery. What if there was a clear attempt to copy their actual handwriting?

The fact is that if people were pretending to write as Caesar or Socrates and being open about it their writings would be dismissed. They have no hope of their writings getting any authority.

What good motive would you have for faking a letter? Why not say you are writing Peter’s doctrine and can voice that you are telling the truth? Why write as if you are Peter?  You know the answer.