Review of Ruthven's "Faking Literature"
Here's an interesting review of one treatment of forgery in a more post-modern context: Jacket 17 - Patrick Herron - Ruthven's "Faking Literature", Forging Literature and Faking Forged Literature.
Die Traditionshypothese
Here's a German site on the a particular solution to the synoptic problem: the Tradition Hypothesis (Die Traditionshypothese). The site states the following (English translation mine):
In my view, which is also the predominant view among critics, the literary similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, not just in the story being told, but in the way in which the gospel story is expressed, are so striking that there must have been some kind of literary interdependence among the three gospels writers. I do feel, however, that contemporary source criticism could benefit from paying more attention to the use of oral traditions that overlap the written.On this site, the arguments for and against the Tradition Hypothesis are going to be discussed.
The Tradition Hypothesis means that each of the first three evangelists--Matthew, Mark, Luke--primarily used oral tradition in the composition of their gospels.
Since oral tradition is insufficient explain the bulk of the literary facts, I cannot recommend the site's particular solution, but the site's reference material, especially its bibliography, is quite nice.
The Gospel of Thaddeus: A Fake, but not a Fraud
On the Synoptic-L list, Dennis Sullivan asked:
My response (now somewhat augmented) is as follows:Has anyone looked into this?
http://www.acegroup.cc/~pburgess/thaddeus.html
A quick reading indicates that it's a conflation of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but there's more material that doesn't appear in the canonical gospels...
I wonder if it's genuine, and if the proposed dating is realistic?
Someone posted a question about it on the Jerusalem Perspective Forum.
It's a fake, but not a fraud, since the true author at the beginning of the page admits that it was an academic exercise on his part:
A number of years back, I got interested in trying to put myself "inside" the heads of the gospel writers. I also wanted to brush the "sawdust of the classroom" off of what I'd learned in the field of biblical studies.
What follows is the result of my little exercise: an entire "early second-century apocryphal gospel," complete with scholarly essays. I omit the detailed tables of texual parallels, as well as the approximately one-third of the Gospel of Thaddaeus which I also wrote up in the "original" Greek...
In other words, the text is a result of the author's experiment in composing an apocryphal gospel text, and the author appears to have a decent grasp of the non-canonical texts and other textual issues of interest to modern critics. Fortunately, we have the author's preface to prevent ourselves from being fooled. But what if the work were transmitted without that preface? As Gilbert Bagnani, "On Fakes and Forgeries," Phoenix, 14 (1960): 228–244, once pointed out, some of the hardest fakes to distinguish from the genuine article are those that were made originally as an honest attempt to recreate an old artifact but later mistakenly thought to be the real thing.
Even if we didn't have the author's own statement to guide us, scholars should still not be fooled (at least for long) as it meets all the classic criteria for a fake:
1. It is too good to be true. It's an early text that includes parallels to Thomas, of which there is intense interest today, and other early texts only made public in the 20th century like Egerton and Secret Mark. The mention of a javelin instead of a hyssop at the crucifixion (25:49) and the hawser (a big rope) through the eye of a needle (18:26) are nice touches as they acknowledge modern conjectures.
2. Its provenance is unverifiable, often accounted for by a fantastic find-story. This text is unearthed by some unknown Russian team supposedly around Edessa. However, due to UN restrictions (!) no manuscript of it was supposedly permitted out, nor photographs, and some kind of nano-virus (taken from Star Trek Voyager?) prevents even electronic copies of the manuscript to be made. But Edessa is in Urfa, Turkey, where the UN has no jurisdiction, so the excuse for no MS is bogus. Not even the original Greek is supplied, but a King James-style translation.
3. It contains anachronisms and other mistakes. For example, the idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute (3:1) is a tradition much later than its purported origin. Another late tradition is the veil of Berenice=Veronica (25:31). The names for Jesus's sisters (Deborah and Ruth) are out-of-place for the times. The text's theology of God's call is Calvinistic (not surprising since the true author of the text is Presbyterian). That a Russian would translate a Greek text into King James-ese today is also a mistake.
Human ingenuity knows few bounds. Although this kind of activity can be harmless and intellectually stimulating, there is a risk that someone more credulous or malevolent can misappropriate it for less noble and intended ends.
On-Line Greek and Latin Texts
Here are a couple of on-line texts in Greek and Latin I have found in my wanderings of the web:
- The Centrum Latinitatis Europae [the Center of Latinity for Europe] has a site (in Italian) devoted to "safeguarding classical culture." In addition to various classical resources, it has a library of Latin texts, among which is Commodian (3rd cen.), Carmen de duobus populis and Instructiones.
- Elpenor's Home of the Greek Word is a pretty site with various resources for Greek literature. One page there features Three Millennia of Greek Literature, which many samples of early Christian writers in both Greek and parallel English translation.
