IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, JESUS is reputed to have said, “I did not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). Truer words were never spoken. Many Christians in the modern age think of their religion as peace loving, as well it often has been and should be. But anyone with any grasp of history at all knows also just how violent Christians have been over the ages, sponsoring oppression, injustice, wars, crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, holocausts—all in the name of the faith. Maybe all the Christians behind history’s hateful acts were acting in bad faith; maybe they were violating the true principles of their own religion; maybe they were out of touch with the peace-loving teachings of the Good Shepherd of the sheep. And no one should deny the amazing good that has been done in the name of Christ, the countless acts of selfless love, the mind-boggling sacrifices made to help those in need. Even so, few religions in the history of the human race have shown a greater penchant for conflict than the religion founded on the teachings of Jesus, who, true to his word, did indeed bring a sword.

Some early Christians realized that the religion would be based on conflict. The author of the New Testament book of Ephesians, allegedly Paul, tells his readers to “put on the full armor of God” (6:10–20). Their struggle was not against mortal flesh, but “against authorities, against the cosmic power of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Against these cosmic enemies Christian believers were to put on the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” This was not a battle, then, against human enemies, but against the spiritual powers arrayed against God. But it was a battle nonetheless.

It is striking that in his instructions about the Christian “armor” the author of Ephesians also tells his readers, “Fasten the belt of truth around your waist” (6:14). Truth was important for this writer. Early on he refers to the gospel as “the word of truth” (1:13). He later indicates that the “truth is in Jesus” and tells his readers to “speak the truth” to their neighbors (4:24–25). He also claims that the “fruit of the light” is found in “truth” (5:9). How ironic, then, that the author has deceived his readers about his own identity. The book was written pseudonymously in the name of Paul by someone who knew full well that he was not Paul. Falsely claiming to be an impeccable Christian authority, this advocate for truth produced a pseudepigraphon, a “falsely inscribed writing.” At least that is what ancient critics would have called it, had they known the author was not Paul. So some Christians went into battle armed not with truth, but with deception. Possibly the author felt justified in lying about his identity. There was, after all, a lot at stake.

Christians entered into conflict not merely with spiritual forces, but also with human ones. Or, perhaps more accurately from the author’s point of view, the spiritual forces aligned against Christians manifested themselves in the human sphere, and it was on this level that the battles were actually fought. As historians of early Christianity have long known, Christians in the early centuries of the church were in constant conflict and felt under attack from all sides. They were at odds with Jews, who considered their views to be an aberrant and upstart perversion of the ancestral traditions of Israel. They were at odds with pagan peoples and governments, who considered them a secretive and unauthorized religion that posed a danger to the state. And they were most vehemently and virulently at odds with each other, as different Christian teachers and groups argued that they and they alone had a corner on the truth and other Christian teachers and groups flat-out misunderstood the truths that Christ had proclaimed during his time on earth.

In all these battles, the “full armor of God” included weapons of deceit. Forgery was used by one Christian author or another in order to fend off the attacks of Jews and pagans and to assault the views of other Christians who had alternative, aberrant understandings of the faith. In this chapter I consider the conflicts with outsiders, the Jews and pagans opposed to the Christian faith. In the next chapter I take up the internal conflicts that plagued the Christian church from the beginning.

The Jewish Reaction to Christian Claims

MANY CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS today cannot understand why Jews do not accept the claim that Jesus is the messiah. For these Christians it all seems so obvious. The Old Testament predicted what the messiah would be like. Jesus did and experienced the things predicted. So of course he is the messiah. The Old Testament said he would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14), in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2); that he would have to flee as a child to Egypt and then come out from there (Hos. 11:1); and that he would be raised in Nazareth, so that he would be called a Nazarene (Isa. 11:1). It predicted that he would minister in Galilee (Isa. 9:1–2) and would be a great healer (53:4). It predicted his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the acclamations of the crowd (Isa. 62:11; Zech. 9:9), his cleansing of the Temple (Jer. 7:11), and his rejection by the Jewish leaders (Ps. 118:22–23). Most important, it predicted his crucifixion for the sins of others and his glorious resurrection from the dead (Pss. 22; 110; Isa. 53).

Jesus did everything that was predicted. Why don’t the Jews see this? It is in their own Scriptures! Can’t they read? Are they blind? Are they stupid?

The truth, of course, is that Jews throughout history have been no more illiterate, blind, or stupid than Christians. The typical response of Jews to the Christian claims that Jesus fulfilled prophecy is that the scriptural passages that Christians cite are either not speaking of a future messiah or are not making predictions at all. And one has to admit, just looking at this set of debates from the outside, the Jewish readers have a point. In the passages allegedly predicting the death and resurrection of Jesus, for example, the term “messiah” in fact never does occur. Many Christians are surprised by this claim, but just read Isaiah 53 for yourself and see.

Most ancient Jews rejected the messiahship of Jesus for the simple reason that Jesus was not at all like what most Jews expected a messiah to be. I should stress that a lot of Jews in the ancient world were not sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a messiah, any more than most Jews today are. But there were groups of highly religious Jews around the time of Jesus who thought that God would send a messiah figure to deliver them from their very serious troubles. All these groups based their expectations on the Hebrew Bible, of course; but there were different expectations of what this messianic savior would be like.¹

The term “messiah” comes from a Hebrew word that means “anointed one.” It was originally, in the Hebrew Bible, used in reference to the king of Israel, a figure like King Saul, King David, or King Solomon. The king was literally “anointed” with oil on his head during his inauguration ceremony, in order to show that God’s special favor rested upon him in a unique way (see, e.g., Ps. 2). After a time, when there were no more kings over Israel, some Jews thought that God would send a future king, an anointed one like great King David of old, who, like David, would lead Israel’s armies against its enemies and reestablish Israel once again as a sovereign state in the land. This future king, then, was to be the messiah, a completely human being who was a powerful warrior and great ruler of God’s people.

Other, more cosmically minded Jews thought that this future savior would be a supernatural figure sent from heaven, a kind of cosmic judge of the earth who would engage the enemy with overpowering force before setting up a kingdom here on earth to be ruled by God’s chosen one. Yet other Jews were principally focused on what we might call the “religion” of Israel, as opposed to its political situation. These Jews thought that the future ruler of the people would be a mighty priest who would empower the people of Israel by teaching them the correct interpretation of the Jewish law. He would rule God’s people, then, by enforcing the observance of what God had demanded in Scripture.

In short, there were a variety of expectations of what a future “anointed” figure, a messiah, would be like. The one thing these conceptions of the future savior had in common was that they all expected him to be a figure of grandeur and might, empowered by God to overthrow the enemies and to rule the people of God with authority.

The followers of Jesus, on the other hand, claimed that he was the messiah. And who was Jesus? A little known preacher from backwoods Galilee who had offended the ruling authorities and was, as a result, subjected to public humiliation and torture and executed as a low-life criminal on a cross. For most Jews, it would have been hard to imagine anyone less like the expected messiah than Jesus of Nazareth.

But that is what Christians claimed, that Jesus was the messiah. The earliest Christians became convinced of this claim, because they believed that Jesus was actually, physically, raised by God from the dead. God had shown that Jesus was not just a lowly criminal or a powerless preacher. God had in fact empowered him to conquer the greatest enemy of all, death itself. Jesus had ascended to heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God, and he is waiting to come back to establish his rule over the earth. According to this early Christian view, the Jewish expectations of the messiah were true. The messiah would overthrow the enemies of God in a show of strength. But before doing that he needed to conquer the bigger enemies, the evil powers of sin and death that were aligned against God and his people. Jesus conquered sin at the cross, and he conquered death at his resurrection. He, then, is the messiah. And he is coming back to finish the job.

For followers of Jesus, therefore, Scripture must have predicted not only the powerful aspects of the messiah’s “second” coming, but also the significant events of his “first” coming. So Christians scoured the texts of Scripture to find passages that could feasibly refer to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Christians were certain that these passages (virgin birth in Bethlehem, triumphal entry, death for the sins of others, and so on) referred to Jesus, because Jesus was the messiah and the Scriptures predicted the messiah. Most Jews were not convinced, however, because none of these passages actually speaks about the messiah, the Hebrew Bible never states that the messiah would come twice, and Jesus’s life was anything but the glorious life of God’s anointed one.

And so there were deep and difficult conflicts from the beginning. In the early stages, Jews far outnumbered Christians and could easily overwhelm them. But Christians continually struck back and kept arguing. And arguing and arguing and arguing. Among other things, many Christian Jews couldn’t understand why non-Christian Jews didn’t see their point and didn’t accept the “fact” that Jesus was the messiah. The proofs were all there, right in the Scriptures themselves! As battle lines became more firmly drawn and both sides dug in and used harsher tactics, Christians began to argue that Jews who rejected Jesus were just as responsible for Jesus’s death as the Jewish authorities who had originally called for it. Rejecting Jesus was tantamount to killing him.

And so non-Christian Jews came to be known as people who had killed their own messiah—Christ-killers. They obviously misunderstood their own Scriptures, and they had rejected their own God. As a result, God had rejected them.

It was in this context that a significant amount of literature was produced by both sides, especially by Christians. Some of this literature we still have today. A letter allegedly by Barnabas, companion of the apostle Paul, claims that Jews have always misunderstood their own religion by interpreting the law of Moses literally instead of figuratively, so that the Old Testament is not a Jewish, but a Christian book. There is a writing by the famous second-century Christian martyr Justin, in which he has a debate with a Jewish rabbi and shows him the errors of his interpretations of his own Scriptures. A sermon by Melito, a Christian bishop of the late second century, claims that Jews have not only rejected their messiah, but in killing him, the Son of God, they are guilty of deicide: they have killed God himself. And so it went.

Among the works produced by Christians in this back-and-forth were a number of forgeries, books written in the names of authoritative figures of the past intending to show the brilliant truth of Christianity and the horrendous errors of the Jews. In particular there were a number of forgeries that stressed the true character of Jesus: he was a divine being, not a mere mortal, as acknowledged by the Roman authorities. In these writings it was not the Romans, but the Jewish leaders, or even the Jewish people themselves, who were responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion.

Some Resultant Forgeries

THE GOSPEL OF PETER

We have already seen one forgery that was written, at least in part, to set forth this view. The Gospel of Peter (discussed in Chapter 2) emphasizes that “none of the Jews” was willing to wash his hands to show that he was innocent of Jesus’s blood. In this Gospel it is the Jewish king Herod, not Pilate, who orders Jesus’s death. And afterwards the Jewish people show their remorse for killing God’s chosen one and acknowledge that now God will surely judge them and bring destruction to their holy city of Jerusalem, a reference to the Roman war that resulted in the burning of the Temple, the leveling of the walls, and the slaughter of the Jewish opposition in 70 CE.

The Gospel of Peter is one of the earliest Gospels from after the New Testament period, possibly written around 120 CE or so. Anti-Jewish Gospel forgeries became increasingly popular with time, especially as Christianity grew and was able to assert its power more convincingly.

THE GOSPEL OF NICODEMUS

One of the most intriguing Gospels comes near the end of the time period I am considering in this book, the first four Christian centuries. It is a lengthy account of Jesus’s trial, death, and resurrection that falsely claims to be written by none other than Nicodemus, the rabbi well known to Christian readers for his important role in the Gospel of John as a “secret” follower of Jesus (see 3:1–15).² The Gospel of Nicodemus became an extraordinarily popular and influential book throughout the Middle Ages, as it was widely circulated in the Latin West and was eventually translated and disseminated in nearly all of the languages of western Europe. It was, of course, believed to have been written by Nicodemus himself. But the account was probably composed sometime in the fourth century, three hundred years after Nicodemus’s death (assuming he was a historical figure). It may well be based, however, on stories that had been passed down orally for two centuries before being written down.

The Gospel begins by indicating that Nicodemus had originally written the narrative in Hebrew. In fact, the account appears to be an original Greek composition. But by claiming that it appeared first in Hebrew the real author, whoever he was, provided it with an air of authenticity, showing both that the narrative was very old and that it was (supposedly) based on eyewitness testimony.

There is no question that the account is far from historical, as it is rooted in later legends about Jesus’s final hours, his death, and his resurrection. The narrative is designed to show that Pilate was completely innocent of Jesus’s execution, that the Jewish leaders and people were completely at fault, and that by rejecting Jesus the Jews have rejected God.

The divine character of Jesus is established at the outset of the narrative in one of its most interesting, and amusing, scenes. Before Jesus’s trial, the Jewish authorities are speaking with Pilate, insisting that Jesus is guilty of crimes and needs to be condemned. Pilate has his courier bring Jesus into the courtroom. Inside the room are two slaves holding “standards” that have—as Roman standards did—an image of the “divine” Caesar on them. As Jesus enters the room, the standard bearers bow down before him, so that the image of Caesar appears to be doing obeisance in his presence.

The Jewish authorities are incensed and malign the standard bearers, who reply that they had nothing to do with it. The images of Caesar bowed down of their own accord to worship Jesus. Pilate decides to try to get to the bottom of the matter and so tells the Jewish leaders to pick some of their own husky men to hold the standards and to have Jesus go out and enter a second time. The leaders choose twelve muscular Jews, six for each standard, who grasp them with all their might. Jesus reenters the room, and once again the standards bow down before him.

You might think that everyone would get the point, but that would ruin the story. Pilate becomes terrified and tries to get Jesus off the hook, but to no avail. The Jewish authorities declare that Jesus is an evildoer who deserves to die. Repeatedly throughout the course of the trial they accuse Jesus of wrongdoing and insist that he be judged. And just as repeatedly Pilate insists that he is innocent of all charges, expresses puzzlement about why the Jews are so intent on seeing him killed, and urges the Jewish leaders to allow him to release Jesus. But they refuse, wanting him dead. Three times they express their willingness to assume responsibility by speaking the words of Matthew 27:25, “His blood be upon us and our children.”

When these words were first written centuries earlier, in Matthew’s Gospel, they already expressed anti-Jewish sentiment. By speaking them, the Jewish crowds showed that they were willing not only to incur the guilt for Jesus’s death, but also to pass along that guilt to future generations of Jews. Over the centuries the words were used by Christian opponents of Jews to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus and to inflict horrible acts of violence against them in retribution. That heightened form of anti-Judaism is already in evidence here, in the Gospel of Nicodemus. The Jewish authorities are shown to be willfully blind to Jesus’s true character. Even the emperor worships him (in the standards). And a number of witnesses are called who recount all the miracles he performed as the Son of God.

But to no avail. Jesus is crucified at the instigation of the Jews and their leaders. The rest of the account shows the truth of Jesus’s divine character. He is raised from the dead, and the Jewish leaders themselves are given incontrovertible proof of the resurrection through the testimony of reliable witnesses.

Here, then, is a forged account, written some three hundred years after the events it narrates, to show that Jesus’s death was undeserved, that the Romans (who were on the side of Christians by the mid-fourth century) had nothing to do with the crucifixion, that it was completely the Jews’ fault, and that by rejecting Jesus the Jews have actually rejected their own God. No wonder an account such as this became so popular throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages, when hatred of the Jews was a constant and disturbing aspect of what it meant to be Christian.

THE “PILATE GOSPELS”

A number of writings from about the time of the Gospel of Nicodemus are in one way or another connected with Pontius Pilate and his role in the death of Jesus. Most of these are designed to show that Pilate was not at fault for the death of Jesus and that he felt considerable remorse after the deed was done. In several of these writings we learn that Pilate not only repented of the evil deed, but actually became a believer in Christ. In later Christianity the conversion of Pilate became part of the accepted lore from the early church. In the Coptic church Pilate was eventually canonized as a Christian saint.

Historically, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Pilate continued on as a brutal governor of Judea after the death of Jesus. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest that he even remembered having ordered Jesus’s execution, let alone felt regret over it. Still, the reason for his later exoneration and even exaltation in parts of the Christian church is reasonably clear. If Pilate was not responsible for Jesus’s death, then who was? The Jews. The legends of Pilate came to be written in a series of documents that may go back to the fourth Christian century or even earlier. A number of them are allegedly written by Pilate himself. All of them, however, are forged.

The Letter of Herod to Pilate

The first document we consider was not said to have been written by Pilate, but to him, by his colleague Herod Antipas, the Letter of Herod to Pilate. Historically Pilate is known to have been the Roman governor of Judea, in the southern part of Israel, when Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great (the ruler of the land when Jesus was born), was the Jewish ruler of Galilee, in the northern part of the land. Herod Antipas is best known from biblical tradition for having beheaded John the Baptist. In later legends he is said to have regretted what he did very much, as it came back to haunt him.

That is the case in this letter forged in his name, allegedly sent to Pilate.³ Here Herod indicates that he is sorry to learn that Pilate had Jesus killed, because he, Herod, wanted to see him and to repent for the evil things he had done. God’s judgment on sinners, he states, fits their crime. In a bizarre incident that he relates, his own daughter has literally lost her head in a flood that arose while she was playing on the banks of a river. The flood began to sweep her away, when her mother reached out to save her by grabbing her head. But her head was severed, so that the mother was left with just the child’s head in her hands. This came, Herod states, as retribution for his having taken the head of John the Baptist.

He himself is suffering, rotting away even before he has died, so that he says, “Already worms are coming from my mouth.” Here the pseudonymous author appears to confuse this Herod with the later Herod Agrippa, who according to the New Testament book of Acts was eaten by worms and died (Acts 12). So too the Roman soldier Longinus—the one who allegedly stuck a spear in Jesus’s side when he was on the cross—has met a grisly fate. He is condemned to a cave where every night a lion comes and mauls his body until dawn. The next day his body grows back to normal, and the lion then comes again. This will go on until the end of time.

Pilate, however, the recipient of the letter, is portrayed in a positive light, as a representative of the Gentiles. Not they, but the Jews, will face judgment for what they did to Jesus: “Death will soon overtake the priests and the ruling council of the children of Israel, because they unjustly laid hands on the righteous Jesus.” It is the Gentiles, then, who will inherit God’s kingdom, whereas Herod and the other Jews “will be cast out,” because they “did not keep the commandments of the Lord or those of his Son.”

The Letter of Pilate to Herod

A second forged letter goes in the opposite direction, from Pilate to Herod.⁴ One might expect this letter to be a response to the first, but despite its title, the Letter of Pilate to Herod, and the fact that it names some of the same characters (Herod, Pilate, and Longinus, the spear-wielding soldier), they have almost nothing else in common. In fact, this second letter does not refer to the first and stands at odds with it at a key point. Here Longinus, rather than being subject to never ending torment for what he did, is portrayed as a convert who came to believe in Jesus after the resurrection. That, in fact, is the point of this second letter, that when Jesus was raised, not only Longinus, but also Pilate’s wife, Procla, and then Pilate himself, all became believers.

According to the narrative of the letter, after Pilate did “a terrible thing” in having Jesus crucified, he hears that he was raised from the dead. Procla and Longinus go to find Jesus in Galilee. There he speaks with them, and they become convinced of his resurrection. When Pilate learns that Jesus has returned to life, he falls to the ground in deep grief. But then Jesus himself appears to him, raises him from the ground, and declares to him, “All generations and nations will bless you.” Here Pilate is not only repentant; he is a Christian convert who will be considered fortunate by later adherents of the faith.

The Letter of Pilate to Claudius

We have another letter allegedly from Pilate to a Roman official, but this time it is supposedly directed to the Roman emperor Claudius, written to explain Pilate’s role in the death of Jesus, the Letter of Pilate to Claudius.⁵ It may seem strange for Pilate to be writing to Claudius, in particular, given the fact that it was Tiberius, not Claudius, who was emperor when Pilate condemned Jesus to death (Claudius became emperor a decade later). Possibly this letter was forged so long after the fact that the forger did not have the facts of imperial history from two hundred years earlier straight (do you know who was president of the United States in 1811?).

One of the places the letter is preserved for us is in a fabricated account of the missionary activities of the apostles called the Acts of Peter and Paul. In this account we are told that years after Jesus’s death, the apostle Peter and the archheretic Simon the Magician, whom we met earlier, appear before the emperor Nero, evidently in the early 60s CE. When the emperor hears about Christ, he asks Peter how he can learn more about him. Peter suggests that he retrieve the letter that Pilate had sent to his predecessor, the emperor Claudius, and to have it read aloud. He does so, and the letter then is quoted in full.

The idea that Pilate may have written a letter to the emperor to explain the death of Jesus was widespread in early Christianity. We have references to some such letter as early as the third century in the writings of the church father Tertullian and in the fourth century in the Church History of Eusebius.⁶ The letter I am discussing here is probably not the one referred to by these two authors. Possibly this one was composed by a forger who thought that some such letter must once have existed. The themes of the short letter are very similar to ones we have already explored. It is the wicked Jews who are responsible for Jesus’s death, and they will be punished by God for it. As “Pilate” states in the letter:

According to the letter Jesus proved that he was the son of God by his many miracles, but the Jewish leaders told lies in order to have him executed. Then they (not the Roman soldiers!) crucified him. When he arose from the dead “the wickedness of the Jews was set aflame,” so that they bribed the soldiers to say that Jesus’s disciples had stolen the body from the tomb. Pilate has written this letter so that the emperor will know the truth and not be “led to believe the false reports told by the Jews.”

The Report of Pontius Pilate

A longer document called the Report of Pontius Pilate gives yet another letter of the Roman governor to the emperor, but this time to Tiberius, soon after the death of Jesus.⁷ This letter appears to be much closer to what the early third-century Tertullian described when he claimed: “Pilate, who was himself already a Christian with respect to his most innermost conviction, made a report of everything that happened to Christ for Tiberius, the emperor at the time.”⁸ Again, it is doubtful if the surviving Report is the document Tertullian refers to. Scholars tend to date it to a later period, possibly the fourth century or so. Its chief claims, in any event, are similar to those of the other forgeries we have looked at in this chapter: Jesus was the miracle-working son of God who was wrongly condemned by the Jews to death. Pilate was innocent of the entire proceeding.

The Report starts by stressing that Pilate was administering the province of Judea according to “the most gentle directives” of the emperor. Nothing hard-hearted or malicious about this Pilate! But the “entire multitude of the Jews” (not just the Jewish leaders) handed Jesus over to him, “bringing endless charges against him” even though they “were not able to convict him of a single crime.”

Pilate goes on to indicate, however, that Jesus had done many miracles, making the blind see, cleansing lepers, raising the dead, healing paralytics, and so on. These were amazing deeds, as Pilate himself confesses: “For my part, I know that the gods we worship have never performed such astounding feats as his.” But the Jews are unmoved and threaten a riot, and so Pilate orders him crucified.

At Jesus’s death a miraculous darkness covers the earth, and at his resurrection a miraculous brightness appears. At three in the morning the sun begins to shine in full strength, angels are seen in the heavens, there are earthquakes and the splitting of rocks, and great chasms form in the earth. All this spells disaster for the recalcitrant Jews:

The Handing Over of Pilate

A final example of a “Pilate Gospel” is called the Handing Over of Pilate.⁹ This is not a letter, but a narrative that reports what happened to Pilate once the emperor Tiberius received his report of what had occurred at Jesus’s death and resurrection. The Handing Over seems to presuppose the existence of the Report of Pilate, but it is stylistically different and has points of disagreement with the earlier text. Scholars tend to think, then, that they were written by different authors.

The Handing Over begins by stating that Pilate’s letter arrived in Rome and was read to Tiberius Caesar in front of a large crowd, who marveled to learn that the daytime darkness and worldwide earthquake they had experienced came as a result of the crucifixion of the Son of God. Caesar is “filled with anger,” and he sends soldiers to arrest Pilate to bring him to Rome. When Pilate arrives, Caesar puts him on trial and upbraids him for executing Jesus: “By daring to do this wicked deed you have destroyed the entire world.”

Pilate protests his innocence, however, and insists that “it is the multitude of the Jews who are reckless and guilty.” Caesar replies that, even so, Pilate should have known better, since it was obvious from Jesus’s miracles that “he was the Christ.” As soon as Caesar mentions the name Christ, all of the pagan idols in the senate house, where the trial is being held, fall to the ground and turn to dust. Here, as in the Gospel of Nicodemus, the gods of the pagans do humble obeisance before the divinity of Christ and come to naught. In this episode it happens just at the mention of Christ’s divine name.

Pilate repeats that Jesus’s works showed that he was “greater than all the gods” that they worshiped. But he executed him “because of the anarchy and rebelliousness of the lawless and godless Jews.” Caesar and the senate take a vote and decide to destroy the nation of the Jews. They then send in the armies, who destroy the nation and take all the Jewish survivors to sell off as slaves. Pilate himself is condemned to death for his part in the affair.

Before he dies, however, Pilate prays to God and pleads his innocence, once again saying that Jesus’s death was because of the “nation of godless Jews.” When he finishes his prayer, a voice comes from heaven—the voice of Christ himself—assuring Pilate of his salvation: “All the races and families of the Gentiles will bless you, because under your rule everything spoken about me by the prophets was fulfilled. You yourself will appear as my witness at my second coming.” When the executioner chops off Pilate’s head, an angel swoops down and takes it, presumably to carry it up to heaven.

The Purpose of the “Pilate Gospels”

The overarching points of these later Pilate Gospels should by now be clear. By exonerating Pilate in the death of Jesus, the accounts make the Jews, not just their leaders, bear all the guilt. The more innocent Pilate is, the more culpable are the Jews. According to some of the legends, Pilate is so innocent that he becomes a devoted believer and follower of Christ. God is therefore angry with the Jews and punishes them for their crime against the Son of God.

These writings were forged in a period that saw heightened animosities between Christians and Jews. Christians realized there would be no rapprochement with the Jews and there was little chance that most Jews would ever come to see the “truth” about Jesus, that he was the messiah of God, not just a lowly crucified criminal. This “truth,” then, is what prompted these Christian “false writings.” That is to say, a number of Christian authors chose to tell the truth about the divine Christ and about his wicked enemies, the Jews, by forging documents, claiming to be people they weren’t. Christian readers of these documents accepted them at face value as real reports from the time, instead of what they were, forgeries from later periods. The authors intended to deceive their readers, and their readers were all too easily deceived.

WRITINGS OF JESUS

We have very few writings from early Christianity that claim to be by Jesus himself, and very few indications that Jesus could in fact write. But there are a few reports of his writing—even though this is not widely known, even among scholars—and a couple of surviving writings that he is (falsely) said to have produced.

Even within the pages of the New Testament there is a record of Jesus writing. This is not a story originally found in the New Testament, however, but a later account that scribes added to the Gospel of John. In fact, it is in one of the best-known stories about Jesus, Jesus and the woman taken in adultery (8:1–11).

In the story the Jewish authorities drag a woman before Jesus and indicate that she has been caught in the act of adultery. According to the law of Moses, they say, she is to be stoned to death. But what does Jesus say? This is an obvious trap. If Jesus says, “Yes, by all means, stone her,” he is violating his own teachings on forgiveness and mercy. But if he says, “No, let her go,” he is violating the law of Moses. So what is he to do? Jesus, of course, always finds a way out of these traps, and he does so in this case by stooping down and writing on the ground. He then looks up and says, “Let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” He then stoops back down and resumes writing. Gradually, ashamed of their own sins, all the Jewish authorities leave, one by one, until there is no one left to condemn the woman.

It is a fascinating account, even if it was not originally part of the New Testament.¹⁰ But what is especially interesting for our discussion here is what Jesus does when he stoops down. He is not said to be drawing or doodling on the ground. He is literally said to be “writing.” The Greek term clearly indicates that he is writing words. This is the earliest indication that we have that Jesus was even able to write.¹¹ One recent study of this passage in fact argues that it was composed years after Jesus’s death precisely in order to show that he could write.¹²

Several alleged writings of Jesus are mentioned by church fathers. Unfortunately, none of these forgeries survive. The fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, for example, mentions books forged in Jesus’s name by the heretics Simon and Cleobius. It is hard to know if such books actually existed or if they were simply said to have existed in order to attack these false teachers for forging them.

The fifth-century theologian Augustine, on the other hand, mentions a letter allegedly written by Jesus that probably did exist.¹³ The letter was addressed to the apostles Peter and Paul and endorsed magical practices. Augustine had no difficulty showing that the letter was forged, since Paul was not actually a disciple during Jesus’s lifetime, but only after his death. Augustine plausibly argues that the forger had seen paintings of Jesus with Peter and Paul (such as one can still see, for example, in the catacombs of Rome) and made the false inference that Paul was one of Jesus’s earthly disciples. On that errant basis the forger made up a letter that Jesus allegedly sent to Paul along with Peter. Regrettably, we no longer have the letter.¹⁴

A couple of other writings, however, do survive in Jesus’s name from the first four centuries. Neither is probably best seen as a forgery, however, since neither seems to be making a serious claim to have been written by the historical Jesus himself. One is found in an account of Jesus’s death and resurrection called the Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea. According to this highly fictionalized narrative, one of the robbers crucified along with Jesus is pardoned for his sins and promised a place in heaven. From the cross, Jesus writes a letter to the angelic cherubim who are in charge of heaven, instructing them to let this fellow in when he arrives at the gates. This is a terrifically intriguing letter, but it really doesn’t seem as though the author intends for his readers to take it seriously as something written by Jesus.¹⁵ But I may be wrong.

Another writing by Jesus is a document discovered in 1945 with a collection of Gnostic texts called the Nag Hammadi library, about which I say more in the next chapter. This document is written in the first person, in the name of Jesus, describing the true nature of his crucifixion and the true way of having salvation through him. It is called the Second Treatise of the Great Seth (the first treatise, if it ever existed, no longer survives). Even though Jesus claims to be writing this book, it is the resurrected Jesus writing from heaven. For that reason it is not exactly the same thing as a forgery in the name of the earthly Jesus.

One brief letter that claims to have been written by the earthly Jesus, however, does survive. The letter was produced by someone who probably wanted to deceive his readers into thinking that it really was by Jesus. If so, it is appropriately called a forgery. This letter is part of a correspondence between Jesus and a certain King Abgar, of the city of Edessa, in Syria. Our first record of this correspondence is in the Church History of Eusebius, who claims actually to have uncovered both letters in the Edessan city archives. Eusebius indicates that the letters were written in Syriac, but that he translated them into Greek. He then cites them in full.¹⁶

The first letter is from the “Ruler Abgar” addressed to “Jesus the Good Savior.” Abgar indicates that he has heard all about Jesus’s miraculous healings and has concluded that Jesus must either be “God…having descended from heaven” or the “Son of God.” In either event, Abgar asks that Jesus come to him and heal him of his illness (without stating what it is). He adds that this would be of benefit to Jesus as well, as he has “heard that the Jews are murmuring against and wish to harm” Jesus.

Jesus writes a reply in which he indicates that Abgar is blessed for believing in him sight unseen and comments, “It is written about me that those who see me will not believe me, and that those who do not see me will believe and live” (see Isa. 6:9; Matt. 13:14–17; John 9:39; 12:39–40). In other words, the people among whom Jesus lived and worked (“the Jews” mentioned by Abgar) would not believe and would, therefore, not have life, but death. Jesus goes on to refuse politely Abgar’s request to join him in Edessa, as he has to “accomplish everything I was sent here to do” and then “ascend to the One who sent me.” Jesus does promise, however, that after his ascension he will send one of his disciples who will heal Abgar and “provide life both to you and to those who are with you.”

I assume this final sentence means that the disciple will teach them the gospel, which they will then believe for eternal life. According to later legends Jesus fulfilled his promise to King Abgar. An apostle was dispatched to Edessa, healed the king of his illness, and converted him and the entire city to faith in Christ.

The Abgar correspondence accomplishes an end similar to that of the Pilate Gospels, but in a far more subtle way. Here too Jews are attacked for their opposition to Jesus and are said not be heirs of eternal life because they reject him. This letter too, then, represents antagonism against the Jewish people for their role in the death of Jesus.

As a side note, the correspondence with Abgar appears to have had an interesting afterlife. As it was circulated throughout the early church, scribes changed it in places. Some of our surviving manuscripts of Jesus’s letter add a final line that informs King Abgar: “Your city will be blessed, and the enemy will no longer prevail over it.” This proved to be a very helpful promise to the citizens of Edessa. In the later fourth century a wealthy Christian woman named Egeria from the western part of the empire (either Spain or France) decided to go on a pilgrimage to visit all the sacred places of the Holy Land. During her journeys she kept a journal in Latin, which we still have today.¹⁷ On her travels, Egeria went to Edessa and saw the letters between Jesus and Abgar, as shown to her by the Christian bishop of the place.

According to the bishop, when the city of Edessa had come under attack by the armies of Persia, the then ruler of the city had taken the letter of Jesus, which promised that the city would not be conquered, and held it up at the city gate. The attacking army was thwarted by the magical power of the letter and retreated, eventually returning home to Persia without harming a soul. Later a copy of the letter was attached to the city gate, and no enemy had tried to attack it since. This, then, was a very useful letter to have on hand, even if it was forged.

Pagan Opposition to Christianity

AS WE TURN FROM considering antagonism toward the Jews by early Christians to opposition occasionally found among pagans, it is important to clear up a few common misconceptions about early Christianity in the Roman Empire. It is widely thought that from its early days Christianity was an illegal religion, that Christians could not confess their faith openly for fear of governmental persecution, and that as a result they had to go into hiding, for example, in the Roman catacombs. As it turns out, none of that is true. Strictly speaking, Christianity was no more illegal than any other religion. In most times and places, Christians could be quite open about their faith. There was rarely any need to “lie low.”

It is true that Christians were sometimes opposed by pagans for being suspicious and possibly scurrilous, just as most “new” religions found opponents in the empire. But there were no imperial decrees leveled against Christianity in its first two hundred years, no declarations that it was illegal, no attempt throughout the empire to stamp it out. It was not until the year 249 CE that any Roman emperor—in this case it was the emperor Decius—instituted an empire-wide persecution of Christians.

Before Decius, persecutions were almost entirely local affairs. More often than not they were the result of mob violence rather than “official” opposition initiated by local authorities. When there was official opposition, it was usually in order to placate the crowds, who did not approve of the Christians in their midst. But what was there not to approve?

For pagans, lots of things. Probably most important, as we have seen, pagans typically worshiped their gods because it was believed that the gods provided people with what they needed and wanted in life: peace, security, prosperity, health, food, drink, rain, crops, children, and everything else that made life both possible and meaningful. The pagan gods were not thought to require much in return. They did not insist that anyone actually “believe” in them, for example; and they did not have complicated “laws” that had to be followed. The gods more or less demanded that they be worshiped in appropriate ways; people were to perform the acceptable and traditional sacrifices that had long been part of their worship and say the prayers that were appropriate to them.

If people worshiped the gods, the gods took care of the people. It was an easy and helpful arrangement. But what happened when the gods were not worshiped, when they were ignored or flouted? Well, then things were not good. The gods could make life very miserable indeed if angered; they could bring war, drought, natural disaster, destruction, death. How, then, would people react if some kind of disaster struck a community? Their natural assumption was to think that one or more of the gods was angry and needed to be placated.

If a group of people in a community rejected the proper worship of the gods, insisted the gods didn’t exist, declared that they were evil demons, or simply refused to do the very minimal requirements of public worship, this group would be the most susceptible to blame if disaster hit the community. The Christian church was just such a group. Other religions followed the ancient traditions that had been handed down in worshiping the gods. Even the Jews were widely seen as acceptable, even though they worshiped just their one God. They were known to perform sacrifices on behalf of the emperor’s well-being (rather than to him), and this was deemed appropriate. Moreover, their traditions were known to be ancient and venerable, and they did no one any harm, did not behave in socially inappropriate ways, and more or less kept to themselves. The Jews, then, were seen as an exception to the rule that the local and imperial divinities needed to be worshiped.

Christians, on the other hand, were not treated as an exception. Christians for the most part were either Jews who no longer seemed to keep the ancestral Jewish customs (so in what sense were they Jews?) or Gentiles who had abandoned the worship of the gods for the worship of the God of Jesus. Christians flat-out refused to worship the gods that had made the state great and that provided all the necessary and good things of life. If disaster struck a community that housed such Christians, they were the natural scapegoat for retribution. Punish the Christians and return to the gods’ good favor. Thus Tertullian’s famous lines about Christians being subject to persecution whenever disaster struck a community:

Moreover, the Christian refusal to participate in state-sponsored worship was often seen as a kind of political statement that Christians were not concerned for the welfare of the state. This was considered antisocial and dangerous. Other aspects of the Christian religion contributed to this perception. For one thing, Christians worshiped a crucified man, that is, someone who had been condemned by the state. Wasn’t that a kind of political statement, that Christians were more or less thumbing their noses at the judgment of the state? And even apart from that, wasn’t it a matter of sheer lunacy to abandon the tried and true religion of the state in order to worship a crucified criminal?

Another problem was that, unlike Judaism, Christianity was such a new phenomenon. People in the ancient world loved nothing more than antiquity, and there was nothing that could authenticate a religion or a philosophy more than a claim to having ancient roots. The old was venerable; the new was suspect. And what was Christianity? It was the worship of a man who lived quite recently, in “modern” times. How could it possibly be true?

Not only was this new religion seen as dangerous and false; it was also seen as corrupt and perverted. Christians did not hold open meetings that everyone could attend. There were no church buildings that opened up on Sunday morning for anyone interested in learning about the new faith. Churches for the first two hundred years almost always met in private homes, and the meetings themselves were private. Only Christians attended. The religion was thought by others, therefore, to be secretive. And not only that, there were also rumors about what happened at these meetings.

For one thing, since the majority of Christians were from the lower, working classes, the weekly meetings as a rule took place either before the work day began, before dawn, or after it was over, after sundown, that is, when it was dark. These nocturnal meetings were rumored to be held among people who were “brothers” and “sisters” and who were known to “love one another” and to “greet one another with a kiss.” And they held periodic “love feasts” in which they celebrated the love of their god for them and their love for each other. If you wanted to start a rumor mill going about the early Christians, how much better could it get? Christians, whose meetings were not public, were thought to be engaged in licentious and incestuous activities, brothers and sisters gorging themselves, probably getting drunk, and holding love feasts in the dark.

Worse than that, it was reported that at these love feasts Christians ate the flesh of the Son of God and drank his blood. Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a child? In addition to incest, Christians were thought to be committing infanticide and cannibalism, killing babies and then eating them.

These charges may all sound extremely far-fetched, but they were commonly leveled against Christians by their pagan enemies. In one early Christian source called the Octavius, written by the third-century author Minucius Felix, we read of a pagan who expresses his disgust at what happens at the Christian nighttime services. This view, according to Minucius Felix, derives from the famous pagan scholar Fronto, the tutor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius:

But these weekly activities pale in comparison with their periodic sacred meals, celebrated with the new converts to the faith:

These were the kinds of charges that Christians had to defend themselves against. If local mobs believed such things, it is no wonder that they opposed Christians, sometimes with violence.

And if the masses were against the people who participated in the new religion, what choice did local officials have but to oppose them as well? Local persecutions of Christians were designed less to punish them for their crimes than to get them to renounce their religion and return to the true fold. That is why, in virtually all the early accounts of the Christian martyrs, the judges ruling in the cases brought against Christians plead with them to recant their faith.²¹ These authorities’ goal was not to hurt the Christians, but to convince them to stop being Christian. Christians were seen as a threat to both the political health of the empire, to the extent that the gods could become upset and exact vengeance, and the fabric of society, through their grossly immoral behavior.

Christians of course defended themselves against all such charges, and did so in a number of ways. Starting in the second half of the second century, intellectual pagans started occasionally converting to this new faith. These were a new breed of Christian: literate, highly educated, trained in rhetorical skills, able to make sustained philosophical arguments and to write them down, and willing to take a public stand defending the faith. These intellectual defenders of the faith are normally called “apologists.” As we have seen, “apology” in this context is not an attempt to say you’re sorry; it comes from the Greek work apologia, which means “a reasoned defense.” Among the more famous Christian apologists of the second and third centuries were Justin Martyr of Rome, Athenagoras of Athens, Tertullian of Carthage, and Origen of Alexandria.

These authors insisted to anyone who would listen that Christians were not opposed to the state, but were in fact fully supportive of the state. The state survived and thrived not because of offerings made to dead idols, but because of prayers made to the living God, who had power and sovereignty over all. The worship of a crucified man was not a statement of opposition to the state; quite the contrary, the state representatives—Pontius Pilate, for example—had emphatically declared Jesus not guilty. Jesus’s death was a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the recalcitrant Jews, who had rejected their own messiah and therefore their own God. God had, as a result, rejected them in favor of his faithful people, the Christians. Rather than being a “new” religion, therefore, Christianity was quite ancient. It was in fact the true expression of ancient Judaism, a religion older than anything in either pagan philosophy or myth.

The best of the pagan philosophers, according to some of the apologists, shared views made sharper by the Christian message of the one true God, who had become manifest in his son Jesus. Jesus himself had taught an exceedingly high set of morals, and his followers were far more ethical than anyone else. Of course they did not murder infants; they did not even allow abortion. Of course they did not commit cannibalism; they were completely circumspect in what they ate and did not indulge in gluttony or drunkenness. Of course they did not commit incest; their love for one another was chaste. In fact, many of them practiced lifelong chastity, even if married. Of course they did not support fornication or adultery; for them, not only was it wrong to have sex with someone other than your spouse; it was a sin even to want to do so.

For the apologists, in short, Christianity was an ancient, philosophically respectable, and highly moral religion that stood over against the false religions of both pagans and Jews. Eventually this message caught on, as more and more pagans converted to the faith. Ultimately, once Christianity became the religion of the empire, the apologists’ view would be accepted as obvious and commonsensical. Before that, though, Christians had to fight for their religious beliefs and practices. And one of the ways they fought was through their literary endeavors, which included the production of forgeries.

Some Resultant Forgeries

SEVERAL FORGERIES ALREADY SEEN

A number of the forgeries we have already considered functioned as well in the apologetic defense of the faith against pagan assaults. Here I need to stress a point I have not yet made. It would be a mistake to think that an author must have produced a forgery for one and only one purpose. This isn’t the case for other books, and it is certainly not the case for forgeries either.

This book that I’m writing now—what is its purpose? In fact, there are multiple purposes. I want to inform my readers about an important ancient literary phenomenon. I want to correct mistakes that other scholars have made in discussing that phenomenon. I want readers to think more deeply about the role of lies and deception in the history of the Christian religion. I want to show the irony in the fact that lies and deception have historically been used to establish the “truth.” I want my readers to see that there may be forgeries in the New Testament. I want to tell interesting stories about intriguing and relatively unknown writings from antiquity. I want to entertain my readers. In fact, I want to accomplish lots of things. Hardly any writing has just one purpose. So too forgeries. As a rule they were multifunctional.

Take, for example, the group of writings that I have called the “Pilate Gospels.” These serve to show that the Jews were the ones responsible for the death of Jesus. They do so by emphasizing, quite strenuously, that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate declared Jesus to be innocent of all charges. That emphasis functions as a kind of Christian anti-Judaism, allowing Christian readers to conclude that Jews were wicked Christ-killers. But it also functions to help Christians defend themselves against attacks leveled at them by pagans. In response to pagans who insisted that Jesus was a convicted criminal opposed by the Roman state, Christians could argue that it wasn’t true, that the appointed governor of Judea found Jesus innocent and crucified him only because the maleficent Jews forced him to do so. Jesus was no criminal, and neither are his followers.

Or consider the letters between the apostle Paul and the Roman philosopher Seneca. On one level these letters satisfied Christian curiosity. How could the most significant theologian of the young faith not have been known to the other great minds of his day? These letters showed that in fact Paul was known and respected by the greatest thinker of them all, the incomparable Seneca. But more than satisfying curiosity, these letters fulfilled an apologetic role in showing that, far from being a backwater religion of lower-class peasants, Christianity from the outset was a highly respectable philosophical tradition. How highly respected was it? The greatest Roman philosopher of the first century revered the apostle Paul and praised his uncanny insights.

In a different way some of the earliest Christian letters—the New Testament ones allegedly by Peter and Paul—may well have served to try to ward off attacks from pagan antagonists. Take 1 Peter as an example. Here is a letter in which a pseudonymous author, claiming to be Simon Peter, comforts Christians of Asia Minor who are undergoing suffering. But the letter is not only meant to provide comfort; it is also meant to provide a defense against precisely the accusations leveled against the Christians that created the conditions for suffering.

For example, Christians are thought to be opposed to the government, and so the author urges his readers: “Be submissive to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether to the emperor as the one who is supreme or to overseers who have been sent by him for the punishment of those who do wrong and praise of those who do right. For this is the will of God: that by doing good you silence the ignorance of foolish people” (2:13–15). Pagans also charge Christians with living flagrantly immoral lives, and so the author urges: “Abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul; maintain good behavior in front of the Gentiles, so that if they slander you as evildoers they may observe your good works and glorify God” (4:11–12). Pagans claim that Christians are socially disruptive, and so the author tells slaves to be submissive to their masters, wives to be submissive to their husbands, husbands to treat their wives considerately, and all to behave well: “Do not return evil for evil or verbal abuse for verbal abuse, but give a blessing instead” (3:8). Since these admonitions allegedly come from Peter himself—the most important leader of the early church—they take on special importance as representing the very core of the Christian message, from the very beginning.

There was a very different function for one other forgery we have already looked at, the Gospel of Nicodemus. In antiquity this book was sometimes called the Acts of Pilate, since its first half records an account of Jesus’s death from the perspective of the Roman governor himself, Pontius Pilate. This account is, of course, very sympathetic toward both Pilate and Jesus. Jesus is innocent of the charges brought against him, and Pilate proclaims his innocence repeatedly, acknowledging the divine character of Jesus’s miracles and life and finally ordering his execution only after being forced to by Jesus’s Jewish opponents.

We may be able to isolate a more precise reason for the writing of this book. According to Eusebius, in the year 311, an anti-Christian pagan book was forged called the Acts of Pilate. This writing portrayed Jesus in an extremely negative way, indicating that he fully deserved everything he got, as seen through the eyes of Pontius Pilate. So impressed with this book was the Roman emperor Maximin Daia that he had it posted in public places throughout the empire and decreed that it should be used in schools for training children to read.²²

This pagan Acts of Pilate, then, was an enormously popular and widespread book; unfortunately it no longer survives. Is it an accident that some years later an alternative version of the Acts of Pilate appeared, one in which Jesus is portrayed as innocent, not guilty, and in which Pilate is shown to support Jesus and declare him divine, rather than oppose him and declare him worthy of death? In the opinion of a number of scholars, the Acts of Pilate that we now have (also known as the Gospel of Nicodemus) was produced precisely in order to counter the pagan Acts of Pilate, as a way of setting the record straight.

THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES

In ancient Rome it was believed that there had been, in remote antiquity, a prophetess who was known as the Sibyl. She was extraordinarily long-lived; according to the poet Ovid she lived a thousand years.²³ According to venerable tradition, the Sibyl had written extensive poems that were prophetic in nature, designed not only to tell the future, but also to tell rulers of Rome what to do in times of crisis. The various writings attributed to the Sibyl were collected over the years and stored in one of the great sacred spaces in Rome, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. A group of priests, eventually named “The Fifteen,” were appointed to preserve and interpret these writings as the need arose and as they were directed by the Roman senate. Some records indicate that the Sibylline oracles, as they were called, were consulted some fifty times between 500 and 100 BCE, in times of plague, famine, or prodigy (i.e., when some highly unusual supernatural event seemed to occur), in order to learn what the prophetess had said concerning what should be done about it.²⁴

A great tragedy occurred in 83 BCE when the Temple of Jupiter was burned, and the books of the oracles with it. The senate directed that other copies of the oracles should be collected from various places, especially the city of Erythrea, and an attempt was made to reconstitute the original writings. Eventually these too came to be destroyed. Today we know of only two brief sayings that probably belonged to this second group of Sibylline oracles, and none from the first.

The tradition that there had once lived a pagan prophetess who could reliably foretell the future was so strong that the temptation to create oracles, or prophecies, in her name proved irresistible to later peoples, especially to Jews, and after them Christians. As I have already pointed out, Jews were widely accepted throughout the empire. Even so, they occasionally had to fight for their right to coexist with pagans and to defend their religion against pagan attacks. By forging oracles in the name of the Sibyl, Jews were able to claim that their religion was very ancient, as attested by this most ancient of prophetesses, and compatible with the best of the pagan religions.

A number of forged Jewish Sibylline oracles were brought together into a collection, which was later taken over by unknown Christian authors.²⁵ These writers modified a number of the oracles by inserting their own Christian “prophecies” into them; they also added some entirely new oracles to the collection. This Christianized version of the Sibylline Oracles was handed down through the centuries, and we still have twelve books of them today.

The Jewish and Christian writings forged in the name of the Sibyl were written over a span of some seven hundred years and were finally assembled by a Byzantine Christian scholar sometime in the sixth century CE. Because of problems in how the books were copied over the centuries, the twelve books are numbered somewhat out of sequence, as books 1–8 and 11–14. Some of these are Jewish; some of them are Jewish books that have had extensive Christian insertions made into them (e.g., books 1–2 and 8); and others are exclusively Christian (book 6 and probably 7). The Christian portions of the oracles forged in the name of the Sibyl predict the coming of Christ and attack Jews for failing to believe in this one who was to come.

Just to give an example of how these apologetic forgeries work, consider the first book, which is largely Jewish until the final section, which contains a Christian insertion. The book begins with the Sibyl’s statement: “Beginning from the first generation of articular men down to the last, I will prophesy all in turn, such things as were before, as are, and as will come upon the world.”²⁶ Here, then, is a reliable ancient pagan prophetess who will tell the future. After narrating the creation of the world and then all the generations of the human race, the Sibyl continues, in the Christian insertion, to indicate the following:

But, she says, “Israel, with abominable lips and poisonous spittings will give this man blows.” She goes on to describe Christ’s death and resurrection, and the eventual destruction of “the Hebrews” for the evil deed they performed against Christ.

One of the more powerful passages in the surviving Sibylline oracles is the very short book 6, which represents a hymn to Christ: “I speak from my heart of the great famous son of the Immortal, to whom the most High, his begetter, gave a throne to possess before he was born.” It goes on to talk about his glorious coming into the world, his rejection, and the consequences for Israel, for whom evil afflictions are in store:

Possibly the most intriguing passage in the Sibylline Oracles comes in the Christian insertion in book 8, where a long section of prophecies forms an acrostic. If you take the first letter of each of these lines and put them together in sequence, they spell out the Greek words “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, Cross.” This kind of acrostic is meant to have symbolic, hidden meaning. Among other things it shows that there was considerable forethought that went into the composition of the poem, made all the remarkable by the fact that it was allegedly constructed by a pagan prophetess living centuries before the birth of Jesus.

The Christian Sibylline oracles were well known in antiquity. As early as Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century they are referred to as predicting the truths of Christianity.²⁷ As you might imagine, pagans intent on attacking Christians knew full well that these oracular “predictions” of the coming of Christ, his activities on earth, his rejection by the Jews, and his vindication were not original to an ancient Sibyl, but had been inserted into these writings or created whole cloth by Christian authors.²⁸ This is one instance in which unknown forgers among the Christians were rightly suspected. They were also, of course, roundly condemned, as almost always happened with forgers in antiquity.

Conclusion

CHRISTIANS OF THE FIRST three centuries often felt themselves under attack for their faith, and for good reason. They were under attack. From the early years of the church, non-Christian Jews rejected the Christian message that Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent in fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, and this led not only to serious debate over the proper interpretation of Scripture but also to serious animosity. The animosity heightened as Christian Jews felt that their non-Christian Jewish opponents refused to listen to reason and were obviously being either willful or blind. As Christianity grew in numbers and power, the tensions increased. Eventually, of course, Christianity would get the upper hand, and once that happened, it became an unfair fight. The entire ugly history of Christian anti-Judaism was the result.

While Christians were fighting their Jewish neighbors on the one hand, they were having to ward off the attacks of pagans on the other. Far more than official persecution, it was local opposition to Christians among their former families, friends, and neighbors—and eventually mobs—that caused Christians the most problems in the early centuries before the Roman emperors came to be active sponsors of empire-wide persecutions in the mid-third century. Many pagans viewed Christians as politically dangerous, socially disruptive, and flagrantly immoral. Christians had to defend themselves against these charges by showing they were obedient members of the state, socially coherent and conservative, and the most moral beings on the planet.

The two prongs of the Christian counterattack were, as we have seen, closely related. By attacking Jews for rejecting their own messiah, Christians were able simultaneously to declare the innocence of Jesus and his followers to governmental officials and other interested pagan observers. By claiming to be the true representatives of the ancient Jewish religion, Christians not only attempted to displace the Jews, but also to provide a sense of antiquity for their own religious claims; they were as old as Moses, who was older by far than any pagan lawgivers or philosophers. By painting the Jews as immoral haters of God, Christians were able to pass themselves off as superior moral beings of no threat to the social order.

Into this maelstrom of attack and counterattack, some Christian authors introduced the weapons of literary forgery. The ultimate goal of the church was to establish itself as true and, of course, to show that all other religions were, as a consequence, false. So once more we have one of the great ironies of the early Christian religion: some of its leading spokespersons appear to have had no qualms about lying in order to promote the faith, to practice deception in order to establish the truth.