Paul and Pseudepigraphy (Pauline Studies, Book 8)

16 armin d. baum

pertained to the abundance of knowledge, the other to the authority of reli-

gion. In that authority the canon is guarded.

so that, if any writings outside of it are now brought forward under the

name of the ancient prophets, they cannot serve even as an aid to knowl-

edge, because it is uncertain whether they are genuine; and on this account

they are not trusted, especially those of them in which some things are

found that are even contrary to the truth of the canonical books, so that it

is quite apparent they do not belong to them.

Augustine, de consensu evangelistarum 1.10.15–16

In his On the Harmony of the Evangelists (400 ce), augustine reported that

naive enemies of the church attributed magical texts to Jesus Christ and

addressed them to the apostles Peter and Paul (who had only after the

ascension become Christians).11

nay more, as by divine judgment, some of those who either believe, or

wish to have it believed, that Christ wrote matter of that description, have

even wandered so far into error as to allege that these same books bore on

their front, in the form of epistolary superscription, a designation addressed

to Peter and Paul. and it is quite possible that either the enemies of the

name of Christ, or certain parties who thought that they might impart to

this kind of execrable arts the weight of authority drawn from so glorious

a name, may have written things of that nature under the name of Christ

and the apostles.

But in such most deceitful audacity they have been so utterly blinded

as simply to have made themselves fitting objects for laughter, even with

young people who as yet know Christian literature only in boyish fashion,

and rank merely in the grade of readers. 16 for when they made up their

minds to represent Christ to have written in such strain as that to his dis-

ciples, they bethought themselves of those of his followers who might best

be taken for the persons to whom Christ might most readily be believed to

have written, as the individuals who had kept by him on the most familiar

terms of friendship. and so Peter and Paul occurred to them, I believe, just

because in many places they chanced to see these two apostles represented

in pictures as both in company with him. for rome, in a specially honor-

able and solemn manner, commends the merits of Peter and of Paul, for this

reason among others, namely, that they suffered (martyrdom) on the same

day. thus to fall most completely into error was the due desert of men who

sought for Christ and his apostles not in the holy writings, but on painted

walls. neither is it to be wondered at, that these fiction-limners were mis-

led by the painters. for throughout the whole period during which Christ

lived in our mortal flesh in fellowship with his disciples, Paul had never

become his disciple. only after his passion, after his resurrection, after his

11 trans. in NPNF 1 6:83–84.