Paul and Pseudepigraphy (Pauline Studies, Book 8)

authorship and pseudepigraphy in early christian literature 53

baptism, so some other should in her own right confer it! But if the writings

which wrongly go under Paul’s name, claim thecla’s example as a license for

women’s teaching and baptizing, let them know that, in asia, the presbyter

who composed that writing, as if he were augmenting Paul’s fame from his

own store, after being convicted, and confessing that he had done it from

love of Paul, was removed from his office. for how credible would it seem,

that he who has not permitted a woman even to learn with over-boldness,

should give a female the power of teaching and of baptizing! “let them be

silent,” he says, “and at home consult their own husbands.”

Tertullian, de cultu feminarum 1.3.1–3

In On Female Ornamentation (197–201 ce), tertullian wrote about an inner

church discussion as to whether the Book of Enoch, which had not been

received into the Jewish canon, could have been written by enoch before

the flood or not. tertullian argued that enoch had charged his son Methuse-

lah to hand his father’s prophecies on to posterity. according to tertullian,

noah, the great-grandson of enoch, must therefore have known about the

preaching of enoch. It is obvious that tertullian and his contemporaries,

whether they accepted or rejected this contention, were convinced that the

Book of Enoch claimed to have been written by the antediluvian prophet.73

I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the del-

uge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher

of all things. If that is the reason (for rejecting it), let them recall to their

memory that noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great-grandson of

enoch himself; and he, of course, had heard and remembered, from domes-

tic renown and hereditary tradition, concerning his own great-grandfather’s

“grace in the sight of god,” and concerning all his preaching; since enoch

had given no other charge to Methuselah than that he should hand on the

knowledge of them to his posterity. noah therefore, no doubt, might have

succeeded in the trusteeship of (his) preaching; or, had the case been oth-

erwise, he would not have been silent alike concerning the disposition (of

things) made by god, his Preserver, and concerning the particular glory of

his own house. If (noah) had not had this (conservative power) by so short

a route, there would (still) be this (consideration) to warrant our assertion

of (the genuineness of ) this scripture: he could equally have renewed it,

under the spirit’s inspiration, after it had been destroyed by the violence of

the deluge, as, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storm-

ing of it, every document of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have

been restored through ezra.

73 trans. in ANF 4:15–16.