Paul and Pseudepigraphy (Pauline Studies, Book 8)

22 armin d. baum

to attend to the names of the apostles, but to the nature of the things, and

their settled opinions.

for we know that simon and Cleobius, and their followers, have compiled

poisonous books under the name of Christ and of his disciples, and do carry

them about in order to deceive you who love Christ, and us his servants.

and among the ancients also some have written apocryphal books of

Moses, and enoch, and adam, and Isaiah, and david, and elijah, and of the

three patriarchs, pernicious and repugnant to the truth.

the same things even now have the wicked heretics done, reproach-

ing the creation, marriage, providence, the begetting of children, the law,

and the prophets; inscribing certain barbarous names, and, as they think,

of angels, but, to speak the truth, of demons, which suggest things to them:

whose doctrine eschew, that ye may not be partakers of the punishment due

to those that write such things for the seduction and perdition of the faithful

and unblameable disciples of the lord Jesus.

Constitutiones apostolorum 8.47.60 = Canones apostolorum 60

one ecclesiastical decree in the pseudepigraphical Apostolic Canons pro-

hibits not the public reading of pseudepigrapha in general, but more spe-

cifically only the use of pseudepigrapha with unorthodox content. strictly

speaking, this decree was not in conflict with the production of an ortho-

dox pseudepigraphon by the author of the Apostolic Canons.19

If any one publicly reads in the Church the spurious books of the ungodly,

as if they were holy, to the destruction of the people and of the clergy, let

him be deprived.

Constitutiones apostolorum 8.47.85 = Canones apostolorum 85

the canonical list at the end of the Apostolic Constitutions included the

two letters of Clement of rome and thereby classified Clement as a pro-

phetic author of canonical texts. this procedure may have facilitated the

appearance of the Apostolic Constitutions, which presented themselves as

the work of Clement, as an inspired and authoritative book. the fact that

the unknown author of the Apostolic Constitutions regarded it as legiti-

mate to deceive his readers by writing under an apostolic name while

at the same time condemning the production of other apostolic pseude-

pigrapha suggests that he accepted pseudepigrapha that were in his eyes

orthodox and merely rejected unorthodox pseudepigrapha.20

19 trans. in ANF 7:503.

20 trans. in ANF 7:505.