Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Paul's letter to the Laodiceans long thought to be part of the New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth one of the most interesting letters forged in the name of Paul is his alleged letter to the Laodiceans. As you'll see, it's intriguing both because some christian churches accepted it as part of the New Testament for centuries and because us scholars have never been able to figure out why a forger bothered to write it. I have a theory about that, though, which I laid out in my book forgery and counterforgery, Oxford University Press, 2013, from which I have taken this discussion. I've edited it a bit to get rid of the weeds. Here I explain the issues and my argument in accessible terms.
[00:00:47] The letter to the Laodiceans the letter of quote unquote Paul to the Laodiceans is a pastiche of pauline phrases with no obvious theme or purpose apart from the opening line drawn from Galatians. One one. The borrowings are almost exclusively from Philippians. About a 10th of the letter represents filler provided by the author, which is also without character or color.
[00:01:12] Scholars have long vied with one another to see who could express the greatest contempt for the letter's sheer banality. Thus, Leon vuo in 1913 quote it is indeed as trivial as possible, unquote. Carl Pink in 1925 quote the letter is a pitiful concoction without any kind of personal note on behalf of the author, without a trace of heresy, without bias or purpose. Unquote. Adolf Harnack in 1931 quote it is, with regard to content and form the most worthless document that has come down to us from christian antiquity and most recently Regis Bernay, who moves the lament to the title of an article. Quote why was the insipid epistle to the Laodiceans written? Unquote. The letter nonetheless serves an interesting historical function. As I will argue below, it appears to be a forgery meant to provide an indirect counter to those who would deny the value of the flesh, that is, by dosetist heretics who claim that Jesus was not a real flesh and blood human being because the flesh and all matter is opposed to the true spiritual God.
[00:02:23] The early references to the letter are confused and confusing. The muritorian fragment from the second century speaks of marcinite forgeries of pauline letters to the Alexandrians and the Laodiceans. The former no longer survives in any form. With respect to the latter, it is impossible to determine if the unknown author of the canon has our extant letter in view.
[00:02:46] If so, it is difficult to know why he would have considered it Marcionite had he actually managed to read it. Tertullian soon thereafter also indicates that the Marcionites had a letter to the Laodiceans, but claims that this was none other than an edited and renamed version of Ephesians, that is to say, not a separate production? Epiphanius complicates matters when he argues that Laodiceans was not a separate 15th pauline letter, but when he quotes from it he cites Ephesians four five with just these earliest references to a laodicean letter. Then we are left with a host of puzzles. In the early centuries was there just one letter to the Laodiceans, the one we now have, which was sometimes mistakenly identified as an edition of Ephesians by people who had not actually seen it? Or were there two, for example, ours and one forged by Marcionites, or three, ours, the Marcionites, and an edited form of Ephesians?
[00:03:48] And just with respect to our earliest reference, did the author of the muratorian fragment have our letter in mind but not realize that it was not in fact Marcionite? Did he have another letter in mind and not know about our letter, or did he have our letter and think, as later Harnack would argue, that it was a Marcionite production? The matter of occasion and purpose has long vexed scholars. The most common explanation is also the most obvious one, that the letter was produced by someone intent on filling the lacuna occasioned by the reference in Colossians 416. Quote when this letter is read by you, see that also that it is read in Laodicea, and that you as well read the one from Laodicea.
[00:04:31] If Paul mentions a letter sent to the Laodiceans, there must have been one, and some unknown forgers set out to create it. It scarcely need be stressed that since Colossians itself is forged, there is no way of knowing whether the reference to a leodicean letter indicates real knowledge of some such writing or represents instead a simple verisimilitude of the earlier forger.
[00:04:55] Even without pressing the logic of the preposition used in Colossians 416, one might still question if its reference to a now lost letter can explain the banal concatenation of pauline phrases that have come down to us as the letter to the Laodiceans. Why would anyone feel compelled to produce such a letter simply because one was known to exist? Surely something drove the forgery outside of idle curiosity or the desire to supply what was lost. Was it really just a random writing exercise? Why then would it have been put in such wide circulation? And how might the author's motivation relate to the character of the letter he produced, which, had he signed his real name to it, would have opened him up to the charge of plagiarism. In my view, the reason for thinking it is an antimarcionite forgery is that it exists.
[00:05:49] What we know historically is this. In protoorthodox circles, as evidenced in the meritorian fragment and Epiphanius, for example, it was known, or at least believed, that a marcionite forgery existed, a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans. This forgery, whether real or imagined, was almost certainly conceived on the basis of Colossians 416 and was with equal certainty a forgery unlike Harnax, that actually or imaginarily pressed a marcionite agenda, which, among other things, opposed the material world, Christ's flesh, and the importance of human flesh. Proto orthodox writers not only knew of the existence of this forgery, they also naturally opposed it. But what would be the best way to show that the marcionite forgery was not the letter Paul was referring to in Colossians 416? What better way than to produce the real letter of Paul to the Laodiceans? If the real item existed, the marcionite version would be exposed as a forgery, and so a protoorthodox author produced the quote unquote real thing.
[00:06:58] That is why the letter is both completely banal and totally dependent on other pauline letters.
[00:07:04] There was no point to the forgery other than its existence to show that the marcionite forgery was a fraud. But it had to sound very much like Paul to be convincing. And who sounds more like Paul than Paul? The forger then simply borrowed a large number of phrases from Galatians and especially Philippians, strung them together, gave them a Pauline epistolary frame and format, and thereby the letter he produced was the letter to the Laodiceans. To counter the marcionite forgery. It did not have to replicate anti marcionite polemic. All it had to do was sound like Paul.
[00:07:43] The author succeeded spectacularly. The letter circulated as part of the New Testament throughout a large chunk of the Latin Middle Ages.
