Forged

By Mancott

A very good overview of Bart Erhman`s book "Forged" can be found by Googling: 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forged

Forged is a book written by biblical scholar, Bart D. Ehrman. Although it has long been recognised that numerous Epistles of the New Testament bear names of authors who are unlikely to have written them, traditional Christian teaching has been that it was an accepted practice in antiquity for a writer to attribute his work to a well-known figure from the past, or a teacher who has greatly influenced him. Forged demonstrates that this is incorrect and the practice would have been condemned as dishonest by all authorities in antiquity. Falsely attributed writings are often referred to as "pseudepigraphs" but Ehrman maintains that the more honest term is forgery. The book posits that 11 or more books out of the 27 books of the Christian New Testament canon were written as forgeries.[1] In his book, Ehrman points out numerous inconsistencies which he finds within the New Testament which appear to support many of his claims, such as the fact that in Acts 4:13 the statement is made that both Peter and John were illiterate, yet in later years entire books of the Bible were then alleged to have been written by them.

NT scholar Bart Erhman identifies eleven NT books as "forged" rather than being of the earlier accepted view that they are pseudepigraphical, where the writer gives his work the name of a well known person rather than his own. For example, a discovered work by Mancott is not going to attract the same attention as if it had been given the name Shakespeare as author.

He also identifies a further nine originally anonymous NT texts that had names of Apostles ascribed to them later. He says these are not strictly to be classed as forgeries as the texts are anonymous, but have had false authors ascribed to them by others.

If the overview takes your interest, reading the book will give you an insight into how our NT came into being, and must lead to questions being asked about inerrancy of the NT, and about the writing being God-inspired.