Authorship of Biblical Texts and the Authority of the Bible

Historians lose one aspect of their ability to evaluate the reliability of information in texts that are written anonymously. Where the identity of the author is in doubt, the information recorded in the text is likewise at the very least suspect. Here is a hypothetical example. A document emerges from the shadows of history purporting to be a Civil War era document about the exploits of a certain private from the ranks (Pvt Christopher Smith) in the Battle of Gettysburg, but no trace of Smith can be found in official documents. The report is undated and turns up some 150 years after the war. How reliable is the report given in the anonymously written document?

            My example bears a certain similarity to New Testament (NT) literature. Some of the NT texts are anonymously written, and some of the texts are regarded as pseudonymous by critical scholarship; that is, they are not written by the person claiming to be the author. What follows is a survey of the state of critical studies as to the authorship of NT texts, virtually all of which, except for a few fragments, date from 200 and later. In critical scholarship the following texts are anonymous in the sense that an author is not named in the body of the document: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Hebrews, and the Johannine letters (1, 2, 3, John). Their subscript titles are traditional and secondary, and represent the view of the early church. The following texts are thought by most critical scholars to be pseudonymous: the Pastoral letters (1, 2 Timothy and Titus), 1, 2 Peter, James, and Jude. Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians are also thought to be pseudonymous. These texts are called “Deutero-Pauline”; they are from the Pauline school (likely written by anonymous disciples of Paul). The texts whose authorship appears certain are seven letters by Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon. The author of the Apocalypse, named John, is an otherwise unknown “former witness to Jesus among the churches of Asia Minor (1:9)…”¹

            Not everyone agrees with the way the literature has been categorized above, however. There are even differences between critical scholars on the authorship of the texts. Some critical scholars for example challenge the Pauline authorship of 1 Thessalonians, which is thought by most critical scholars to be the earliest Pauline writing. Critical scholars decide the issue of authorship based on historical evidence alone and they will set out their reasons for critiquing the authorship of a document so that their rationale can be critiqued by other scholars.

            With regard to my hypothetical example above had the author of the anonymous document claimed to be one Edson Williams, 1^st Sgt of Company A of the 56^th Pennsylvania, a volunteer Infantry Regiment of the First Corps of the Army of the Potamic, the information in the anonymous document would have warranted further research, even though there were no Smiths listed on the Unit Roster.² The 1^st Sgt is expected to know what happened with soldiers under his command would be the rationale for further study.³ This is one reason that the writers of pseudonymous documents of the NT are thought to have used names of known members of the Christian movement to attach to their documents. For example, the name of Paul may have been added to Colossians for this very reason. What is at issue for the modern historian when the authorship of Colossians is attributed to Paul, if it is not written by Paul? It is this: the false ascription attributes the ideas of the pseudonymous author to the known historical figure and invalidates, or at least renders suspect, the historical accuracy of any description of Paul based on the use of Colossians.

            The disinterested historian ideally is interested in the Bible only as a library of texts gathered from the stream of Western civilization and in arranging them with respect to their historical sequence in order to reconstruct the sequence of historical events and thought. The church is interested in this goal as well but only up to a certain point. The overriding interest of the church is in protecting the Bible as an iconic object that communicates God’s eternal “Word,” for the purpose of using the Bible as an authoritative source for faith and morals. Given the Church’s need for a firm basis for faith and morals, anonymous and pseudonymous texts become a difficulty. What for the disinterested historian is an inconvenient problem becomes for the church a serious problem.

The authority of the Bible resides not in the collection of texts themselves but in its authors, that is, in “the authority of persons who being presumed to know the truth communicate it to others.”⁴ If that is the case, knowing the identity of the authors of the Biblical texts becomes essential in order to support claims made for the Bible’s authority.

            Early Christians shared this idea. The anonymous author of Hebrews opined: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets…“ (Heb 1:1). And in 2 Pet 1:20-21 we read: “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation because no prophecy ever came by human will but men and women moved by the Holy spirit spoke from God.” (New Revised Standard). The authority of the prophet’s experience with God was in turn passed to their written texts as well: “All scripture is inspired by God…“ (2 Tim 3:16). But the authority of the prophet’s experience undergirded the authority of the written text for the early Christians.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See the discussion in W. G. Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament (17^th revised ed.; Abingdon: SCM Press, 1975), 472.

²https://www.pa-roots.com/pacw/infantry/56th/56thcoa.html

³Of course, if the author made a specific claim to be Edson Williams, 1^st Sgt of Company A, it might be a fraudulent claim and the document could still be pseudonymous.

⁴The quotation is from C. H. Dodd; see the discussion in Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 303-305.

Mysticism and the Jesus of John's Gospel

I have previously defined mysticism briefly as "the experience of mystical union or direct communion with God."¹ In other words, it is an experience in which an individual becomes one with God, or unites with God. Recently I found the following definition on the internet:

In modern times, "mysticism" has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the "union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God". This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices, valuing "mystical experience" as a key element of mysticism.²

Becoming “one with God” would seem to be a claim that one has become “divinized,” or simply stated: one has become absorbed in God. Is that even possible? Through history, however, there have been those that believed it to be possible. One finds such statements in ancient texts as the Corpus Hermeticum (1,25-26), and Plotinus, for example, said that the goal of humanity “was not to be sinless but to be God” (Enneads, I.6,1-3). Porphyry, his student, claimed that Plotinus had achieved union with God four times during his time with Plotinus and even Porphyry claimed to have achieved it once.³ In philosophy it is known as henosis (becoming one with the one).⁴

In the modern Orthodox Christian Church, the stated goal of salvation is becoming one with God.⁵ For a brief discussion of the pervasiveness of union with God in the Christian devotional classics, see the brief discussion in Georgia Harkness, Mysticism. Its Meaning & Message.⁶

            Against this all too brief background I note several statements by Jesus in the Gospel of John suggesting that the author portrayed Jesus as a mystic who was conscious of being one with God. The plain language of the statements themselves are clearly mystical, but critical New Testament scholarship has generally not taken them to be such.⁷ There are two levels of mystical statements; in the first Jesus speaks of himself and God and a second level in which he speaks of himself, God, and the disciple. The union of the Father and the “son” are reflected in statements made by others at the beginning and ending of the gospel. At the beginning the narrator describes the “Word” (generally it is assumed Jesus is the Word) as being both opposite God and as being God (The word is Theos, God, and not theios, divine): “The Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And a second statement by the narrator describing Jesus (from the critical Greek text) as: “the only God in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). And at the end of the gospel Philip’s confession about Jesus: “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28). These two statements form a basis for understanding the statements below as mystical.

            In the first level of statements Jesus claimed union with the father: “I and the Father, we are one” (John 10:30; see also for similar statements: 14:10-11; 17:21-22). In the second level of statements Jesus brought the disciple into mystical union with himself and the Father: “On that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you are in me and I am in you” (John 14:20; see also 15:4-7; 17;21, 23, 26).

            Is the author of the Gospel of John a mystic? The English New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd had problems with the term mystic and wrote:

If the mystic is one whose religious life is expressed in ecstasy, or one who experiences an impersonal absorption in the divine, then one is right to deny this description to the author of the gospel (Dodd, p. 198).

Nevertheless, Dodd avers that John was not using stereotypical language then in vogue, but clearly using language evocative of mysticism. Dodd surveys the passages in John that suggest “union with God” and chides the German scholar, Walter Bauer, for shying away from the term “mystic” and instead describing the author of John as opting for a “conception of the Christian life” akin to a “kind of legalism.” Dodd himself affirms that the author of John opened up for believers a situation in which faith permitted them to dwell in God and God in them, but opines “whether this should be called ‘mysticism’ I do not know” (Dodd, p. 198). His problem with the term is the ecstasy associated with it.⁸

            Clearly John uses the language of mysticism, but there is no evidence for ecstatic visions or other mystical retreats from the world to be found in John. Does this suggest John reflects a kind of intellectual “mysticism” (if such is even possible), as Dodd seemed to think?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=mysticism

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism

³Porphyry, “Life of Plotinus,” 23: in A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus, Porphyry on Plotinus; Enead I (Cambridge/London: Harvard, 1966; revised 1989), 69.

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henosis

⁵Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books, 1964), 236-37. For the quotations, see C. Hedrick, “On Becoming God,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, Tuesday July 4, 2017: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=enneads

⁶Georgia Harkness, Mysticism. Its Meaning & Message (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), 20-24.

⁷For example, see C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press), 187-200; Raymond Brown does not even raise the subject of mysticism in connection with John’s language: The Gospel of John (2 vols.; AB 29; New York: Doubleday, 1966, 1970). Ernest Haenchen sees no hint of mysticism in these verses: A Commentary on the Gospel of John (2 vols.; Hermenia; Fortress, 1984), 2.50. He even translates Theos (God) in John 1:1 as if it were theios (divine).

⁸See Rev 1:9-20 as an example of an ecstatic vision; for definition see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy