Forged
Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
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Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and God’s Problem reveals which books in the Bible’s New Testament were not passed down by Jesus’s disciples, but were instead forged by other hands—and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial—yet least discussed—problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship.
It is often said, even by critical scholars who
should know better, that “writing in the name
of another” was widely accepted in antiquity.
But New York Times bestselling author Bart D.
Ehrman dares to call it what it was: literary
forgery, a practice that was as scandalous then as it
is today. In Forged, Ehrman’s fresh and original
research takes readers back to the ancient world,
where forgeries were used as weapons by unknown
authors to fend off attacks to their faith and
establish their church. So, if many of the books in
the Bible were not in fact written by Jesus’s inner
circle—but by writers living decades later, with
differing agendas in rival communities—what
does that do to the authority of Scripture?
Ehrman investigates ancient sources to:
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Reveal which New Testament books were
outright forgeries.
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Explain how widely forgery was practiced by
early Christian writers—and how strongly it was
condemned in the ancient world as fraudulent
and illicit.
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Expose the deception in the history of the
Christian religion.
Ehrman’s fascinating story of fraud and deceit is
essential reading for anyone interested in the truth
about the Bible and the dubious origins of
Christianity’s sacred texts.
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Author Extras
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Jesus, Interrupted
The Human Story Behind the Divine Book In this New York Times bestseller, leading Bible expert Bart Ehrman skillfully demonstrates that the New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. Ehrman reveals that many of the books were written in...
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God's Problem
One Bible, Many Answers
In God's Problem, the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus challenges the contradictory biblical explanations for why an all-powerful God allows us to suffer.
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Misquoting Jesus
For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand––and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the...
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