The Rev. John W. Chadwick, in his “Bible of To-day,” says that the first four Epistles “are his [Paul’s] with absolute certainty.” Four others, Philippians, Colossians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon, he is disposed to accept, but admits that their authenticity is doubtful. The remaining books he pronounces spurious.
Persons in this age have little conception of the prevalence of literary forgeries in the early centuries of the church. Now, when books are printed in editions of 1,000 or more, such forgeries are nearly impossible and consequently rare. When books existed in manuscript only, they were neither difficult nor uncommon. Books and letters purporting to have been written by Paul, Peter, John, and other Apostles were readily “discovered” when wanted. Of these Apostolic forgeries Prof. John Tyndall says: “When arguments or proofs were needed, whether on the side of the Jewish Christians or of the Gentile Christians, a document was discovered which met the case, and on which the name of an Apostle or of some authoritative contemporary of the Apostles was boldly inscribed. The end being held to justify the means, there was no lack of manufactured testimony.”
Conclusion.
Of these fourteen Epistles ascribed to Paul, four, then, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians, are pronounced genuine; three, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon, are of doubtful authenticity; while seven, Ephesians, Colossians, Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews, are spurious.
The genuine writings of Paul are probably the oldest Christian writings extant. Admitting the authenticity of these four books, of course, is not admitting the authenticity of Christianity. Paul was not a witness of the alleged events upon which historical Christianity rests. He was not a convert to Christianity until many years after Christ’s death. He did not see Christ (save in a vision); he did not listen to his teachings; he did not learn from his disciples. “The gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it” (Gal. i, 11, 12). Paul accepted only to a small extent the religion of Christ’s disciples. He professed to derive his knowledge from supernatural sources—from trances and visions. Regarding the value of such testimony, the author of “Supernatural Religion” says: “No one can deny, and medical and psychological annals prove, that many men have been subject to visions and hallucinations which have never been seriously attributed to supernatural causes. There is not one single valid reason removing the ecstatic visions and trances of the Apostle Paul from this class.”
We have now reviewed the books of the Bible and presented some of the historical and internal evidences bearing upon the question of their authenticity. The authenticity of the books of the New Testament, we have seen, is but little better attested than that of the Old. The authors of twenty books—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Ephesians, Colossians, Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, James, First and Second Peter, First, Second, and Third John, Jude, and Revelation—are unknown. Three books—Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon—are of questionable authenticity. Four books only—Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians—are generally admitted to be authentic.
Of the sixty-six books of the Bible at least fifty are anonymous works or forgeries. To teach that these books are divine, and to accept them as such, denotes a degree of depravity on the one hand, and an amount of credulity on the other, that are not creditable to a moral and enlightened people.