Pseudepigrapha

As pseudepigraphy (Greek ψευδεπιγραφία - literally about " the false attribution " composition of ψευδής pseudes, spurious, untrue ' and ἐπιγραφή epigraphs, name, inscription, write ' ) refers to the phenomenon that a text deliberately in the name of a famous personality drafted or incorrectly one is attributed to such. A font with wrong Responsibility is called accordingly the Pseudepigraph.

Motivations for pseudepigraphy

Pseudepigraphy is common in the ancient world, be it in classical authors, whether in writings of the Bible. It can be explained by the desire to hand down the thoughts of a person in authority of the past in a school tradition. You can specify both the desire to give the personalized text a higher authority, in the foreground, and the humility that written down thoughts attributed to the person by whom one has it taken objectively or from which one has been inspired.

Forms of pseudepigraphy

An incorrect Responsibility can have several reasons. Roughly we can distinguish four types of pseudepigraphy, which can be divided into two categories.

Author of pseudepigraphy

In the first category will be asked for the person who made ​​the false attribution. A distinction is made between primary and secondary pseudepigraphy pseudepigraphy.

Intention behind pseudepigraphy

It turns on the other hand the question of whether a false attribution was made intentionally or unintentionally. This question can also be combined with the first category. There may be deliberate primary and secondary deliberate pseudepigraphy. Only secondary pseudepigraphy can happen unintentionally. Because you can exclude the possibility that an author for his own work unintentionally indicates a wrong author.

Pseudepigraphy Bible and Science

Today's historical-critical research assumes that some biblical books, or parts thereof, in both the Old and New Testaments, are pseudepigraph. For example, in the Old Testament many psalms attributed to King David, regarded as pseudepigrapha; in the New Testament some letters are counted among the Pseudepigrapha due to the author information given in the text, such as the Ephesians, who claims to have been written by the Apostle Paul. Other examples are the Epistle of James, Jude, among others

There is disagreement in the Bible, science, literature extent pseudepigraphe input into the Biblical canon could have been found. What is important is the question of how deliberate primary pseudepigraphy was firstly understood by the author and secondly taken by the reader. Some theologians believe that there is deliberate primary pseudepigraphy without intent to deceive and the readers had this pseudepigraphe literature not included as an attempt at deception, but as a common literary style figure. Other theologians deny this and refer to the statements of various ancient authors who comment on pseudepigrapher literature and as such they also criticize. Due to various statements by church fathers to false authorship they conclude that pseudepigraphe writings that would have been recognized as such, have not been included in the biblical canon.