“That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us...” 2 Thes.2:2
"Jezebel...wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his city". 1 Kings 21:6-8
Forgeries of antiquity are a big business. Highly skilled people produce forgeries for a number of reasons, obviously money is the clearest motive. But forgeries are also produced for revenge to embarrass or fool people, or to prove a point in one's favor for power or prestige,(e.g. Donation of Constantine, The False Decretals) to demonstrate how superior the forger is by deceiving their peers. Not to mention the impact of archaeology on politics and the intense debates it can spark (as the Israeli/ Muslim contentions see here and here) . The range of motives and emotions surrounding being publicly embarrassed or becoming suddenly important among your peers (or even life and death) creates a matrix in which forgeries will be perpetuated. So, the methods for detecting forgeries have a wide range of chemical or material tests, historical contextualizing, handwriting analysis, location of the find (i.e. provenance) and so on. But in spite of experts analyzing the artifacts rigorously “There isn't a museum in the world that doesn't have any fakes,” said Philippe de Montebello, acting director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (New York Times 1978 article)
For instance, this video lists “10 Bizarre Archaeological Hoaxes That Fooled Everyone”. This site- World of Antiquity has an interesting video “Ancient Texts That Were FAKED” documenting a series of fakes fooling many people including experts of a variety of disciplines. Sometimes forgers are used in identifying forgeries. The Smithsonian Channel has a video A Convicted Forger Calls Nefertiti's Bust a Fake.
In the Art world “An Unknown Man” by Dutch artist Frans Hals... had been sold for $10.8 million, but when testing revealed it to be a fake, Sotheby’s said it had “rescinded the sale and reimbursed the client in full,” (BBC News, 2016). (The Value of Forgeries) In an article entitled “Infamous Piracy: How the Lucrative Market for Forgeries is Transforming the World of Fine Art” Emma Kleiner reported “the now defunct Knoedler Gallery... closed in 2011 following the discovery that the gallery had sold $63 million of fakes”. She further reported regarding the tightly regulated art market in India, "Girish Shahane, Artistic Director of the India Art Fair, explains how the tightly controlled national art market in India has stunted the development of the art market and encouraged the proliferation of fakes through the promise of great profit: “Expertise and transparency have been strangled by the Antiquities Act, which makes the owning and selling of antiquities difficult, their export illegal, and restricts trade in the work of a number of modern artists labeled national treasures . . . While there is no silver bullet solution for the problem of forgeries, partial fixes emerge as a natural consequence of trade.” Not only does it ruin a reputation of an institution to have invested a lot of money only to be duped by a forger, it costs money to have scientific testing done on artifacts.
This CNN report says “In 2012 Karen King, a prestigious scholar at Harvard Divinity School, announced the academic discovery of a lifetime: a scrap of papyrus, purportedly from the early days of Christianity, in which Jesus refers to a woman as “my wife.” Only later to embarrass Harvard and herself as it was proven to be a forgery.
Mark William Hofmann “Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished forgers in history” made millions of dollars deceiving the Mormon church (exposing their corruption in the process) as well as experts, historians and collectors. 'Mark Hofmann was unquestionably the most skilled forger this country has ever seen,' said Charles Hamilton, a New York document dealer who is widely regarded as the nation's pre-eminent detector of forged documents... Mr. Hamilton said Mr. Hofmann 'perpetrated by far the largest monetary frauds through forgery that this country has ever had,' adding, 'He fooled me – he fooled everybody.'[31] “Some of his forgeries were accepted by scholars for years, and an unknown number of them may still be in circulation.” “Hofmann also traded in many legitimate historical documents acquired from rare book sellers and collectors. The forgeries were thus intermingled with many legitimate historical documents, which bolstered Hofmann's credibility.”[5]: 95, 98
Codex 2427 known as “Archaic Mark” (listed as a category 1 in importance by Kurt Aland) was rated by scholars as superior quality which means it should always be considered when trying to establish the original text. But comprehensive testing and analysis (microscopic, chemical and codicological) by the University of Chicago of ms 972-Gregory-Aland ms 2427 (Archaic Mark) confirms that it is a modern production made sometime between 1874 and the first decades of the 20th century. (see here and here)
CNN & The BBC initially reported “The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC says five of its most valuable artifacts – once thought to be part of the historic Dead Sea Scrolls – are fake and will not be displayed anymore.” Now all 16 of their Dead Sea Scroll fragments are considered forgeries. (see here and here) The “The James Ossuary” is still being debated as the find or forgery of the century. One of the two references to Jesus by Josephus was an apparent forgery. (see here and here) The list goes on and on. Forgeries are basically an entire field of research.
In some cases, the desire to win a debate can even lead leading Evangelical scholars into embarrassment naïvely believing things before they have been thoroughly vetted (even if it’s not a forgery). Daniel Wallace excitedly in a ‘gotcha moment’ broke the news in his Bart Ehrman debate (Ehrman was unaware). The ‘ace up his sleeve’ oldest manuscript was a newly analyzed fragment of Mark’s gospel from the first century (2:04:40 here) dated by a papyrologist of an “unimpeachable” reputation (and here) which in fact turned out to not be true (as White admits here) much to Wallace’s chagrin and Evangelical scholarship in general no doubt. (Due respect to him for owning it.)
Bart Ehrman in his book ‘Lost Christianities’, spends the first 89 pages discussing ancient and modern forgeries. In one account he mentions a letter of Clement (pg.81-4) believed to be authentic by a number of scholars although there was no full consensus. All that was available were photographs but the document itself was never subjected to chemical analysis and the manuscript was eventually lost. Ehrman again “It is true that a modern forgery would be an amazing feat. For this to be forged, someone would have had to imitate an eighteenth-century Greek style of handwriting and to produce a document that is so much like Clement that it fools experts who spend their lives analyzing Clement, which quotes a previously lost passage from Mark that is so much like Mark that it fools experts who spend their lives analyzing Mark. If this is forged, it is one of the greatest works of scholarship of the twentieth century, by someone who put an uncanny amount of work into it.
But it would not have been impossible. What seems most incredible to most of us is that someone could imitate an eighteenth-century style of handwriting in Greek! In fact, this is not at all impossible. We know of numerous forgers since the Renaissance who taught themselves different Greek and Latin writing styles and produced documents that fooled experts for years. Some documents are still probably unsuspected.” (pg.82-3) He notes "the only way to see if a modern person has forged the text is to have the manuscript available for analysis. On the most basic level, until there is a chemical analysis of the ink, we cannot really know if the scribe was writing in the late 1750s—or the late 1950s." (pg.82) And again "We cannot know if this eighteenth-century hand was actually writing in the eighteenth century until we can examine the ink." (pg.83)
In this section Ehrman mentions a man named Constantine Simonides who himself was known as great forger. (pg.83) Not sure if he was a Mark Hofmann level forger, but Ehrman writes of him “In the 1850s and 1860s, a Greek scholar named Constantine Simonides passed off dozens of forgeries of ancient texts (including some in hieroglyphics) and made a small fortune doing it. For a long while, he managed to convince a good number of people that he in fact had forged the famous manuscript of the Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, discovered by the great manuscript hunter Constantine Tischendorf in the Monastery of St. Catherine’s at Mount Sinai. This was the most significant New Testament manuscript discovered in the nineteenth century, and Simonides claimed that he himself had fabricated it. And he was so good at his craft, as everyone knew, that learned societies throughout England debated the merits of his claims for months.” (pg.83)
Was Simonides a great forger? (as J.K. Elliot holds -Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair) If he had a Hofmann level skillset, he could have undertaken the task of writing the Codex Sinaticus which is considered the gold standard of manuscripts when it comes to determining the original reading. It is ranked as a category 1 in importance by the Aland's... um, yeah. Anyway, there are people today as well as when the Codex was discovered (by Constantine Tischendorf), who question its authenticity (e.g. Sir James Donaldson). Simonides in many of their minds was not a forger but a gifted calligrapher who was not trying to defraud anyone. So argues these guys for example- David Daniels of Chick Publications, Bill Cooper, Chris Pinto (who debated the subject here with James White). (This gentleman familiar with the material and sympathetic to their case is unconvinced regarding Simonides- see here.)
With this back ground and the fact that chemical analysis of the ink is the final arbiter in such matters, it is sort of odd that no chemical analysis has been conducted on the Codex Sinaiticus apparently. That seems to be confirmed here under 1.1.1 Brown-black inks: "The Codex Sinaiticus inks have never been chemically characterized, and the type and proportions of ingredients mixed together have never been determined. Therefore, the composition of the writing media can only be roughly guessed by observing their visible characteristics and their degradation patterns." Also, in the 1.3 Squiggles section "no certain conclusion can be reached without a chemical characterization of the writing media." Why hasn’t it had such testing? I don’t know.
But the real question is ‘are we to believe that God preserved His words by secular experts and their God rejecting science falsely so called?’ If so, what percentage of certainty can we ascribe to their claims (e.g. category 1), considering the history of forgeries and experts being duped? Can we say like preachers of old with fervency ‘This book that I hold in my hand is the inerrant, infallible, unadulterated word of the Living God!’ Or do we need to add a lukewarm “very likely” to the end of the claim?
If we start with the bible as the precondition of intelligibility from the impossibility of the contrary as presuppositional reasoning dictates, then these things are all secondary and subordinate. The bible can be received by the church the pillar and ground of the truth, collectively by reason of use over time apart from scientific experts (just like the canon) which are fooled more often than they care to admit.
See here also for Papal forgeries- https://youtu.be/LPFR5PXGTWY?si=xaWp6gn01_EftpHf&t=6197
