Despite this, the Book of Enoch and other rejected books do appear in some Bibles, with a warning about how they are apocryphal. Just because they aren’t inspired though (officially-speaking) doesn’t mean they can’t be interesting.
To everyone who is interested in the texts and backgrounds of the apocrypha of the New Testament, I can highly recommend the two volumns of Wilhelm Schneemelcher: "New Testament Apocrypha" (or for German speakers: "Neutestamentliche Apokryphen"): vol. I: "Gospels and Related Writings" and vol. 2: "Writings Relating to the Apostles Apocalypses and Related Subjects". They include a lot of texts, many in complete translations, and provide excellent philological introductions to each text. However, the Apostilic Fathers are not included. For this you must look for other editions.
Given the pejorative connotations of "apocrypha", Catholics don't accept that term for the books in their OT canon which are rejected by Jews and Protestants – they say the appropriate term is "deuterocanon" ("second canon"). Catholics do use the term "apocrypha" for books of similar antiquity (such as Enoch) which ended up being rejected from the Catholic canon. Many Protestants prefer to call those later books "pseudepigrapha", to avoid confusion with the books of the Protestant apocrypha / Catholic deuterocanon; however, in the strictest sense of the term, that's not entirely correct, since "pseudepigrapha" literally refers to false claims of authorship, and while most of these texts do make such false claims, some of them are instead anonymous.
So, for me, the question of forgeries is interesting because if forged texts were used someone had an interst in doing it. If a text is not a "forgery", it doesn't mean the text states objective truths so.
You're overgeneralizing. The Bible is effectively something like an anthology compiled from texts written in different styles over thousands of years. The character of Genesis is quite different from, say, the New Testament Gospels. While Genesis is not intended to be a scientific text, the New Testament does describe events in a historical kind of manner.
> they are closer to pure propaganda pieces.
I have no idea what that means. You should probably revisit your assumptions.
So is a text from, say, 200 B.C. that changes some things from an older version from 300 B.C. a forgery? Or is it just a different version of the same story and is neither more authentic than the other (the 300 B.C. version may not be the true original either)?
It seems to me that something is only a forgery if, say, someone in the year 500 invents an entire new text whole-cloth and then tries to pretend it's actually from 200 B.C. But if it originates from the same culture and traditions as the Hebrew bible then it's one version of an authentic text.
And even someone invents something whole-cloth – like, say, claiming to find golden plates with Egyptian hieroglyphs in the US – then can we define this as a "forgery"? It quickly becomes a matter of faith.
When in reality it is very hard to know truth, even in the present time, even in one's own experience.
So, if that is the case, why make such an outlandish claim?
Well, there is value to someone if they can say 'I have the truth' and other people believe them.
The initial lie, once believed, takes on a life of its own thanks to the belief that becomes invested in it, especially when it is under someone's external control.
>> Take the story of a group of fallen angels who descend to earth to seduce beautiful women. Using his new technique, Langlois discovered that earlier scholars had gotten the names of some of the angels wrong, and so had not realized the names were derived from Canaanite gods worshipped in the second millennium B.C.—a clear example of the way scriptural authors integrated elements of the cultures that surrounded them into their theologies.
The priests from the new religion wrote a text portraying the ancient gods as "evil". Sounds like an efficient use of propaganda to me. And that is something that makes historical research of religious texts very worthwhile.
For example, early Canaanite texts assigned territory to tribes according to their number of gods. In a later text, it was by their number of tutelary angels. In current texts it is unspecified why they got their allocation.
Oldest Canaanite texts have a goddess Asherah, equal to YHWH in importance (and always shown with a cake), involved in important rites. Nowadays they use a stick in her place, which appears to suffice. They clearly would have preferred to do away with her entirely, but weren't willing to abandon the rites that needed her.
Religious rites were indistinguishable from magic spells, and the ancients didn't care who they came from, if they seemed to work. They were swapped around like coleslaw recipes. You can see how they were thought of particularly in Numbers, where it clearly doesn't matter who uses them: if you say it, it works, priest or no.
For most of the known text we have a pretty good idea about where the earliest written copy comes from and serious academic is careful about ascribing truth to anonymous late 1st and 2nd century greek texts written in modern day Turkey and describing events happening decades earlier.
Christian theologians and biblical scholars however kind of have to take 2nd century anonymous texts from people who could not have been direct witnesses to the events described as gospel value because without those accounts there is no new testament.
Likewise, scholars generally agree that at least two of the gospels copied parts wholesale out of another (generally that Mathew and Luke copied from Mark and changed elements of his story). See the synoptic problem for more information about this. And that after they were written, others came along and changed or added elements. The ending of the gospel of Mark, for instance, is generally thought to have been a later addition, and at least some prominent scholars think the nativity story in Luke is. But again, we don't use the term "forgery."
For a more recent example, you don't see the term used to describe The Book of Mormon, which is purported to have been written two millennia before non-Mormons think it was written.
I suppose the term isn't used when matters of faith are the focus. The article uses the term to describe items created with the secular purpose of earning more money, even though they're religious in nature.
I think there are some good reasons why we don't call them "forgeries".
One is that people in the ancient world had different understandings of authorship from what people do today. Today, if you are copying a text written by someone else, either you copy it verbatim, or you very clearly mark your changes, so no one mistakenly thinks they were the work of the original author. In ancient times, people didn't necessarily think there was anything wrong with "improving" a text while copying it, and not failing to note the changes.
Nowadays, it sometimes happens that an author dies with a work unfinished, and a close friend or colleague is called upon to finish it off. However, we'll make it very explicit that's what going on, and to fail to do so is seen as unethical. In the ancient world, it was quite common for students to add stuff to texts written by their late teachers, based on their oral recollections of what the teacher said – or even just their opinions on what the teacher would have said – and few thought it necessary to explicitly note that they were doing it.
As these particular texts came to be seen as holy, intentionally changing them began to be seen as sinful. However, there was likely a lengthy period – possibly measured in decades – between the first drafts, and when they came to be seen as too holy to intentionally alter any further.
Finally, "forgery" generally implies something done to be intentionally deceptive, and we don't have any evidence that the authors of these texts were intentionally deceiving anyone. Even if they wrote falsehoods, for all we know, they honestly-yet-mistakenly believed they were true.
> For a more recent example, you don't see the term used to describe The Book of Mormon, which is purported to have been written two millennia before non-Mormons think it was written.
Part of the problem with calling it a "forgery", is that could be interpreted as making an assumption about Joseph Smith's psychology – that he was a conscious charlatan. While non-Mormons aren't going to believe he was a genuine prophet, genuine prophet and conscious charlatan aren't the only two options – is it possible that he was deluded? That he honestly, however falsely, believed that God was revealing stuff to him? Even if he was "making stuff up", was he consciously aware he was doing it, or was it unconscious creativity, which he subjectively experienced as coming from outside of himself, even though in truth it didn't? One of the reasons why scholars don't call it a "forgery", is it allows them to avoid that debate except when they specifically want to delve into it.
Yes, among many other religious texts (whole Orthodox Biblical canon + a bunch of pseudoepigraphical works, most of the Buddhist canon, Taoist and Hindu works, some ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts, Quran, etc...). Got way too sidetracked in University. It's interesting though.
> Also, Genesis does not merely reference Enoch, it introduces him
Of course he was a character mentioned in Genesis but references to things from the book of Enoch (Nephilim/Giants/half-god humans) are more interesting.
Genesis authors had to retain all the old myth imagery in order to be taken seriously as an origin story, but stripped off the meaning to lay their own on top.
Noah and the dove are also from much older origin myths about where the Earth came from.
Cain and Abel, and also Esau and Isaac, recycle origin twin myths. One twin kills his brother and makes the world out of his body parts, and becomes the first priest.
So Genesis is largely a big mishmosh of origin-myth imagery with a narrative overlaid.
The imagery shows up in Vedic hymns, too, tracing to the same original source, with of course a different narrative overlaid.
I figured "giant" could be a metaphor, after all it's in a collection of traditions of pastoralists, wherein God rejects the agriculturalist's offering, who then kills his sheep herding brother.
Then the farmer builds the first city, and his descendents are the first blacksmith, the first musician, the first dancer (debateably), and the first animal farmer - who also often conflicted with semi-nomadic herders.
Great metaphor for the Iron Age equivalent of the Range Wars.
And IIRC, Neanderthal were far stronger than us.
Mind you, could be that they're where folk memory of dwarves arises, short, strong, like living underground.
Maybe elves were Homo floriensis?
I love speculating like this because it's entirely unprovable, much like evolutionary psychology.
No one seriously imagines Adam, Noah, or Moses as historical, flesh-and-bone, people, any more than we imagine that of Paul Bunyan, Slue-foot Sue, or Hamlet.
Jesus, too, BTW. Everything written as if of real events came at least two generations after the cult began.
“Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:5, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:8, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:11, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:14, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:17, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:20, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” (Genesis 5:23–24, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:27, ESV)
“Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.” (Genesis 5:31, ESV)
The Bible only describes one other human, Elijah, as leaving Earth without having died. (Even Jesus died!)
Can I ask - are you a biblical scholar? Reading a different bible each year us impressive