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[Scape211]

I recently heard someone say this:

Even the Vatican recognizes that 6 of Paul's letters are forgeries. Archeology has found no trace of Moses or his million or so followers, scholars cannot find any population of Jewish slaves in Egypt. Nothing, it is a made up story. So are the gospels, Jewish scripture written in Greek, what a nonsense.

Now, I dont hold the Vatican in high authority in terms of the correctness of the bible as I am not Catholic. Nor do I think the claim of 'no trace of Archeology' good grounds for calling something fake (absence of something is not proof of its non-existence). However, what is the argument and therefore counter argument for calling Paul's Letters forgeries?

I assume this is talking about some of the later books of the bible as the first 7 seem to have almost universal agreement of Paul's authorship.

[jimwalton]

There are books of Paul's that are virtually universally regarded as having been authored by him: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. There is hot debate over the other 6 traditionally thought to be authored by him: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thes., 1 & 2 Tim., and Titus.

Having studied the 6 "forged" ones, I'm solidly in the camp of Pauline authorship. If these letters are forged, the authors "out-Pauled" Paul. Somebody had his personality, vocabulary, style, figures of speech, and theology down so well they beat Paul at his own game. I've had conversations about them on the forum here, and Pauline authorship has a strong case. While there are legitimate arguments against Pauline authorship, I think the evidence is in his favor. They aren't even close to being able to say with any kind of certainty, "They are forgeries."

I know nothing about the Vatican's assessment of the 6 disputed books, nor do I care. I care about the truth, not about who said what.

> Archeology has found no trace of Moses

It's true that archaeology has found no mention of Moses, but most of that is to be expected. (1) We don't know what era he was in; (2) he was only in Egypt his first 40 years and we don't know by what name they may have called him; (3) After the "rebellion" and exodus, you can just imagine that if his name was in the records, it was expunged; (4) Moses never held any formal office in Egypt; (5) he was a shepherd in Midian for 40 years; (5) he was part of a wandering people group that didn't leave any of their stuff behind for 40 years.

There is one questionable mention of Moses, though. It has mild credibility, but most archaeologists disagree with Petrovich's reading of the texts. https://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Charles4.pdf

> his million or so followers, scholars cannot find any population of Jewish slaves in Egypt.

I happen to think there were only about 25,000, not millions. Again, I think there are reasons we haven't found them: (1) They lived in the Nile Delta, where no records have survived the wet, humid environment; (2) they lived in homes with the Egyptian people; (3) there were many Semitic people in Egypt at the time, and we don't know who any of them were, either; (4) When they left they didn't build any cities but wandered for 40 years, taking everything with them every time they moved; (5) Nobody's digging the desert looking for remains. They hardly know where to look. Archaeologists dig on mounds (tels) where there were cities; the Israelites didn't build any buildings during the 40 yrs.

> So are the gospels

This isn't evidence, it's just a false statement that the Gospels are made up.

> Jewish scripture written in Greek

Of course they were. Greek was the lingua franca of the empire. Mark was probably in Rome when he wrote his Gospel; Luke was a Gentile who probably didn't know Hebrew. We would expect Matthew, as a businessman employed by Rome, to know Greek. John spent many years in Ephesus. We would expect him to know Greek, too.

These are all much longer conversations, but the accusations are difficult to sustain with evidence.