Ancient Attribution: Humble Anonymity or Pseudepigrapha‎

First we should note that in the Mishnah, the ascription of a statement to a particular ”named sage marks that statement as a minority opinion.25 Rulings cited as the opinion of ””"the sages" in general are more authoritative.26 But rulings cited anonymously are ”understood to be the ruling of the Mishnah itself and are the most authoritative.27 Thus, in ”the Mishnah, anonymity confers authority, contrary to what we find in pseudepigraphy ”where false attribution to some specific, well-known and highly respected personality is ”generally used to increase the authority of a literary work, statement or idea.

Writings ascribed to some other than their real author, generally with a view to giving ”them an enhanced authority. The term is used especially of the pseudonymous Jewish ”works dating from the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of the ”Christian era which were not included in the Greek Canon of the Old Testament. Among ”these writings are the "Book of Enoch", The Assumption of Moses", the later "Books of ”Baruch" and the "Psalms of Solomon".””1) Some New Testament scholars contend that Paul did not write the letter to the ”Collossians but that it was rather written pseudonomously and credited to Paul ””(Pseudepigraphy) to give it more importance.
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”2) The word Pseudepigraphy from the Greek literally means ”false writing’ and we take it ”to mean falsely attributed writing.
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”3) Pseudepigrapha is not unique to the New Testament. In the Old Testament the Books ”of Moses were not written by Moses but in his name as the great lawgiver.
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This concept is important to us because many of the letters in the NT were written by ”other than the one to whom authorship is ascribed. This does not diminish the validity of ”the lesson. In fact they are wrongly attributed to increase the authority of the lesson.

Now a pseudepigraphal work may be a forgery, the intention being to deceive the readers into accepting views which the person credited the work would never have held. Thus in the New Testament, II Thessalonians, the Pastoral Epistles and I & II Peter are rightly called forgeries for they advocated views which were never held by the persons the writings were attributed to. However a pseudepigraphal document may also have been written by a disciple of the person attributed as the writer. The use of the teacher's name is then a way to tell the readers that the writings originate from his school. Indeed some scholars have suggested that the epistle of James could be a collection of traditional teachings attributed to James and the Jerusalem Church.