In the
“The Flood and Meat Eating” thread of the BA&I forum, Lam made the comment: ””
but it was common practice in ancient times and up to the Renaissance for authors of ”certain works to not identify themselves or to sign their works. People back then believed ”that anything they did was for the glory of god and thus was expected to be humble ”enough to not claim their own work.”
Do we have evidence that this was the practice of the OT or NT authors?”
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Pseudepigraphy In Rabbinic Literature seems to show otherwise in the rabbinic era.”
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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.
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Pseudepigrapha: ”
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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.
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These two excerpts do not seem to support the idea of humble anonymity.”
I realize that the Hebrew Bible is a compilation of various types of writings as is the NT. ”I am not saying that anonymous or pseudepigrapha are they only types.”
What I’m proposing is that the anonymous writings in the Hebrew Bible and New ”Testament do not seem to be anonymous due to human humility, but that anonymity and ”false attribution added authority.”
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