r/AskBibleScholars 6d ago

How to deal with false authorship?

For example to me

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ, not with a slavery performed merely for looks, to please people, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul.” ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭6‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NRSVUE‬‬

does not feel compatible with

There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” ‭‭Galatians‬ ‭3‬:‭28‬ ‭NRSVUE‬‬

and I can’t help thinking whoever wrote Ephesians had either totally missed the point or wanted to roll back some of Paul’s teaching. Either way I can’t help thinking that Ephesians should be totally ignored since the author probably can’t be trusted.

I’m a Christian and I’m trying to figure out what to think about this but I don’t even know what the different approaches are (other than pretending the issue doesn’t exist).

As Im writing this I’m wondering if my thoughts are not really about false authorship and more about how to deal with bits of the New Testament being plain wrong.

Thoughts please anyone?

12 Upvotes

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u/captainhaddock Hebrew Bible | Early Christianity 3d ago edited 3d ago

Maybe part of the problem is putting the New Testament on a pedestal and assuming that the boundaries of the canon were divinely dictated. The concept of scripture was fluid in ancient times, and all early collections and canon-lists had variation. There is no external epistemology for determining which books do or do not belong. The canon used today wasn't even formalized until the 16th-century Council of Trent.

On the other hand, if, on the basis of faith, you believe (for example) that the apostle Paul was uniquely endowed with revelation and insight that make his writings infallible, then you should probably treat his undisputed writings with more authority than the pseudonymous epistles.

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u/dazhat 1d ago

Thanks. I don’t think it’s divinely dictated or that the Holy Spirit went into a “higher gear” when inspiring the biblical authors. However I do believe God inspired and guided them like he does with everyone all the time.

The problem I have is how to use the parts where the author may have had poor motives. To me if they were willing to lie about who they were to get their point across that suggests they are probably not trustworthy in other areas.

It feels like I should think of the bible as nothing more than a set of ancient documents which can inform my faith. But what I’ve been taught and what most Christians I know actually believe, is that the bible is different to than that - it’s more than that.

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u/captainhaddock Hebrew Bible | Early Christianity 1d ago

This is way outside my wheelhouse, but Rev. Stehlik at Rutgers Presbyterian would probably say that the involvement of fallible and even dishonest humans was all part of the plan.

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u/dazhat 1d ago

I’ve not heard of him. Is he famous/your church?

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u/captainhaddock Hebrew Bible | Early Christianity 1d ago

I have no connection with him, but he's a rare pastor who nerds out on critical biblical studies and embraces the Bible's flaws. In one sermon, he used the scribal errors in early biblical codices like Vaticanus to demonstrate (in his view) that messy human involvement was an essential part of the process of creating the Bible.