On my bookshelves is a handsome set of late Victorian printed books in a plum-coloured binding. I take down a volume, and read on the spine the name ‘David Copperfield’; underneath, in slightly smaller letters, is another name, ‘Charles Dickens’. I open the book, and find the same combination repeated on the title page. I have heard of Dickens, and conclude that what I...
Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics by Bart Ehrman. Other faiths have sacred books aplenty, but you can imagine them existing perfectly well as religious practices and ways of life in the absence of any particular one of their holy texts. Not so Christianity. The discovery that its scripture is full of literary deceit is unsettling to the foundations of Christian faith, at least for those who have staked their Christianity on a reliability that the Bible virtually never claims for itself.