Fact or Fiction - Was the Bible forged? Author claims some New Testament books were written by 'people pretending to be apostles' - 27th Mar 2011

Parts of the Bible were written by people who lied about their identity, an author has claimed.

Bart D Ehrman claims many books of the New Testament were forged by people pretending to be the apostles Peter, Paul or James.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Professor Ehrman, best selling author of 'Misquoting Jesus' and 'Jesus, Interrupted', said religious scholars were well aware of the 'lies' of the Bible.

While some were happy to acknowledge them others refer to them as 'pseudepigrapha' - meaning a falsely attributed work -, he wrote.

In his new book , Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, Professor Ehrman claims The Second Epistle of Peter - or 2 Peter - was forged.

'...scholars everywhere - except for our friends among the fundamentalists - will tell you that there is no way on God's green earth that Peter wrote the book.

'Someone else wrote it claiming to be Peter,' he writes.

He then suggests scholars who say it was acceptable in the ancient world for someone to write a book in the name of someone else, are wrong.

'If you look at what ancient people actually said about the practice, you'll see that they invariably called it lying and condemned it as a deceitful practice, even in Christian circles,' Professor Ehrman writes.

Many scholars think six of the 13 letters allegedly written by Paul were actually authored by somebody else claiming to be Paul, Professor Ehrman claims. Read More