Invisible Foreigner

wiggs39 replied to your post: Apocryphal Quotes and the Internet

Good title, considering that attributing text to notable Christian thinkers is what writers of ancient apocryphal texts did. (I spend a lot of time with those texts now.) 2,000 years from now scholars may be as frustrated at us as we are at them :D

Yeah, obviously misattribution has had a long and noble tradition in Israelite religion, Judaism, and Christianity. I mean, think of how many people probably wrote Isaiah, and that’s not even touching the issues with authorship of the Pentateuch or the Pastoral Epistles. Once we get to the non-canonical apocryphal texts, accurate attribution just goes out the window. That’s probably why I got so frustrated with our non-canonical gospels class. :)

In 2,000 years, scholars will be so annoyed by the internet, I think. Writing a whole book in someone else’s name is one thing, but spreading small ideas from person to person over a period of years, and even centuries, will probably make it nearly impossible to trace attribution well.

Oh, well. I at least have made my tiny contribution to the accuracy of the internet. :D