I very much enjoyed reading the March 2005 SBL Forum on forgeries of ancient Semitic materials. I was a bit disappointed, however, that it did not include a discussion of ancient forgeries. The competition between the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamon in antiquity, for example, resulted in inflated prices for manuscripts (especially of Homer and the tragedians), which led to numerous faked manuscripts — this was an issue of significant concern to textual critics in ancient Alexandria. It also leads to a problem that some genuinely ancient materials may be forgeries committed in antiquity.

In future issues of the SBL Forum , I was wondering if you might be able to include this sort of historical perspective on problems.

Carol Poster
English Department
York University
Toronto, Ontario

Citation: Carol Poster, " Ancient Forgeries," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited March 2005]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=380