It is often said, even by critical scholars who should know better, that "writing in the name of another" was widely accepted in antiquity. But religion scholar Bart D. Ehrman dares to call it what it was: literary forgery, a practice that was as scandalous then as it is today. Here, Ehrman's original research takes readers back to the ancient world, where forgeries were used as weapons by unknown authors to fend off attacks to their faith and establish their church. So, if many of the books in the Bible were not in fact written by Jesus's inner circle--but by writers living decades later, with differing agendas in rival communities--what does that do to the authority of Scripture?--From publisher description.