How has our cultural addiction to authorship and intellectual rights coloured our understanding of the differing standards of “authorship” from ancient cultures?
Why do you think it is that pseudonymous and anonymous authorship of Philosophy and Theology has all but vanished? Would Ecclesiastes be anonymous in the 21st Century?
To be clear, I’m talking about the publishing world. Pseudonymous writing still exists in the blog world–although even there it seem to be diminishing 
Would Kierkegaard be published under the name of Johannes de Silentio in 2009? Would a present day writer of Ecclesiastes seriously consider authorship under the name Qoheleth?
Why do we put so much value today into verifiable authorship? Why do so many run in terror from any notion that a book such as Zechariah, or even Daniel, might be pseudonymous?
Pseudonymous work appears to have had days of higher moral standing than that which it currently enjoys. What have we lost in the process?
3 Comments
Peter Rollins said, (paraphrase) “We place more importance on what is said than the saying.” I think it comes down to certainty. When an authors words are out there it can be vetted. But when its anonymous it’s harder to do. The authorship gives it more credence after the author has been established.
You know what, I would interpret that quote (out of context, of course) to be contradictory to our desire to vet. Publishing today banks its money on the accepted and vetted authors “saying” something/anything, not so much on the quality of what has been “said” in the content. I personally have bought and read so many books based on who the author was, and then been let down by the quality of the content. There may have been a good nugget that was summarized in the first chapter that is then followed by so much hot air. Then I wonder why I paid 20 dollars to sit someone’s name on my bookshelf.
I like this, Dave.
Course, some of the authorship fightin’ is more about things like whether, for instance, Daniel really wrote foreshadowing the Greek and Roman empires, or whether it was actually another pseudonymous writer doing it after the fact (which is a convenient way of stripping away Christians’ argument for divine inspiration / genuine prophetic power of the text.) I think that’s why some Christians make a bigger deal about it. Yeah?