Why are there so many forgeries in Christian literature?

As you may very well know, outside the accepted Christian canon there is a plethora of other rejected gospels and Acts that did not make the cut. Some gospels like The Secret Gospel of Mark and Infancy Gospel of Thomas are flat-out bizarre while some like the Gospel of Mary and Judas are quite amusing and give some insight into what "heretical’ Christians believed. Some Acts like Acts of Peter are funny albeit ridiculous (it mentions talking dogs and babies, a magic competition between Simon Peter and Simon Magus, Peter convincing people to stop having sex hehe etc). There is even an Epistle of Pilate to emperor Claudius which purports to be a letter from msito Pontius Pilate mwenyewe testifying about Jesus’ miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. It even comes with a conversation between Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea :smiley:

Some forgeries were so good they even found their way into the canon. Some books like 2 Peter most scholars accept is a forgery while 6 out of the 13 Pauline epistles are disputed by scholars… some say they are genuinely from Paul some say they are written by his disciples or people pretending to be him. Whatever the case, I don’t understand why early Christians were so casual about forging documents and evidence. At this point I’ve seen so many fake conversations purporting to be btwn Jesus and his disciples or amongst themselves I genuinely wonder what are the chances some fake conversations did not slip unnoticed into the canonical gospels too.

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