Cueva and Martínez (eds.), Splendide Mendax

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Edmund P. Cueva, Javier Martínez (ed.), Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Literature. Groningen: Barkhuis, 2016. Pp. ix, 369. ISBN 9789491431982. €95.00.

Reviewed by Colin Whiting, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (cwhiting@ascsa.org)

Publisher's Preview
[Authors and titles are listed below.]

Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Literature is an edited volume containing 19 chapters about, very broadly, ancient fakes, forgeries, lying, deception, and so on. As such, it functions as a sort of companion volume to Fakes and Forgers of Classical Literature/Falsificaciones y falsarios de la Literatura Clásica, a 2010 volume edited by one of the present volume’s editors, Javier Martínez, and reviewed in BMCR 2012.07.20 by the other, Edmund P. Cueva. Martínez, with Isabel Velásquez, also edited a 2012 volume entitled Realidad, ficción y autenticidad en el mundo antiguo: La investigación ante documentos sospechosos (full bibliographic information available here).

[...]

The book includes coverage of The Gospel of Jesus' Wife and other New Testament Apocrypha, along with biblical and ancient Near Eastern vaticinia ex eventu (prophecies after the fact).