ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two divergent streams of tradition, both of which confound a simple correlation between notions of textual authenticity and authority in Late Antiquity. First I explore acta (“proceedings”) from the Council of Chalcedon – a corpus of texts that attained the highest form of authority in the Theodosian Empire, but that were known by their transmitters and receivers alike to be forged. I then move on to consider the Abgar tradition – a set of documents considered undoubtedly authentic by Eusebius, but that he did not consider to be authoritative in any way. These traditions suggest a disconnect between the scholarly concepts of textual authenticity and authority in Late Antiquity, and demonstrate that neither one can be used as an explanatory device for the other. The chapter reevaluates these concepts as evidenced in the visible, extant reading practices of late ancient interpreters, with the aim of denaturalizing the concept of authorship in the late ancient world.
