Forgery and Counter-forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics - (2012)
Bart Ehrman
https://books.google.com/books?id=-pTy801iZyYC&pg=PA75
There was ... a letter of Jerome suspected by Rufinus (Adv. Rufin. 3.2), and another letter allegedly by Jerome about false translations of Scripture (Adv. Rufin 3.25; also 2.24). Jerome himself wonders if a letter of Augustine’s is actually his (Epist. 102,1).
https://books.google.com/books?id=-pTy801iZyYC&pg=PA83
Forged letters became a real and widespread problem in the highly charged polemical environment of the Christian community at the end of the fourth Christian century and into the fifth. And so we have the complaint of Jerome:
My brother Eusebius writes to me that, when he was at a meeting of African bishops which had been called for certain ecclesiastical affairs, he found there a letter purporting to be written by me, in which I professed penitence and confessed that it was through the influence of the press in my youth that I had been led to turn the Scriptures into Latin from the Hebrew; in all of which there is not a word of truth.
That he was not the author of the letter should have been obvious from the style; in any event, Jerome considers himself fortunate, tongue in cheek, for not being “self-accused” by the forger of truly criminal activity.
It was impossible for him, accomplished as he was, to copy any style and manner of writing, whatever their value may be; amidst all his tricks and his fraudulent assumption of another mans personality, it was evident who he was. ... I wonder that in this letter he did not make me out as guilty of homicide, or adultery or sacrilege or parricide or any of the vile things which the silent working of the mind can revolve within itself. Indeed I ought to be grateful to him for having imputed to me no more than one act of error or false dealing out of the whole forest of possible crimes. (Adv. Ruf. 2.24)50
50. Translation of W. H. Fremantle in NPNF, 2nd scries, vol. 3.
In another place Jerome himself is falsely accused by Rufinus of forging a letter in the name of Pope Anastasius, a letter that, as it turns out, was genuine (Adv. Ruf. 3,20). Elsewhere Rufinus feels that he has been unjustly accused of forging a letter in Jerome’s name to a group of African bishops (Jerome, Adv. Ruf. 3,25). Again, Jerome writes Augustine to ask if the letter he has received is actually by him (Epist. 102.1). As we have already seen, Augustine too exposed a forgery of a letter allegedly by Victorinus summoning him to a council meeting.51
It should not be objected that the forging of letters is generically different from the forging of literary works. Generic differences do matter. But many of the early Christian forgeries we will be examining—including those found in the New Testament—are precisely letters.
51. Augustine, Lipist 59, 1
https://books.google.com/books?id=-pTy801iZyYC&pg=PA104
Jerome, as we have seen, on one occasion had to defend himself against slurs leveled against him in a forged correspondence: “he found there a letter purporting to be written by me ... in all of which there is not a word of truth.45
45. Adv. Rufm. 2.24