The discussion of forgery led to a discussion on the way to lunch about the role of imitation in ancient pedagogy. That led me to ponder whether we might not benefit from doing more of that in modern teaching. Many students struggle to express themselves well. Perhaps we should return to this older method of asking them to learn by imitating other authors, and doing so explicitly? In other domains, such as music, it is simply taken for granted that one begins imitating the style of others, on one's way to developing one's own style.
Perhaps it would be fun to get students to try to produce a convincing imitation of Bart Ehrman addressing the subject of forgery? Perhaps they could hone their composition skills as well as learning about ancient literature and modern scholarship about it?
Here is a photo from last night's reception, with Mark Goodacre, Bart Ehrman, and myself.
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