Hugo Méndez is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching New Testament and Early Christianity. His research highlights how Christians used invention, fabrication, and literary forgery as tools to advance religious agendas in antiquity. He is the author of The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem: Inventing a Patron Martyr (Oxford University Press, 2022) and the co-author, with Bart Ehrman, of the forthcoming eighth edition of The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press). He is currently completing a book project arguing that four biblical books—the Gospel of John and the letters of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John—are a lineage of ancient literary forgeries.