Apocryphal Collections in Medieval Jewish Manuscripts
The comparative devaluation of “outside books” in Jewish tradition did
not mean an avoidance of them altogether. A number of Aramaic and He-
brew Jewish manuscripts from the Middle Ages contain short collections
of works that to some extent resemble what would become the Protestant
“apocrypha.” Here, the texts for each of the works were either secondary
versions (e.g., Tobit and Judith, translated from Latin and/or Greek; Epis-
tle of Jeremiah), summaries (e.g., Baruch, Ben Sira, Esther, 1-4 Maccabees,
Susanna, Prayer of Manasseh), or adaptations (Bel and the Dragon), re-
lated materials (to Esther: The Dream of Mordecai and the Books of
Ahasuerus), and often additional obscure pieces (with titles such as the
Book of Yashar, Proverbs of Solomon, the Book of Enoch [neither 1 nor
2 Enoch], the Fables of Aesop, the Proverbs of Sandabar, The Deed of the
Jerusalemite, The Speech of Aphar and Dinah, and so forth). The reason
for such collections within manuscripts — that is, whether they were
driven by an internal Jewish dynamic or in some sense were meant as
counterparts to existing Christian compilations — has yet to be studied
properly.Pseudepigrapha
The Problematic Term “Pseudepigrapha”
The difficulties described above in relation to the use of “apocrypha” apply
to “pseudepigrapha” as well. First, if “pseudepigraphon” refers to a work
falsely ascribed to a figure who is not the real author, then it does not per-
tain to a discrete collection of works. Indeed, several books in the Hebrew
Bible are arguably pseudepigrapha (e.g., Deuteronomy, Proverbs,
Qoheleth, Daniel, and the Davidic Psalms), while the same may be said re-
garding “apocrypha” such as 1 Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Prayer of
Manasseh, Psalm 151 (and Syriac Psalms 154–155), Wisdom of Solomon,
and4 Ezra.Second, as already noted, in Roman Catholic tradition it is
pseudepigraphal works outside the “Deuterocanonicals” that are called
“Apocrypha”; this accords with ancient usage of the term “apocrypha.”
Third, since the term does not describe a set of writings that can be distin-
guished from other existing collections (e.g., “biblical,” “apocryphal”), it
often refers today to an ever-growing and fluid corpus of documents pre-191Apocrypha and PseudepigraphaEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:02 PM