ments discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls reflects the ancient meaning
of “hidden” traditions without, however, being “hidden” in the more tech-
nical sense found in Daniel,4 Ezra,and2 Baruch.
By contrast, collections of “pseudepigrapha” (or “apocrypha” in Ro-
man Catholic tradition) have been anything but stable. This is due to a
number of factors: (a) The term “pseudepigraphon” has often not been ap-
plied in its narrow meaning of a writing falsely ascribed. Instead, it has
sometimes served as a broad category that refers to religious Jewish and
Christian writings that are neither found in the “Bible” nor included in a
church’s list of “Apocrypha.” (b) Since the beginning of the nineteenth
century, when entrepreneurs and collectors brought ancient manuscripts
to Europe from monasteries in Africa and the Middle East, and until the
present, as manuscripts for new documents from Ethiopia, Armenia, and
the Dead Sea have continued to come to light, collections of pseudepigra-
pha (however the term is defined) have been growing in number. (c) Mod-
ern collections of translated works — here we may take German and En-
glish publications since 1900 as an example — have each differed from one
another in what to (and not to) include. Some of these differences can be
attributed to nomenclature, that is, whether or not a given editor focused
on “pseudepigrapha” per se (Kautzsch 1900, Charles 1913, Charlesworth
1983-1985, Sparks 1984: “apocryphal Old Testament”), more generally on
works “outside the Bible” (Riessler 1927), or on Jewish writings from the
Greco-Roman period (the series Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-
römischer Zeit [JSHRZ] 1973-present). These more widely disseminated
collections, however, have fluctuated greatly on the number and selection
of documents: Kautzsch (thirteen documents), Charles (seventeen), Riess-
ler (sixty-one, includingShemoneh Esreh, Megillat Ta{anit,Heraclitus of
Ephesus, Theodotus,Caves of Treasures), Sparks (twenty-five), Charles-
worth (sixty-five, though ten nonpseudonymous works are included
within a supplementary section entitled “Fragments of Lost Judeo-
Hellenistic Works”), and JSHRZ (fifty, including “Apocrypha”).
Beyond the writings included in these collections, a number of further
documents could be included. The significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls has
been noted for the addition of new materials, and there is little doubt that
these materials were composed during the Second Temple period. A fur-
ther project entitledMore Old Testament Pseudepigrapha(MOTP), based
at the University of St. Andrews under the direction of James Davila, is
seeking to supplement the Charlesworth edition with an additional fifty
pseudepigraphal writings, plus nearly thirty more that are found either in201Apocrypha and PseudepigraphaEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:02 PM