Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

(which made larger collections of books possible) and only when decisions

came to be made about canonicity were they formally brought together in

different forms, first in Greek and then in Latin. Far from descriptive, then,

the term “apocrypha” is anachronistic, and it remains a problem to find

terminology that more accurately accords with the respective ways the

books present themselves while at the same time recognizing their history

of reception among Jews and Christians during the last two millennia.

The “Outside Books” in Jewish Tradition

A related problem to the early development of classifications for “Scrip-

ture,” on the one hand, and books deemed heretical or rejected, on the

other, is found in the rabbinic designation “outside books”(s 4 f#rîm ha-

FîjZnîm),which first occurs inm. Sanh.10:1, where a saying attributed to

R. Akiba states that those who have no place in the World to Come include

anyone “who reads the outside books.” The Babylonian and Palestinian

Talmud commentaries on this passage single out “the books of Ben Sira” as

a poignant example. However, this condemnation is not unequivocal. For

example, in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Sanhedrin100b), after R. Akiba’s

condemnation is endorsed by a ruling of Rabbi Joseph, the latter himself is

nonetheless made to permit the use of Ben Sira for instruction. This ten-

sion is underscored in the number of instances in which the Rabbinate

continued to cite Ben Sira with the same respect shown to biblical works

(b. Berakot48a;y. Berakot11b;y. Nazir54b;Bereshit Rabbah91:3;Qohelet

Rabbah7:11), presumably because its teaching could be seen as consistent

with the Torah. In its condemnation of readers of Ben Sira, the Palestinian

Talmud (y. Sanhedrin10a) adds those who make use of the books of a so-

called “Ben Laana.” The text, however, states that a further category of lit-

erature, enigmatically called “the books ofhamiras” (Homeric works?), is

not problematic at all: “the one who reads them is like one who reads a let-

ter”(ha-qZrê}b#-hen k 4 -qZrê}b#-}igeret).Crucially, then, the text leaves the

impression that the danger of Ben Sira consists in its potential for being

confused with Torah, while no such difficulty exists for ancient literature

held to be nonreligious. While it may be misleading to generalize from Ben

Sira to other books, this broad classification suggests that for the rabbis the

“outside books” would have at least consisted of the sort of Jewish writings

that later Christian tradition would regard as “Old Testament Apocrypha”

and “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.”

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loren t. stuckenbruck

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:02 PM