the end of Judaism by any means. The rabbinic literature, which later tra-
dition would take as normative, took shape in the following centuries, but
it did so in conditions that were very different from those that had pre-
vailed before the great revolts.The Recovery of the Pseudepigrapha
For much of Western history, there were relatively few sources for Judaism
between the Bible and the Mishnah. The Apocrypha, or deuterocanonical
books, were traditionally (and still are) part of the Bible of the Catholic
Church. This is a very small selection of Jewish literature from the period
200 b.c.e.to 100c.e.It includes the books of Maccabees, major wisdom
books (Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon) and pious tales (Tobit, Judith),
but apocalyptic writings are conspicuous by their absence. (2 Esdras,
which includes the apocalypse of4 Ezra,is included in the Apocrypha but
not in the deuterocanonical books that are part of the Catholic Bible.) The
history of the period was well known because of the books of Maccabees
and the writings of Josephus. In recent years these sources have been sup-
plemented by archaeology (Meyers and Chancey 2012), but few additional
literary sources that shed light on the history have surfaced. Also, the great
corpus of Philo of Alexandria’s works was transmitted by Christians, be-
cause of its similarity to the writings of the church fathers. The Hellenistic
Jewish literature was of marginal interest for orthodox Jewish scholarship
in the nineteenth century, but it was the subject of some important studies,
notably in the work of Jacob Freudenthal (1874-1875; see Niehoff in
Oppenheimer, ed. 1999: 9-28).
There exists, however, an extensive class of writings attributed to Old
Testament figures that is not included in the Apocrypha. These writings
are called “pseudepigrapha” (falsely attributed writings). There is also a
small number of pseudepigraphic writings attributed to figures of pagan
antiquity, most prominently the Sibyl. Most of the Greek and Latin writ-
ings relating to the Old Testament, such as theTestaments of the Twelve Pa-
triarchs,were collected by J. A. Fabricius in hisCodex Pseudepigraphus
Veteris Testamentiin 1713. But many important works were preserved only
in less widely known languages, such as Ethiopic, Syriac, and Old Church
Slavonic. The translations from Ethiopic of theAscension of Isaiah(1819)
and1 Enoch(1821) by Richard Laurence inaugurated a new era in the study
of ancient Judaism. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, sev-3Early Judaism in Modern ScholarshipEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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