eral more important pseudepigrapha came to light —Jubilees, 2and
3 Baruch, 2 Enoch,theApocalypse of Abraham,and theTestament of Abra-
ham.These discoveries greatly enlarged the corpus of apocalyptic works
from around the turn of the era and potentially provided resources for a
new view of ancient Judaism. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
there were landmark editions of the collected Pseudepigrapha in German
(Kautzsch 1900; Riessler 1928) and English (Charles 1913), but editions of
the individual books had been available from the late nineteenth century.The Relevance of Rabbinic Writings
This newly available material was not immediately integrated into the
study of ancient Judaism. Emil Schürer’sGeschichte des jüdischen Volkes im
Zeitalter Jesu Christi(1886-1890) included surveys of Jewish literature (di-
vided between “Palestinian Jewish” and “Hellenistic Jewish” literature),
but his depiction of Jewish religion is drawn heavily from rabbinic writ-
ings. This is especially true of his treatment of “Life under the Law,” in
which he drew primarily from the Mishnah, but even his account of messi-
anic belief integrated data from the Pseudepigrapha with rabbinic beliefs.
In the judgment of George Foote Moore, the chapter on the Law “was con-
ceived, not as a chapter of the history of Judaism but as a topic of Christian
apologetic; it was written to prove by the highest Jewish authority that the
strictures on Judaism in the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles are fully justi-
fied” (Moore 1921: 240). Schürer’s work was a mine of information and his-
torical detail. Its enduring value can be seen in the degree to which its
structure, and much of its detail, are retained in the English edition revised
by Geza Vermes and his collaborators. The revisers “endeavoured to clear
the notorious chapter 28,Das Leben unter dem Gesetz —here re-styled as
‘Life and the Law’ — and the section on the Pharisees...ofthedogmatic
prejudices of nineteenth-century theology” (Vermes et al. 1973-1987: 2:v; cf.
464 n. 1). Nonetheless, Schürer’s introductory claim is repeated: “The chief
characteristic of this period was the growing importance of Pharisaism...
the generalities of biblical law were resolved into an immense number of
detailed precepts...this concern with the punctilious observance of the
minutiae of religion became the hallmark of mainstream Judaism”
(Vermes et al. 1973-1987: 1:1). Likewise, the section on messianism retained
the systematic presentation, which synthesizes data from rabbinic sources
and the Pseudepigrapha.4john j. collinsEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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