Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

The Place of the Pseudepigrapha

In his critique of Bousset, Moore acknowledged that critical use of the rab-

binic writings is difficult, but he argued that the critical problems pre-

sented by the Pseudepigrapha are no less difficult: “How wide, for exam-

ple, was the currency of these writings? Do they represent a certain

common type of ‘Volksfrömmigkeit,’ or did they circulate in circles with

peculiar notions and tendencies of their own? How far do they come from

sects regarded by the mass of their countrymen as heretical?” (Moore 1921:

244). Perhaps the most fundamental question to be asked about the use of

the Pseudepigrapha in the reconstruction of ancient Judaism is whether

they are in fact Jewish at all. Most of these texts were preserved by Chris-

tians, not by Jews. Robert Kraft has argued repeatedly that these texts

should first be understood in their Christian context (Kraft 1994; 2001). At

the same time, it is incontrovertible that some pseudepigraphic writings

which were preserved only by Christians were composed by Jews in the

centuries around the turn of the era. Fragments of most sections of

1 Enoch,and ofJubileeswere found in Aramaic and Hebrew, respectively,

among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It does not necessarily follow that all pseud-

epigrapha attributed to Old Testament figures are of Jewish origin. Since

most Christian literature refers explicitly to Christ, and Christians often

added references to Christ to Jewish writings, the tendency has been to as-

sume that any Old Testament pseudepigraphon that has nothing explicitly

Christian in it is in fact Jewish.

This tendency has recently been challenged by James Davila (2005).

We have a considerable corpus of writings from antiquity that are indis-

putably Jewish, because of their language or the context of their discovery

(most notably, the Dead Sea Scrolls). On the basis of these texts Davila at-

tempts to identify “signature features” that can reliably indicate the Jewish

origin of a work:

• substantial Jewish content, and evidence of a pre-Christian date;


• compelling evidence that a work was translated from Hebrew;


• sympathetic concern with the Jewish ritual cult;


• sympathetic concern with Jewish Law/Torah and halakah;


• concern with Jewish ethnic and national interests. (Davila 2005: 65)

These “signature features” are not necessarily foolproof, but they can help

establish a balance of probability. They enable Davila to authenticate as

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Early Judaism in Modern Scholarship

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:48 PM