Pseudepigraphy Archives - Page 6 of 6

Jewish or Christian Pseudepigrapha?

In the previous post I made a few comments on common problems confronting those who study the Pseudepigrapha. A serious problem is that even though a particular book originated among Jewish thinkers of the Second Temple period, most of this literature was preserved by Christians. It is therefore possible Christian scribes made additions or modifications as they copied to make them more appealing to Christians. One of the better examples of this is 4 Ezra, a Jewish apocalypse written at the end of the first century A.D. At some point an introduction and conclusion was added to the book (sometimes called 2 Ezra and 5 Ezra). These additions include Christian elements (the messiah figure places crowns on the heads of the resurrected martyrs is identified as “the Son of God, whom they confessed in the world.” (4 Ezra 2:47).

In a recent essay, Robert Kraft gives us reason to be cautious by asking “can we be sure we are able to separate the Jewish from the Christian?” (Robert A. Kraft, “Setting the Stage and Framing Some Central Questions,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 32 [2001]:371-395). All this literature comes to us as preserved by Christians, therefore we have to assume it was of interest to Christians and is always subject to interpolation and adaptation.
We are often warned about using the Mishnah to develop a “background” for New Testament studies because we cannot be sure what elements date to the pre-70 A.D. period. Why not heed the same warning for using the Pseudepigrapha? It seems easy enough to remember this warning when reading the Apocalypse of Daniel, a book clearly written in the ninth century about current events of the ninth century, but should a book like 1 Enoch or 2 Baruch be read with as much caution? Scholars such as Kraft would think so.

It is not appropriate however to throw out anything that looks too “Christian” or create a false dichotomy of either Jewish or Christian literature. The earliest of this material comes from a theological environment when the categories were not quite fully developed. 1 Enoch and 2 Baruch have both Jewish and Christian elements which may be so intertwined that we can neither sort them out, nor should we try since the intertwining is a part of the environment in which they were written.

Perhaps it is best to think of these books in terms of a trajectory. We know the Old Testament is the foundation for all of the Jewish literature we will encounter in the Pseudepigrapha and is highly influential in the Christian material as well. From this starting point we can track how ideas moved from the Old Testament base through the early apocalyptic and Pseudepigraphal literature, then into the New Testament and the Christian pseudepigraphal material. Potentially we could continue to track development into the medieval period since there are any number of texts which are extensions on themes we begin reading in the Old Testament but come to us through hundreds of years of recycling and reapplying.

When approaching a text, we need to place the book in a historical context including both date and provenance, but also sources. In dealing with a book in the Ezra tradition, for example, we need to think about how the book used and re-used the early Ezra traditions. It is therefore possible even a late text from the medieval period still has useful materials for reconstructing the context of the New Testament despite being hundreds of years removed from the period. There is also the problem of diminishing returns studying the later texts. Because of the late date of the text, the value of the Apocalypse of Daniel for studying the New Testament is rather limited, for example.

Challenges for the Study of Pseudepigrapha

Since I intended to spend the summer reviewing the apocalyptic literature in the Pseudepigrapha, this would be a good time think about some of the challenges reading this material. I will be using the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited James Charlesworth (originally Doubleday, 1983; not Yale University Press). The OTP abbreviation OTP throughout this series refers to the 1983 print edition of these two volumes. It is important to point out the obvious: there was no collection of “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” in the ancient world. Although a few were considered sacred by some elements of the early church, these books were never collected as an alternate canon nor were they suppressed by orthodox Christians. There was no grand conspiracy of women-hating priests who systematically suppressed the free-thinking writers of this material. That sort of wild-eyed story telling makes for a good Hollywood movie or a wacky conspiracy theory blog, but it is simply not the case.

There are two problems with using the Pseudepigrapha as a source for studying first century Judaism. The first is the problem of the date of the documents. Some texts come to us in translations dated centuries later than the period under investigation. For example, 2 Enoch (The Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch) may date to the late first century A.D., but there are no manuscripts which date earlier than the fourteenth century and any “supposed Greek composition need not have been produced before A.D. 1000” (F. I. Anderson, “2 Enoch” in OTP, 1:94 ). Because of this, scholars date the original composition of 2 Enoch from pre-Christian times into the late medieval period. Given this ambiguity, it is probably best not to use 2 Enoch as the centerpiece of a description of first century theology or common second Temple period Jewish theology.

A second problem is that of influence on the theology of “common Judaism” of the first century. We may confidently date a book such as the Psalms of Solomon to “about 50 B.C.” and even posit a Pharisaical context for the book, but how we know with any measure of confidence the book was read in the first century widely enough to change the way people really thought? Or to put it another way, how do we know the book reflects a broad consensus of opinion of first century thinking? The book may have been written and circulated in among a very small community and was virtually unknown to readers outside of that community. Similarly, the book may have been the work of an individual maverick thinker who was out of touch with the rest of Judaism and received virtually no recognition until Christians began to use the text in the second or third centuries.

There are some methods to gauge the date and popularity of a text in the first century. If the text appears among the Dead Sea Scrolls we can at least know the Qumran community valued the text, especially if it appears in multiple copies. For example, Aramaic portions of First Enoch were present at Qumran. These fragments are not precisely the same text as the later Ethiopic version and some are too small to translate. The Dead Sea Scrolls at least confirm the book was known well before the first century and was popular enough to appear in the library of the Qumran community.

A second possible way to measure the potential influence of a text is by way of citation. If other first century works allude to a work there is at least an implication of influence. Using 1 Enoch as an example, we can find echoes of themes in other first century writings, not the least of which is the New Testament. The Epistle of Jude clearly alludes to 1 Enoch 60:8, confirming a date for at least that line to the late first century and a certain popularity in Jewish Christian circles.

The use of 1 Enoch in the book of Revelation is also possible. This evidence is potentially dangerous, since the New Testament reflects Christian popularity, but perhaps not Jewish popularity. In addition, the two sources just mentioned date to the post-70 period. The popularity of 1 Enoch may have increased after the fall of Jerusalem and not accurately reflect the pre-70 worldview.

An additional measure of popularity is the amount of additional material created based on an earlier text. 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra seem to have sparked a whole series of books which are based on the earlier versions (i.e., 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch the various other books of Ezra). That Enoch was being read and re-created to reflect a later historical context is a witness to the influence the book may have had in the first century. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs refers to 1 Enoch several times, indicating the influence of the apocalyptic text on later Jewish writings (T.Rub. 5:6, T.Sim 5:4, T.Levi 14:1, T.Jud 18:1, T. Dan 5:6, T.Naph 4:1, T.Ben 9:1).

It is also possible a source is dated post-70 A.D. but still reflects something of Jewish expectations before the watershed event of the fall of Jerusalem. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are examples of books normally dated at the end of the first century because they refer to the fall of Jerusalem as a past event. Can these books be useful for constructing Jewish expectations in the pre-70 period?

Possibly, but the evidence ought to be handled especially carefully. That some sort of messianic hope is reflected in these books is certain, but to what extent that same messianic hope was present in Palestine in the late 20’s is a more difficult problem. It is possible there was a messianic hope in the 20’s but it was entirely reworked after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra may be an example of this reworking. The difficulty, then, is sorting out the early material from the re-working.

Pseudepigraphy and Jewish Christian Literature

Karen Jobes deals with the issue of pseudepigraphal authorship in her recent Letters to the Churches (Zondervan, 2011). As she defines it, a document is pseudepigraphical if the author intentionally uses another name rather than his own (page 6). This is different than a pen name (she cites Samuel Clemens, more commonly known as Mark Twain), and it is also different than using an amanuensis, or scribe, to compose a letter. If a person was not “officially commissioned” to write a document then it should be considered pseudepigraphic.

Here is the problem for evangelicals with a commitment to inerrancy. If Second Peter says Peter wrote it, then that means Peter wrote it (or commissioned a scribe to write what he intended). Many scholars consider 2 Peter to be written well after Peter’s death by a well-meaning disciple of Peter, but without Peter’s direct authorization. That 2 Peter is a “pious forgery” is almost axiomatic in NT studies.

I agree that the way in which most American evangelicals define inerrancy requires the “historical Peter” to be the author of 2 Peter. Not only is the name attached to the first verse, but there are several clear hints that Peter is the author in the book. On the other hand, if I were forging 2 Peter, I would include these very things. So yes, Justin is correct. A pseudepigraphical author of any New Testament book would be contrary to inerrancy.

But what if the definition of inerrancy was expanded to include pseudepigraphy as a literary genre in the first century? Here’s what I am thinking: those of us who hold to inerrancy would never say that there was a real, historical “prodigal son” behind Jesus’ parable in Luke 15. In the genre of Parable, the characters are by definition a fiction. That Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal Son is true, but that there was a prodigal son is not true. That part is a story. I would say the same for Jotham’s fable in Judges 9. Inerrancy must be broadly defined to include genres such as a parable or illustration.

Can you argue that the genre of Testament literature allows for the use of a pseudonym? No one really thought the Testament of Levi was written by Levi, it was fairly clear that it was not. One might argue the same about 2 Peter – it is really a “Testament of Peter,” using the literary conventions of the first century.

I am not sure that I agree with this line of argument, but it would allow for an evangelical to teach that Peter is a pseudonym still hold to inerrancy.

On the other hand, it is difficult to accept that letters which claim to be from eye-witnesses of Jesus and “teaching the truth” as opposed to falsehood would themselves be foundation on a lie, even if that was a culturally acceptable literary genre.