Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Blog

Irish Pseudepigrapha Lecture

2007-04-26T13:33:00.000Z

I have posted Dr. Macaskill's lecture from last week, The Pseudepigrapha in the Irish Church," on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website.

Irish Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha resources

2007-04-24T21:19:00.000Z

As a follow up to Friday's lecture, I thought it might be helpful to post details of two very useful books.

First, the starting point for any research on the Irish texts is Martin McNamara's , The Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), which provides full details of the actual manuscripts of the Irish texts.

The second resource to be mentioned is Maire Herbert and Martin McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha: Selected Texts in Translation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989). This provides beautifully translated readings from the Irish texts and gives a real flavour of the material. The translations are accompanied by helpful notes that generally provide the essential critical information.

My apologies, by the way, to the respected authors listed above: I don't know how to get the appropriate accents for their Gaelic names in this blogging program and so their names have been represented in brute English!

I'm not sure if it crosses the Irish-Scottish divide but tha mi duilich, co dhuibh.

6 Ezra Lecture

2007-04-24T16:32:00.000Z

I have posted last week's lecture on 6 Ezra here.

UPDATE: Bad link corrected.

Irish Pseudepigrapha

2007-04-19T20:01:00.000Z

Tomorrow's class will examine some of the pseudepigraphal material maintained by the Irish Church. As we will see, that Church had a particular interest in Adam traditions, which parallel and draw upon the Apocalypse of Moses/Latin Life of Adam and Eve.

It may be helpful if students are able to read through the Life of Adam and Eve in volume 2 of J.H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 249-295. Some of the comments I make about the distinctives of the Irish Adam and Eve material will make better sense if students have read this first.

Those inspired to learn Old Irish (not necessary for tomorrow, by the way) may be interested in the website run by the University of Texas at Austen's Linguistics Research Center:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.html

I have only glanced at the site, which provides lessons and readings from classic texts. I appreciated the Old Church Slavonic site that the same center produced, though, and if it is even remotely as helpful as that site then, frankly, I shall be spending a good deal of time there! The OCS site is:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/ocsol-0-X.html

Summary of Testament of Moses Seminar (13 April)

2007-04-17T13:19:00.000Z

Here are some of the points that were raised during our discussion of the Testament of Moses ("Milan manuscript," "Latin Moses fragment") during the seminar on 13 April. The major methodological issue that arose in class discussion was how to balance the need to avoid harmonization of the data (i.e., oversimplifying to make the data fit together) with the need to apply Occam's Razor ("entities must not be multiplied" or "the simplest solution is to be preferred"). This dilemma arises both with the question of whether the Latin Moses fragment is sectarian (if so, which sect, or is it one we otherwise don't know?) and whether it should be identified with any of the lost ancient Moses books already known to us.

The question of the purpose of the of Latin Moses fragment came up a number of times. This important issue was outside the scope of the paper, so we devoted some class time to it. It was suggested that chapters 11-12 might offer some insight, in that they dealt with the question of leadership after Moses' death and they taught that the individual leader is not important, nor is the piety of the people, but rather the important thing is divine election and support. The potential inference is that the community was suffering a from a lack of leadership or a recently lost leader and this work was intended to encourage them. It was also pointed out that works that include an ex post facto review of future history frequently bring out their central concerns in the part of the review that culminates in the writer's present as eschatological end time. Chapters 8-9 fit this description and portray a time of persecution and an ideology of nonviolent passive resistance, perhaps hinting at the life situation of the writer. All this, of course, is speculative.

There is some reason to believe that the Latin Moses fragment is "sectarian" in the sense that it thinks its own group is right and righteous even in contrast to other Jewish groups (note, e.g., the hostility toward apparently Jewish rulers in chapter 7). But it is difficult to link the writer's group to one particular group or sect such as the Essenes/Qumran sectarians, Pharisees, or Samaritans. Kenneth Atkinson has argued that the Psalms of Solomon were written by an otherwise unknown Jewish sectarian group, and the Testament of Moses may have been produced by still another unknow sect.

Is the Latin Moses fragment to be identified with either the Testament of Moses or the Assumption of Moses? In Jude and the Relatives of Jesus Richard Bauckham concludes that the Latin Moses fragment is the same as the Testament of Moses, which is also quoted in Jude 9. In The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha I argue that, although the Testament of Moses is indeed quoted in Jude 9, the Latin Moses fragment is not to be identified either with the Testament of Moses or the Assumption of Moses, but rather it was a third work. This does multiply entities a bit, but I think in a way required by the evidence (in that what seems to be the description of the first part of the Testament of Moses in the Palaea Historica does not correspond well at all to the surviving material in the Latin Moses fragment). And I noted in class that we do know of a good number of Moses pseudepigrapha going back to antiquity. These include:

The lost Archangelic Book of the Prophet Moses described in On the Origins of the World from the Nag Hammadi Library (NHC II 102, 7-9).
The Eighth Book of Moses, a magical treatise that otherwise has nothing to do with Moses and which is found in Greek Magical Papyrus (PGM) xiii in two versions. The end of this papyrus also mentions the "Hidden Book of Moses Concerning the Great Name," which may be another lost Moses work.
The Sword of Moses (Harba di-Moshe) is a Hebrew and Aramaic magical treatise that likewise has nothing in particular to do with Moses.
The Greatness of Moses (Gedullat Moshe) is a Hebrew account of Moses' travels to paradise and hell.
The Apocalypse of Moses is the title of a Greek version of the Latin Life of Adam and Eve. [26 April: I had the languages reversed and have now corrected them.] It is about Adam and Eve rather than Moses.
The Colloquy of Moses on Mount Sinai is a Syriac work about Moses.

The Latin Moses fragment cannot be identified with any of the above, but they do establish that there have been a number of Moses pseudepigrapha from antiquity on.

Ladder of Jacob Class Session 23rd March

2007-04-16T14:42:00.000Z

This post is a rather belated summary of our class session from 23rd March, which involved a student paper examining the Ladder of Jacob.

The paper argued that the Ladder of Jacob as a text draws upon several other works or traditions, including Jewish traditions associated with Jacob and Christian traditions such as the Tale of Aphroditianus. The latter work describes events in Persia at the time of Christ's birth and seems to have influenced chapter 7 of the Ladder. Scholars tend to assume that the first six chapters are Jewish but that the seventh is a Christian addition; this paper instead suggested that the work is much more composite in nature than often assumed.

Interestingly, the paper picked up on some strong similarities between the Ladder of Jacob and the Apocalypse of Abraham, suggesting that the latter influenced the editor of the Explanatory Palaea, in which the Ladder is found. This raises for us again one of the problems of the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: where works are clearly related closely to one another but quite different to the other texts with which they are often grouped (i.e., the demonstrably Jewish pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple period), should we not be wary of assigning to them a Second Temple date and regarding them as representing the Judaism of that time?

The paper also highlighted the problem that we are essentially dealing with a text that has been extracted from its context in the Explanatory Palaea. In other words, we have no witnesses to the text in the form that it currently takes in English translation. Working with the text, we are faced with the problem that our English translation does not correspond to any actual manuscript and so we are kept from working with the text as it actually is.

All in all, the session opened up a difficult text on which little has been written, opening up some interesting lines of research that could be explored further, particularly concerning the extent to which the work is composite.

Testament of Moses Abstract

2007-04-13T16:52:00.000Z

I have posted the abstract of Fiona Grierson's paper on the Testament of Moses here.

More on Moses Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

2007-04-12T23:18:00.000Z

M. R. James collected a great many fragments of Moses apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, some of which we will discuss in class tomorrow. See the Moses section of his The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament. And one more lost Moses apocryphon is mentioned in On the Origin of the World in the Nag Hammadi library. See here for details.

Online Translation of the Latin Moses Fragment

2007-04-11T22:45:00.000Z

Contra my last posting, the Latin fragment usually known as the Assumption or Testament of Moses can be found in translation online after all. A Mormon site collects translations of pseudepigrapha and apocrypha and it has a page with the Charles translation of the Latin fragment. Concentrate on Priest's translation in volume 1 of the Charlesworth OTP, if you have it. But the Charles version is serviceable if you don't.

A Note on Moses

2007-04-10T16:42:00.000Z

Here are a few references on the Testament of Moses and related matters. First, Peter Kirby has a web page on the Testament of Moses on his useful Early Jewish Writings website. Unfortunately, there is no translation of the Latin fragment online. On my 1998 Divine Mediators in the Biblical World website there an abstract of a paper on Moses by Ysmena Pentelow and also a bibliography entry on Moses. The listing of secondary literature is both limited and now out of date (cf. the Assumption/Testament of Moses bibliography for the current course), but the entry collects a lot of useful primary evidence.

Ladder of Jacob Abstract

2007-04-09T13:19:00.000Z

I have posted the abstract for Kate Piscator's essay on the Ladder of Jacob over at the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website.

Apologies for the long silence on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha blog. The last two weeks have been the spring break and both Dr. Macaskill and I were thoroughly preoccupied with other things. He will be posting the summary of the Ladder of Jacob class session in due course.

Later this week we will be looking at the Latin fragment generally (but perhaps inaccurately) know as the Testament of Moses.

Random Notes on the Ladder of Jacob

2007-03-23T00:21:00.000Z

Besides the bibliography for this course, there's another bibliography on The Ladder of Jacob posted by Andrei Orlov. For some reason Jacob's Ladder has a strong presence in popular culture. I'm not entirely sure why the movie with Tim Robbins has this title, but it does. And then there's the song by Huey Lewis and the News. Also, you can make a Jacob's Ladder, instructions here. I'll be bringing one of these to class tomorrow. But not one of these. More tomorrow!

Summary of Coptic Apocalypse of Abraham Seminar (16 March)

2007-03-20T23:18:00.000Z

These are some of the points raised during the class discussion of the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah on 16 March. The Apocalypse of Elijah exemplifies some of the chronic problems one encounters in the study of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, including a number of problems we have not yet discussed in detail. These include the following.

The problem of reconstructed texts. Note that on p. 727 of Charlesworth's OTP vol. 1, Wintermute tells us that various passages of the Apocalypse of Elijah are translated from different manuscripts in different Coptic dialects. The particular text translated in OTP did not exist until put together by Wintermute. This is problem for all eclectically reconstructed ancient texts, but the narrow manuscript base of many of the OT Pseudepigrapha, should give us pause about the reconstructed text we use.
The problem of different (?) works with the same or a similar title. Books of Elijah with similar titles are mentioned, for example, in the Sitchometry of Nicephorus and the List of the Sixty Books, and by Origen and Jerome. These may or may not have been the same work as our Coptic apocalypse. In some cases it appears pretty clear that they are not.

We know that different books circulated in antiquity with the same or a similar title. Examples are the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Thomas from the Nag Hammadi Library; the two Apocalypses of James in the Nag Hammadi Library; and one Apocalypse of Peter from the Nag Hammadi Library and a perhaps Jewish-Christian apocalypse with the same name. So we have no particular reason to suppose that multiple works pertaining to Elijah also circulated. (For more on lost works attributed to Old Testament characters, see here.)
The problem of different recensions of the same work. The Stichometry of Nicephorus gives the length of its Elijah book as 316 stichoi (lines). Wintermute (p. 728) notes evidence that this could be about 7% shorter than our Apocalypse of Elijah. But there is ample evidence that these works circulated in multiple recensions of different lengths. For example the Coptic Gnostic Apocryphon of John - known from the Nag Hammadi Library and elsewhere - survives in a long and a short recension). So a small difference in length (or even a large one) does not automatically prove that a lost work is not a variant recension of a work that survives.
The problem of similar works with overlapping material. The classic example of this phenomenon is the three Synoptic Gospels in the New Testament, and it is telling that the interrelationships of this comparatively large corpus continues to be debated in serious scholarship today. So the partly overlapping (and not very close) descriptions of the Antichrist in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah and the Hebrew Sefer Elijah could be explained in any number of ways.
The problem of similar works with similar titles that have overlapping themes. The Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah and Sefer Elijah share numerous general themes, too many to be coincidental (future battles involving foreign kings and countries, including Assyria; the coming of the Messiah; the coming of the Antichrist/eschatological adversary; the millenial/paradisiacal age; descriptions of hell; etc.) There is some relationship between the works, but it does not seem to be literary.

In general it is clear that there was a Jewish body of tradition about Elijah in antiquity and that ancient Christians drew on this body of tradition and augmented it with their own ideas and legends. How these two fairly vague clouds of tradition led to our Christian Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah (apparently translated from Greek), our Jewish Sefer Elijah, and one or more other works associated with Elijah which now survive only in fragments, is almost certainly a process too complicated for us to reconstruct on the basis of surviving evidence.

We also discussed in general how undergraduate students can best approach the material in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and we agreed that it was important to begin with the primary texts (i.e., the ancient texts) and to master their content in translation before tackling the secondary literature (the scholarly articles and monographs).

We also briefly discussed, among other things, the figure of Tabitha (who seems to draw on traditions about Tabitha in Acts 9; an Egyptian mythological figure with a similar name; and the Greek prophetess know as the Sibyl); the relationship between the Apocalypse of Elijah and the NT Book of Revelation (at the very least they came from a shared tradition); and possible Jewish traditions in the Apocalypse of Elijah, which are almost impossible to separate out due to our lack of such Jewish sources as the author apparently used.

Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah Abstract

2007-03-19T10:35:00.000Z

I have posted the abstract of Oliver Jackson's essay on the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah here.

Monotheism and Mediators

2007-03-16T10:10:00.000Z

The course has been exploring whether given texts are (as is often assumed) Jewish and how key figures within them function as "divine mediators."

To help appreciate the relevance of this to New Testament studies, I would like to suggest that students read pages 1-22 of Richard Bauckham's book God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998). The book explores the nature of Jewish monotheism and the character of debates within New Testament studies that concern how Jesus is to be viewed as "divine." Did the portrayal of Jesus as a divine figure evolve from Jewish ideas of divine mediators, exalted patriarchs, etc? Similar issues are explored in Dr Davila's article on divine mediators, as well as in book length treatments such as Larry Hurtado's One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: SCM, 1988), but the treatment by Bauckham has the advantage of being pitched at a much more accessible level.

At this stage in the course, students will be better able to understand the debates touched upon in Bauckham's book and I hope this will help them to appreciate the importance of what we are doing for New Testament research. I want to encourage them, though, to pay attention to the works cited in the footnotes, throughout the chapter, as "Second Temple Jewish" texts. Often these are the works we have placed in the "questionable" category (as far as authorship and date of composition are concerned). Professor Bauckham is actually a very careful scholar, with great expertise in the Pseudepigrapha: the fact that he glosses over the critical issues surrounding these texts reflects the semi-popular nature of this book rather than any carelessness in his scholarship. It is interesting, though, to see how often texts about which we have serious questions occur here. This reflects the extent to which these texts play a role in New Testament scholarship, especially in discussions concerning Christology.

Elijah Materials Online

2007-03-14T11:55:00.000Z

In advance of Friday's session on the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah, readers may be interested in the coverage of Elijah in my 1998 Divine Mediator Figures in the Biblical World course. Here is the abstract of an essay by Christopher Maxwell on Elijah as a divine mediator. And here is a bibliography that collects many primary source references to Elijah as well as a now slightly-dated list of secondary references. The bibliography on the Apocalypse of Elijah for our current OT Pseudepigrapha course is here.

There is little else online on the Apocalypse of Elijah, but do have a look at Peter Kirby's page at his useful Early Jewish Writings site.

Pseudepigraphers and Their Pets

2007-03-13T21:56:00.000Z

The following passages from the Apocalypse of Abraham have always stood out to me:

I am called Jaoel by Him who moveth that which existeth with me on the seventh expanse upon the firmament, a power in virtue of the ineffable Name that is dwelling in me. I am the one who hath been given to restrain, according to His commandment, the threatening attack of the living creatures of the Cherubim against one another ... (10:8-9a)

This last odd comment is expanded upon when Abraham describes his vision of the heavenly throne room:

And as the fire raised itself up, ascending into the height, I saw under the fire a throne of fire, and, round about it all-seeing ones, reciting the song, and under the throne four fiery living creatures singing, and their appearance was one, each one of them with four faces. And such was the appearance of their countenances, of a lion, of a man, of an ox, of an eagle: four heads [were upon their bodies] [so that the four creatures had sixteen faces]; and each had six wings; from their shoulders, [and their sides] and their loins. And with the (two) wings from their shoulders they covered their faces, and with the (two) wings which (sprang) from their loins they covered their feet, while the (two) middle wings they spread out for flying straightforward. And when they had ended the singing, they looked at one another and threatened one another. And it came to pass when the angel who was with me saw that they were threatening each other, he left me and went running to them and turned the countenance of each living creature from the countenance immediately confronting him, in order that they might not see their countenances threatening each other. And he taught them the song of peace which hath its origin [in the Eternal One]. (18:3-11)

Is it just me, or was this passage not written by someone who had watched interactions between house cats, especially when they first meet? Cats can barely tolerate the existence of other cats, and the hissfull reaction of the living creatures (Hayyot) to one another seems entirely true to cat nature. I doubt that I'll ever write this observation up for a journal article, but I still think it's likely that the author of the Apocalypse of Abraham had pet cats.

For more on the living creatures see here.

Another interesting point about the living creatures/Hayyot is that they are (as far as I can find) the only female angels in Jewish tradition.

UPDATE (14 March): For more on cats and the OT Pseudepigrapha (sort of), see here.

Summary of Friday 9th March Class (The Apocalypse of Abraham)

2007-03-12T23:19:00.000Z

Our session on Friday involved a presentation by one of our students on The Apocalypse of Abraham, followed by a discussion of the paper and of the issues it raised.

The paper explored several interwoven themes relating to this problematic text:

1) How does the text relate to the national fortunes of the Jewish people, specifically the destruction of the Second Temple?
2) How are the themes of monotheism and the appropriate worship of God developed within the text and how might this relate to the choice of Abraham as the central figure in the apocalypse?
3) How do the above issues relate to the question of authorship and date of composition? Do they require a Jewish authorship and a date soon after the fall of the Second Temple?

The discussion afterward raised a number of interesting issues. We explored some of the connections between the apocalypse and Muslim traditions found in the Qu’ran. We also discussed at some length the question of whether the alleged Hebraisms in the text carry any probative value for establishing whether the text was originally composed in Hebrew. Dr. Davila and I are rather sceptical about this: most, if not all, can be explained on the basis of the influence of Greek translations of biblical narrative. Leading on from this, much of our conversation concerned whether the evidence really requires a Jewish authorship. If we start with the manuscript evidence—and we only have late Slavonic mss.—we can only argue for dates of composition that precede this historical context if elements of the text cannot be accounted for therein. So, only if elements of the text are inexplicable in a Slavic context can we push back towards a putative Jewish original. We discussed at some length what might constitute such evidence. I suggested that the presence of Azazel as the villain of the piece may be one fruitful line of enquiry: Christian texts tend to use Satan as the main figure of evil and in the Slavonic context, especially among the Bogomils, Satan (or Satanael) tends to displace other figures.

We also discussed the difficult passage found in chapter 29, a section of the text with numerous internal contradictions. The student paper provided a helpful examination of this passage, which tends to be read as a Christian interpolation, raising the possibility that it belonged to the original layer of the apocalypse and that a Christian author altered it in a more "Christological" direction. This theory would be most compatible with a Jewish authorship, of course, and scholars who have advocated it have tended to assume that the apocalypse was originally Jewish.

The discussion, then, highlighted that the question of whether the text is Jewish may not be quite as well-settled as many scholars claim. All in all, it was a very good session and the student paper opened up the questions admirably.

Apocalypse of Abraham Abstract

2007-03-09T16:42:00.000Z

I have posted the abstract of Maria Elliott's paper on the Apocalypse of Abraham here. Next week, Dr. Macaskill will post a summary of today's seminar discussion.

Online Translations of Apocalype of Abraham Revisited

2007-03-09T10:43:00.000Z

In my previous post on the online translations of Ap.Ab., I mentioned some of the flaws of the Box-Landsman edition. Reading that translation in preparation for today's class, it occurs to me that while it is indeed flawed in several ways, it also has something in its favour that is lacking from the translation in Charlesworth OTP 1. The appendix to the Box-Landsman translation contains extracts from the Palaeas that Ap.Ab. is found in. One of my concerns in working with the Slavonic texts is that our translations are somewhat inauthentic, the passages having been removed from the contexts in which they were originally embedded. The appendix to Box-Landsman gives us a better sense of how the pseudepigraphon was actually used and introduced in the Palaeas and for this reason students may find it helpful to read through that appendix.

The translation can be found here.

Fallen Angels and Genetic Science

2007-03-09T10:03:00.000Z

Please don't quote this in your exam, students.

This is a rather different take on the pseudepigrapha than any we would encourage. There is, incidentally, lots of this stuff out there ("out there" is worthy of emphasis).

New Testament Job at the University of St. Andrews

2007-03-07T13:58:00.000Z

THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS invites applications for a Professorship in New Testament (equivalent to a Full Professorship in North America). We are seeking applicants with a strong international research profile in New Testament. You will contribute to the School’s existing strengths in exegetical, literary and historical scholarship. Specialism within the area of New Testament is open, though a research interest in the interface between biblical studies and Christian theology and/or history of interpretation is highly desirable. You will be committed to excellence in teaching and you will be expected to teach students from undergraduate to doctoral level. You are a team-player who will be fully involved in the School's research, supervisory and administrative roles. Informal enquiries to Dr Jim Davila (Tel. +44-1334-462834; email: jrd4@st-andrews.ac.uk) Further information about the School of Divinity can be found at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity. Application forms and further particulars are available from Human Resources, University of St Andrews, College Gate, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, (tel: 01334 462571, by fax 01334 462570 or by e-mail Jobline@st-andrews.ac.uk. The advertisement and further particulars can be viewed at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/vacancies. Please quote ref: ME163/07. Closing Date: March 30th 2007. The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

Again, I would be grateful if other bibliobloggers would copy or link to this job advert and the earlier one.

Online Translations of the Apocalypse of Abraham

2007-03-07T08:47:00.000Z

A good quality pdf file of the first English translation of Apocalypse of Abraham (that of G.H. Box and J.I. Landsman, published in London in 1918 under the title of the Apocalypse) can be found here .

The translation is a good starting point to orient oneself in the text, but is generally acknowledged to have some fairly serious flaws. The translators seem to have been rather anachronistic in imputing later Russian meanings to Church Slavonic words and the criteria by which they chose which variant to follow among the readings attested by the manuscripts also seem not to have been clear. The translation of R. Rubinkiewicz (which contains additional notes by the great Slavist, Howard Lunt) in Charlesworth's The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (New York: Doubleday, 1983) points out where these errors occur and should be the text used for our class.

A new translation has also appeared in Alexander Kulik's Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Towards the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 9-35. While this is an important study, I would not encourage students to make use of it at this stage, as it requires a knowledge of Greek, Hebrew and Church Slavonic to engage with the footnotes. Moreover, Kulik's translation is based on some of his innovatory attemps to establish a hypothetical underlying text; an assessment of whether his arguments are persuasive has not yet been made by the academic community in general and requires linguistic skills that are beyond those we expect from our class members. For the time being, therefore, Kulik's work should be regarded as speculative and as falling outside of the scope of this class.

Old Testament/Hebrew Bible Job at the University of St. Andrews

2007-03-05T00:40:00.000Z

THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS invites applications for a Readership/Professorship in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (roughly equivalent, respectively, to an Associate or Full Professorship in North America). We are seeking applicants with a strong international research profile in OT/HB. You will contribute to the School’s existing strengths in philological and historical scholarship. Specialism within the area of OT/HB is open, though a research interest in the interface between biblical studies and Christian theology and/or history of interpretation is highly desirable. You will be committed to excellence in teaching and you will be expected to teach students from undergraduate to doctoral level in Old Testament and Hebrew. You are a team-player who will be fully involved in the School's research, supervisory and administrative roles. Salary - £41,392-£47,194 pa (Reader) or negotiable (Professor). Informal enquiries to Dr Jim Davila (Tel. +44-1334-462834; email: jrd4@st-andrews.ac.uk). Further information about the School of Divinity can be found at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity. Application forms and further particulars are available from Human Resources, University of St Andrews, College Gate, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, (tel: 01334 462571, by fax 01334 462570 or by e-mail Jobline@st-andrews.ac.uk. The advertisement and further particulars can be viewed at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/vacancies. Please quote ref: SK162/07 Closing Date: March 30th 2007. The University is committed to equality of opportunity.

Note that the deadline is not far away. I would be grateful if fellow biblobloggers would feel free to reproduce or link to this advert on their blogs.

UPDATE (6 March): Another job, this one in New Testament.

The Measure of God and the Divine Face

2007-03-03T21:13:00.000Z

I promised in class that I would post links to articles by Andrei Orlov that deal with the idea of the "divine measure" and the " divine face." Both articles are quite technical, but they will give a flavour of the kind of work that Prof Orlov does on 2 Enoch. I am a little unconvinced by much of his argumentation in the latter article, by the way; if you wish to discuss this, let me know in class.

Similitudes Lecture

2007-03-02T15:28:00.000Z

I have posted this week's lecture on the Similitudes of Enoch here.

Also, congratulations to Grant on the publication of his book (previous post).

"Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology" Now Available

2007-03-01T15:21:00.000Z

My book, Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (JSJSupp 115. Leiden: Brill 2007) has now been released by Brill, although it is still listed as unavailable on Amazon. The book is based on my doctoral thesis, which I developed under the supervision of Professor Richard Bauckham here in St. Andrews. Dr Davila was one of my examiners, along with Dr Alistair Wilson, who at the time taught in the University of the Highlands and Islands. One chapter of the book deals with 2 Enoch and I will make this available to the class soon.

Details of the book can be found on the Brill website:

http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=74&pid=27131

When Good Angels Go Bad

2007-02-28T21:32:00.000Z

Poor Enoch. We saw in Friday's lecture that he was transformed into a glorious angelic being (2 Enoch 22) and carried away mankind's sins (65:4); in Jewish traditions he became Metatron, the Lesser Yahweh, no less.

In the modern novel, however, he seems to have become the villain of choice. Philip Pullman's excellent (and award winning) His Dark Materials trilogy presents him as a cosmic tyrant, symbolic of the intellectual oppression the author sees embodied in the Christian Church. The trilogy is available on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/His-Dark-Materials-Gift-Set/dp/0439994799/ref=sr_1_1/202-4553687-7404610?ie=UTF8&s=books

More recently, Scottish author Hal Duncan has begun a series of books in which Metatron again plays a rather tyrannical role, coercing other angels into his service. I have only recently begun to read the book and my thoughts on it may change, but so far I have found it enjoyable and stimulating. It is best avoided by those who may be easily offended (Metatron's language is rather more colorful than the Jewish texts might suggest!), but those who can weather it will find a surprisingly erudite novel that weaves together Jewish and Sumerian mythology, modern fantasy and science fiction. The Amazon.co.uk page is worth a visit as it contains a description of the book by the author himself.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product-description/0330438360/ref=dp_proddesc_0/202-4553687-7404610?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

Second Lecture on 2 Enoch

2007-02-27T14:28:00.000Z

Dr. Macaskill's second lecture on 2 Enoch, "Enoch and Salvation," has now been posted on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website. Sorry for the delay.

Please note also that Friday's Library trip has been canceled and will be rescheduled to happen near the end of the semester. The Similitudes lecture is still on for Friday.

The Glory of Adam

2007-02-27T08:43:00.000Z

In Friday's lecture on 2 Enoch I referred to Andrei Orlov's argument that Enoch functions as a saviour figure by having restored in him the original glory of Adam. The argument is found in Andrei's book The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ 107. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck), but a condensed version of the argument can be found at the following address:

http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/oil

I also referred to the work of Alexander Golitzin, who has traced the theme of Adamic Glory from Jewish texts through to Syriac Christian writings. Golitzin presented a paper on the subject at a conference here in St Andrews in 2001. The online version of his paper can be found at the following address:

http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/Recovering

The final edition of his article can be found in the conference volume edited by Dr Davila and entitled The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity : Papers from an International Conference at St. Andrews in 2001 (STDJ 46. Leiden: Brill, 2002).

Apologies, by the way, for the failure to blog yesterday: the ongoing saga of my computer's problems continues ... Let's hope that when the Singularity arrives, Apple will be in charge of the software.

Another Schedule Change

2007-02-23T20:00:00.000Z

I have unexpectedly had to be away from St. Mary's College today. Apologies to class and blog readers. I shall post Grant's lecture this weekend. The Similitudes lecture is now rescheduled for next week.

UPDATE (25 February): I didn't get a chance to post it on the weekend. Look for it on Monday.

Online Resources on 1-2 Enoch

2007-02-22T09:32:00.000Z

You might want to have a look at the following in advance of tomorrow's session:

Regarding 2 Enoch, my review of Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Review of Biblical Literature, December 2006);

Regarding 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch, James VanderKam's 1997 guest essay for this course: "The Enoch Literature";

Regarding the Similitudes of Enoch and related materials, my lectures on Methodology and "Enoch as a Divine Mediator" for the 1998 Divine Mediator Figures course. These two lectures were later expanded and revised into my article ""Of Methodology, Monotheism, and Metatron," listed in the bibliography. I'm afraid the final article is not available online, but I will bring copies to class tomorrow.

Translations of 2 Enoch

2007-02-21T20:37:00.000Z

The Wesley Center Online unfortunately does not carry a translation of 2 Enoch, but you can find one at the following address:

http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/pseudepigrapha/enochs2.htm

The same translation turns up on a number of sites. It is taken (I think) from the 1896 translation by W.R. Morfill, which was published in collaboration with R.H. Charles under the title The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896).

While this is helpful as a taster of the text, for serious work I would want to point students in the direction of the far superior translation by Francis I. Andersen in J.H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985) 91-221. There are several reasons for this.

Andersen worked with a much fuller selection of manuscripts.
The online Morfill translation, which is based primarily on manuscripts of the longer recension of 2 Enoch, does not allow students to compare the longer and shorter readings.
The Morfill translation omits chapters 69-73. These chapters are highly problematic and are not found in all of our manuscripts, but the balance of scholarly opinion currently supports the view that they are original to 2 Enoch. Students ought at least to know that these chapters exist and be familiar with their content.

Sibylline Leaves

2007-02-21T09:25:00.000Z

There's a new blog on an important corpus in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Sibylline Leaves, run by Gordon Lyn Watley, is "On the Jewish & Christian Sibylline Oracles & related literature: Interfaces of Christianity, Hellenism, & Judaism in late antiquity." Looks good.

(Via Hypotyposes.)

Library Session on 2 March

2007-02-20T16:51:00.000Z

Just a note to flag that the class will be going to our Main Library Special Collections for our 2 March meeting to view some relevant volumes. I'll post some notes and photos then. There's no particular reading assignment in advance, but if you happen to be looking for a good novel to read in the next week and a half, I would recommend:

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, The Rule of Four (paperback, 2005)

It will have some bearing on the class session, although any connection with the course content is indirect.

Translations of the Similitudes

2007-02-20T16:42:00.000Z

There are several translations available of 1 Enoch (of which chapters 37-71 are the Similitudes of Enoch). By far the best and most up-to-date is:

George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. Vanderkam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress, 2004) (Amazon.co.uk link here)

If you are interested enough in the Pseudepigrapha to be following this course, this book is a worthwhile investment and I encourage you to buy a copy. (Students in the course: there are copies on short loan for this module in the libraries.)

The translation by E. Isaacs in the Charlesworth OTP is conveniently available, but it is now quite out of date and thoroughly superseded by the new translation. An old (1917) translation by Charles is available online, as well as an even older one (1883) by Richard Laurence. Both are extremely out of date. If you are limited for some reason (e.g., being stationed at an Antarctic base) to online resources, use the Charles translation. But if you have access to Amazon, order the Nickelsburg/VanderKam translation (and maybe even buy a second copy to donate to your local library).

5 Ezra Lecture

2007-02-19T16:41:00.000Z

I have posted last week's lecture on 5 Ezra here.

"Scottish Field" remembers James Bruce

2007-02-19T07:59:00.000Z

The March edition of "Scottish Field," a lifestyle magazine that often carries historical articles concerning important Scottish figures, contains a biography of explorer James Bruce, who brought back from his travels several copies of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), effectively rediscovering the book for those outside of Ethiopia and opening the door for subsequent research into the Enochic texts.

Unfortunately the article is not available online and in any case it fails to mention Bruce's literary "discoveries," focusing instead on the more exciting (and gruesome) aspects of his travels in Abyssinia. Still, it is a good read and warmly recommended.

The association of Scotland with the Pseudepigrapha goes back to long before the "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" course in St Andrews University!

Slavonic Pseudepigrapha Lectures

2007-02-16T16:15:00.000Z

Dr. Macaskill has provided us with very full and detailed online lectures to go with today's class session:

"The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: An Introduction"

"An Introduction to 2 Enoch"

This should be enough to keep you all busy during the weekend. I also lectured on 5 Ezra, but I will post that file on Monday.

Introducing the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha and 2 Enoch

2007-02-16T10:24:00.000Z

My lecture today is essentially two talks rolled into one. I will introduce the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha and discuss the problems associated with them and then introduce 2 Enoch, which nicely illustrates these problems.

Here are my brief abstracts

The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: an Introduction

A substantial number of pseudepigraphical texts have been preserved for us in the Slavonic languages. Most of these have parallels in traditions preserved in other languages such as Greek and Latin. A small number, however, are unique to the Slavonic context, although some of their constituent parts have parallels in other traditions. These texts provide rich insights into the ongoing life of the Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic and Byzantine contexts, but they pose a number of problems for students, the most significant being the level of variation between their individual textual witnesses. In order to work with them, one must appreciate something of the linguistic and textual contexts of the works. Such an appreciation will help to highlight the ancestry, the influences and the distinctive problems associated with the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha.

An Introduction to 2 Enoch

The text that we refer to as 2 Enoch, Slavonic Enoch or even The Book of the Secrets of Enoch is a fascinating example of the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha and of the distinctive problems associated with them. In the lecture I will discuss the ways in which the manuscripts witness to those problems as I outlined them in The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: an Introduction. We will discuss: 1) macro variation between manuscripts and recensions; 2) micro variation within text families; 3) the verifiable route of transmission of 2 Enoch; 4) debates over the provenance of 2 Enoch. This will lay a groundwork for next week’s lecture on themes within 2 Enoch.

Much fuller versions of both lectures will be added to the main course web-site in due course. These will contain some helpful additional detail that I simply don't have time to cram into the session today.

I will also give students a short outline of the narrative of 2 Enoch at today’s lecture.

GM

Translation of 5 Ezra

2007-02-15T15:09:00.000Z

As promised, I have posted the authoritative translation of 5 Ezra by Theodore Bergren. This is based on the best available Latin text and should be used rather than any other translation.

I have also updated the class schedule on the OT Pseudepigrapha website to clarify what we are doing in the next few weeks. We will fill out the schedule further as the semester progresses.

It would be helpful if the class members would print out the Begren translation and the RSV translation of 5 Ezra and bring them to class tomorrow for comparative purposes. (The translation of 5 Ezra in the Charlesworth OTP is the same as that of the RSV, both by Bruce Metzger - about whom there is recent sad news - so no need to duplicate it if you already have it.)

Pseudepigrapha Translations Online

2007-02-14T14:54:00.000Z

The Noncanonical Literature page of the Wesley Center Online has a collection of translations of OT Pseudepigrapha. There you can find translations of 2 Enoch (covered this week) and 1 Enoch (of which chapters 37-71 comprise the Similitudes of Enoch) to be covered this semester), as well as many other Pseudepigrapha. Also this week, we shall be covering 5 Ezra, which appears as chapters 1-2 of 4 Ezra or 2 Esdras. You can read the translation of the Revised Standard Version here. Later this week I shall post a better translation by Ted Bergren.

A Pseudepigrapha Journal in the News

2007-02-13T09:30:00.000Z

The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha gets a mention in today's Jerusalem Post. Some of the issues covered in class last week appear as well.

Lack of 2nd Temple period rabbinic control may have caused assimilation
By HAVIV RETTIG

A deep linguistic and cultural chasm between the Jewish communities of the West and their brethren in the East led to the almost total assimilation of Western Greek- and Latin-speaking Jews during the last centuries of the Roman Empire, according to a study by Prof. Doron Mendels of the Hebrew University and Dr. Arye Edrei of Tel Aviv University published in the January issue of The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha.

"We have quite decisively shown that the view that the rabbis [of the Talmud] had authority over the whole Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic period and later is not true," Mendels, an expert on the Hellenistic world and its Jews, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

[...]

According to Mendels, "In the East, they spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, whereas in the West they spoke Greek and Latin. This gap was never bridged by the rabbis. They never translated all the rabbinic [material], which for a long time [remained] oral."

Prof. Aharon Oppenheimer of Tel Aviv University says the thesis put forward by Mendels and Edrei "makes sense." Given the oral nature of the rabbinic texts, "there's a great likelihood that for Jews in Rome, only pieces or fragments arrived, not whole tractates or chapters," he said.

"Because of this language gap," continued Mendels, "the two parts of the Jewish Diaspora had different corpora of literary works. The eastern side had the Bible, the midrashim, the Mishna and the Talmud, whereas the western part had the Bible in Greek, and also part of the Apocrypha, the external texts."

These Apocrypha, such as the second Book of Maccabees, were excluded from the Jewish canon in the East by the rabbis. Thus, "the Jewish bookshelf was different in the West and the East as a consequence of the language gap," Mendels said. "Even the Haggada of Passover, developed in the second century, wasn't translated into Greek."

[...]

You can find the January 2007 issue of the JSP, which contains this article, here. The abstract can be accessed for free, but you have to have a paid personal or institutional subscription to download the article itself.

Preparation for this week's lecture on the Slavonic texts

2007-02-12T11:30:00.000Z

It would be helpful for students to read Andrei Orlov's "Introduction: The Slavonic Pseudepigrapha" before Friday's lecture. This can be found at the following site:

http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/pseudepigrapha

I will provide a thorough handout of my lectures on Friday and we will post a summary of the lecture on the Old Testament Pseudeigrapha module website before then.

GM

First Lecture Summary Posted

2007-02-09T17:27:00.000Z

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha class met for the first time this afternoon and I have now posted the summary of my lecture: "Introduction to the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha."

Also, you may have noticed some alterations to the schedule on the main page of the website. We are rearranging some things right now and hope to have a more or less final schedule posted in the next week or so.

Welcome!

2007-02-09T09:09:00.000Z

Welcome to the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Blog, which is associated with an honours (i.e. upper division) undergraduate course on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, which Dr. Grant Macaskill and I are teaching this semester (spring 2007) at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland. The first meeting of the course is today. Please have a look at the "About the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Blog" link (also above and to the right) and the St. Andrews Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Website for detailed information about the course and the blog.

I shall be posting a summary of the opening lecture later today on the St. Andrews Old Testament Pseudepigrapha website and will link to it in a post on this blog. The provisional schedule for the course is already posted on that website and will be updated as the semester progresses. We aim to update the blog at least once a day during weekdays (not excluding weekends if something interesting should happen to come up), so please come back often. And have a look as well at PaleoJudaica.com, my blog on ancient Judaism and its literary and historical context.

Thanks for visiting this site and we hope to see you here often.