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In Praise of 'The Default Position', Or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage

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In Praise of 'The Default Position', Or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI In Praise of ‘The Default Position’, or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage* ABSTRACT Many ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha have been preserved in their integrality only through secondary versions and Christian late antique and medieval manuscript tradi- tions. James R. Davila’s new monograph on The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? provides us with a useful survey not only of Christian ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish’ but also of ‘Pseudepigrapha of Debatable Origin’ that were previously deemed to be Jewish but that probably are of Christian origins. Following the same line of thought, I will discuss the case of a Jewish Pseudepigraphon copied and translated by Christian scribes (the so-called Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon) and the subsequent Christian rewriting of it (the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah). Many ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha have been preserved in their entirety only through secondary – sometimes even tertiary – versions, and late antique and medieval Christian manuscript traditions. One should think, for example, of Second Temple literary gems such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees, or 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, whose integral texts (with the exception of the Enochic Book of Giants) were saved from censorship and oblivion thanks to their translations from Greek into Ge‘ez (Old Ethiopic), in the case of the first two, or, more generally, from Greek into Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, and other languages spoken by the eastern Christian faithful.1 Historically, the intellectual recu- peration of those forgotten texts by Western scholarship and their subsequent reinsertion into the cultural heritage of Second Temple Judaism began in the nineteenth century. Their progressive rediscovery on the shelves of western and eastern libraries led to the publication of the first significant collections of _____________ * A preliminary version of this study was presented at the Pseudepigrapha Section of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Annual Meeting, in Washington, D.C., on November 19th, 2006, as a part of a broader discussion on ‘The Pitfalls of Categorization: A Panel Discussion of James R. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? Brill, 2005’. I wish to thank John C. Reeves, the chair of the Pseudepigrapha Section, for kindly inviting me to join such a stimulating panel. 1 The best introductions and bibliographical tools are now provided by J.-C. Haelewyck, Clavis apocrypho- rum Veteris Testamenti, Turnhout 1998; A. Lehnardt & H. Lichtenberger, Bibliographie zu den Jüdischen Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit, Gütersloh 1998; A.-M. Denis et al., Introduction à la littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique (Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament), 2 vols., Turnhout 2000; L. DiTommaso, A Bibliography of Pseudepigrapha Research, 1850–1999, Sheffield 2001. www.ntt-online.nl NTT 61/3, 2007, 233-250 Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 234 PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI texts in translation, the German anthology of Emil Kautzsch and the English compilation of Robert H. Charles.2 It is well known that only a few texts were able to meet the extremely se- lective criteria set up by the editors. Thus, for example, in the second volume of Charles’s anthology, we can only find fifteen of the more than seventy texts that we now consider as ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’:3 Jubilees, Letter of Aristeas, Life of Adam and Eve and Apocalypse of Moses, Martyrdom of Isaiah, 1 Enoch, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Sibylline Oracles, Testament of Moses, 2 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Psalms of Solomon, 4 Maccabees, and Ahiqar. To these, Charles adds in appendices two Genizah copies of the Damascus Document (which he calls ‘The Fragment of a Zadokite Work’) and the Mishnah tractate Pirqe ’Abot. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, provoked a renewed inter- est in the remnants of Jewish Pseudepigrapha that are preserved in Christian milieus. Not only did the publication of the Scrolls have the benefit of pro- moting the study of the small group of ‘canonical’ Pseudepigrapha published by Kautzsch and Charles, but it also served to promote the study of a wider range of related texts. This new orientation became apparent in the last two decades of the twentieth century with the publication of new anthologies of Pseudepigrapha in translation by scholars like James H. Charlesworth, Alexandro Díez Macho, H.F.D. Sparks, André Dupont-Sommer and Marc Philonenko, Paolo Sacchi, and Werner Georg Kümmel, Hermann Lichten- berger and Gerbern S. Oegema.4 Charlesworth’s definition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha was espe- cially inclusive: Those writings 1) that, with the exception of Ahiqar, are Jewish or Christian; 2) that are often attributed to ideal figures in Israel’s past; 3) that customarily claim to contain God’s word or message; 4) that frequently build upon ideas and narra- tives present in the Old Testament; 5) and that almost always were composed ei- _____________ 2 E. Kautzsch (ed.), Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, 2 vols., Tübingen 1900; R.H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, 2 vols., Oxford 1913. 3 At least, according to the classification adopted by P.H. Alexander et al. (eds.), The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies, Peabody, Mass. 1999, 74-75. 4 J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols., Garden City, NY and London 1983–1985; A. Díez Macho (ed.), Apócrifos del Antiguo Testamento, 5 vols., Madrid 1983–1987; H.F.D. Sparks (ed.), The Apocryphal Old Testament, Oxford 1984; A. Dupont-Sommer & M. Philonenko (eds.), La Bible: Écrits intertestamentaires, Paris 1987; P. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento, 5 vols., Turin and Brescia 1981–2000; W.G. Kümmel, H. Lichtenberger & G.S. Oegema (eds.), Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit, 6 + 2 vols. of the ‘Neue Folge’, Gütersloh 1973–2006 (still in progress). NTT 61/3, 2007, 233-250 www.ntt-online.nl Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 235 ther during the period 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 or, though late, apparently preserve, albeit in an edited form, Jewish traditions that date from that period.5 Thus, the obvious goal of his wonderful anthology of sixty-three antique and late antique texts was to collect all known remnants of Second Temple Jewish literature not included in the Dead Sea Scrolls (with the notable exception of 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of Levi), as well as the works of Philo and Josephus, the Rabbinic literature (with the exception of the so-called 3 Enoch), and the ‘Gnostic’ library of Nag Hammadi (with the exception of the Apocalypse of Adam, NHC V.5).6 More precisely, bearing these limitations and exceptions in mind, we are able to complete Charlesworth’s parameters by adding: the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are writings 6) that were often translated (from Hebrew or Aramaic) into, or directly written in, Greek;7 7) that were adopted and/or adapted, copied, translated again, and distributed by early Christian readers; 8) and that were progressively abandoned and forgotten by Rabbinic Judaism and Western Christianity. Yet, the question remains, that no matter how much they have been reworked by Christians due to their insertion in a new corpus consisting primarily of Second Temple Jewish texts,8 they almost always end up being perceived by contemporary readers as repositories of ancient traditions and stories that can 9 be used to shed light on pre-Rabbinic and early Christian problematics. _____________ 5 Charlesworth, ‘Introduction for the General Reader’, in idem (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:xxi-xxxiv, at xxv (emphasis added). 6 Charlesworth, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:xxvi-xxvii. 7 See J.R. Davila, ‘(How) Can We Tell if a Greek Apocryphon or Pseudepigraphon Has Been Translated from Hebrew or Aramaic?’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 15 (2005), 3-61, as well as B. Schaller, ‘Die griechische Fassung der Paralipomena Jeremiou: Originaltext oder Übersetzungstext?’, in B. Schaller, L. Doering & A. Steudel (eds.), Fundamenta Judaica: Studien zum antiken Judentum und zum Neuen Testament, Göttingen 2001, 67-103; idem, ‘Is the Greek Version of the Paralipomena Jeremiou Original or a Translation?’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 22 (2000), 51-89. 8 The perverse effects of the modern constitution of new corpora of pseudepigraphic and apocryphal texts were aptly pointed out by J.-C. Picard, ‘L’apocryphe à l’étroit: Notes historiographiques sur les corpus d’apocryphes bibliques’, Apocrypha 1 (1990), 69-117, reprinted in idem, Le continent apocryphe: Essai sur les littératures apocryphes juive et chrétienne, Turnhout 1999, 13-51. 9 One case in point is, for example, the use of the evidence provided by Joseph and Aseneth in the study of Jesus’ last supper as suggested by C. Burchard, ‘The Importance of Joseph and Aseneth for the Study of the New Testament: A General Survey and a Fresh Look at the Lord’s Supper’, New Testament Studies 33 (1987), 102-134. The legitimacy of such an approach really depends on our understanding and dating of this text, a question that R.S. Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered, New York and Oxford 1998, now leaves perfectly open – an opinion also shared by J.R.
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