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

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 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 ‘ 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 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 literary gems such as 1 and Jubilees, or 4 Ezra and , 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, , 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 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.

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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, , Life of and Eve and of , Martyrdom of , 1 Enoch, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, , Testament of Moses, , 2 Baruch, , 4 Ezra, , , 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 tractate Pirqe ’Abot. The discovery of the 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-

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2 E. Kautzsch (ed.), Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, 2 vols., Tübingen 1900; R.H. Charles (ed.), The 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 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 : Écrits intertestamentaires, 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).

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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 ), as well as the works of Philo and Josephus, the Rabbinic literature (with the exception of the so-called ), 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 ) 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 . Yet, the question remains, that no matter how much they have been reworked by 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 be used to shed light on pre-Rabbinic and early Christian problematics.9

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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 and Aseneth in the study of ’ last supper as suggested by C. Burchard, ‘The Importance of for the Study of the : 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. Davila and G.W.E. Nickelsburg (see below, note 21). For an apology of the traditional view, see J.J. Collins, ‘Joseph and Aseneth: Jewish or Christian?,’ Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 14 (2005), 97-112.

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Building on the evidence which suggests that Christian literature has preserved so many Jewish pseudepigraphic texts, a large majority of scholars who specialize in Second Temple Judaism are still eager to identify newly discovered parabiblical narratives which bear no explicitly Christian signa- tures, as new examples of Jewish Pseudepigrapha.10 However, during the last two decades some authoritative voices – Marinus de Jonge, Robert A. Kraft, and Enrico Norelli, to mention just a few11 – have begun to argue that early Christian authors could have written or edited at least some of these texts (for example, the or the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs). In the same vein, James R. Davila’s new monograph on The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? provides us with a useful survey of not only Christian ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish’ (ch. 2), but also of ‘Some Pseudepigrapha of Debatable Origin’ (ch. 4) that were previously deemed to be Jewish but are probably of Christian origin.12 The plausibility of such a paradigmatic shift is independently confirmed by the major changes that another great specialist of Second Tem- ple Judaism, George W. E. Nickelsburg, has just introduced into the revised and expanded edition of his masterful 1981 introduction to the Jewish Litera- ture between the Bible and the Mishnah. In the new edition, some Pseudepi- grapha have now been relegated to the newly created limbo of ‘Texts of Dis- puted Provenance’ (ch. 9), while others are purely and simply omitted.13 ______

10 This was blatantly demonstrated by E. , ‘The Ethiopic History of Joseph: Translation with Introduc- tion and Notes’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 6 (1990), 3-125, who too hastily identified as a new Jewish Pseudepigraphon what is in fact an Ethiopic secondary translation made from an Arabic intermediary version of the Pseudo-Basil’s History of Joseph originally written in Syriac (as noticed by Kristian Heal). Another late and clearly Christian pseudepigraphic text is Pseudo-Athanasius’s Story of , translated by S.R. Robinson, ‘The Apocryphal Story of Melchizedek’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 18 (1987), 26-39, and edited by J. Dochhorn, ‘Die Historia de Melchisedech (Hist Melch). Einführung, editorischer Vorbericht und Editiones praeliminares’, Le Muséon 117 (2004), 7-48. 11 See M. de Jonge, Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature: The Case of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Greek , Leiden 2003; idem, ‘The Au- thority of the “Old Testament” in the Early Church: The Witness of the “Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testa- ment” ’, in J.-M. Auwers & H.J. de Jonge (eds.), The Biblical Canons, Leuven 2003, 459-486; R.A. Kraft, ‘Setting the Stage and Framing Some Central Questions’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 32 (2001), 371- 395; E. Norelli, Ascension du prophète Isaïe, Turnhout 1993; idem, L’Ascensione di Isaia: Studi su un apocrifo al crocevia dei cristianesimi, Bologna 1994; idem, ‘The Political Issue of the Ascension of Isaiah: Some Remarks on Jonathan Knight’s Thesis and Some Methodological Problems’, in D.H. Warren, A.G. Brock & D.W. Pao (eds.), Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions and Symbols: Essays in Honor of François Bovon, Leiden 2003, 267-279; P. Bettiolo, A. Giambelluca Kossova, C. Leonardi, E. Norelli & L. Perrone, Ascensio Isaiae: Textus et Commentarius, 2 vols., Brepols 1995. 12 J.R. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other?, Leiden 2005, 74-119 and 180-217. 13 G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction, Minneapolis 2005 (first edition, Philadelphia 1981), 301-344 and 412-423.

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Admittedly, the number of Jewish Table 1 First Second edition edition Pseudepigrapha taken into account by (1981) (2005) Nickelsburg in the second edition – 1 Enoch X X Jubilees X X 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Testament of Testament of Moses X X Moses, Sibylline Oracles 3, Letter of Martyrdom of Isaiah X Omitted Sibylline Oracles 3 X X Aristeas, , 2 Enoch, Letter of Aristeas X X Psalms of Solomon, Parables of 3 Maccabees X X 2 Enoch X X Enoch, 4 Maccabees, Book of Biblical Psalms of Solomon X X Antiquities, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, Apoca- Parables of Enoch X X 4 Maccabees X X lypse of , only thirteen texts! Testaments of the X Disputed – is closer in number to Kautzsch and Twelve Patriarchs Testament of X Disputed Charles than to the profusion of texts X Disputed included by Charlesworth or Díez Life of Adam and Eve X Disputed Joseph and Aseneth X Disputed Macho. The same comment also Book of Biblical X X applies to Davila’s selection of ten Antiquities 2 Baruch X X truly ‘Jewish Pseudepigrapha’ (ch. 3) 4 Ezra X X – Letter of Aristeas, 2 Baruch, Para- Apocalypse of X X 14 Abraham bles of Enoch, 4 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, 3 Baruch X Omitted 4 Maccabees, Testament of Moses, Paraleipomena of X Omitted Jeremiah Book of Biblical Antiquities, Psalms Disputed of Solomon, together with 1 Enoch Total: 21 13 + 6 and Jubilees that are ‘taken for disputed granted’ because of the fragments found in the Qumran libraries.15 In the case of Nickelsburg, however, such a phenomenon is especially striking when we compare the first and second editions of Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah. In fact, the Jewish identity of five texts that were included in the chapter on ‘The Exposition of Israel’s Scriptures’ in the first edition (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, , Testament of Abraham, Life of Adam and Eve, and Joseph and Aseneth)16 is now uncertain, while three other texts have simply disappeared (Martyrdom of Isaiah, 3 Baruch, and Paraleipomena of Jeremiah).17 On the other hand, Nickelsburg was able to completely update ______

14 One should note that there is a growing consensus about a Jewish authorship and a late first century B.C.E. date for the Parables of Enoch. In this sense, see the large majority of the contributions published in G. Boccaccini (ed.), Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables, Grand Rapids, Mich. 2007. 15 Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, 120-164. 16 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (first edition), 231-275. 17 For the Christian reworking and/or authorship of these three texts, see above, note 11, and below, notes 19 (Ascension of Isaiah) and 28-29 (Paraleipomena of Jeremiah), as well as D.C. Harlow, The Greek

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 238 PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI the Qumran material thanks to the insertion of new documents published after 1983 (Halakhic Letter, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, Temple Scroll, Ara- maic Levi, and others).18 The reader might wonder, whether the progressive disclosure of unpublished fragments from Qumran over the past twenty-five years has contributed to the realization that many Pseudepigrapha previously thought to be of Jewish and/or Qumranic origin, actually have very little in common with the Dead Sea Scrolls. With this in mind, one has only to think of the similarities between the characters in the so-called Martyrdom of Isaiah (preserved, according to Charles’s ingenious reconstruction, in Ascension of Isaiah 1:1, 2a, 6b-13a; 2:1-8, 10-16; 3:1-12; 5:1b-14) and the figures of the Teacher of Righteousness and his enemies in the Scrolls. This comparison which was originally suggested by David Flusser as early as 1952–1953, was enthusiastically accepted and developed by Marc Philonenko in 1967, before being vulgarized by Nickelsburg in 1981, prior to its final implicit abandon- ment in 2005.19 Be that as it may, the texts of dubi- Table 2 ous provenance listed in Davila’s ch. 4 Davila’s Pseudepi- Nickelsburg’s Texts grapha of Debatable of Disputed and Nickelsburg’s ch. 9 are as shown in Origin Provenance Table 2. For Nickelsburg there is no Sibylline Oracles 3 Sibylline Oracles 5 doubt that the third book of Sibylline Testaments of the Oracles is a Jewish text written in the Twelve Patriarchs 20 Joseph and Aseneth Joseph and Aseneth Egyptian Diaspora. As for Sibylline Testament of Job Testament of Job Oracles 5 and the Story of Zosimus Testament of Testament of Abraham Abraham (also known as History of the Recha- Life of Adam and bites), the fact that he does not mention Eve Story of Zosimus them at all seems to imply that he Prayer of Manasseh ______Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch) in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity, Leiden 1996; idem, ‘The Christianization of Early Jewish Pseudepigrapha: The Case of 3 Baruch’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 32 (2001), 416-444. 18 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (second edition), 119-189 (ch. 5, ‘The People at Qumran and Their Predecessors’). 19 See D. Flusser, ‘The Apocryphal Book of Ascensio Isaiae and the Dead Sea Sect’, Israel Exploration Journal 3 (1953), 30-47 (originally published in Hebrew, in 1952); M. Philonenko, ‘Le Martyre d’Ésaïe et l’histoire de la secte de Qoumrân’, in idem et al., Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer Morte, Paris 1967, 1-10; Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (first edition), 142-145, 157, and 159. V. Nikiprowetzky, ‘Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer Morte: Réflexions sur une publication récente’, Revue des Études Juives 128 (1969), 5-40, at 11, had already pointed out the inconsistencies of such a source critical approach. More recently, M. Pesce, Il ‘Martirio di Isaia’ non esiste: L’Ascensione di Isaia e le tradizioni giudaiche sull’uccisione del profeta, Bologna 1984, and Norelli, L’Ascensione di Isaia, 38-45, have convincingly demonstrated that a supposedly Jewish text called Martyrdom of Isaiah never existed. 20 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (second edition), 193-196.

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 239 considers them to be the work of Christian authors. Thus, between Davila and Nickelsburg there is an explicit agreement on three texts of disputed origin (Joseph and Aseneth, Testament of Job, and Testament of Abraham)21 and an implicit agreement on two other similarly problematic texts (Sibylline Oracles 5 and Story of Zosimus). Concerning the texts of disputed provenance, Nickelsburg’s conclusions are worth quoting in their entirety: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a Christian text that draws on a wealth of Jewish tradition. The Life of Adam and Eve is quite probably a Chris- tian composition, which also draws on Jewish tradition. The Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Job, and Joseph and Aseneth seem to be of Jewish origin, but this is not absolutely certain. The Prayer of Manasseh is a toss-up. (…) The material in these texts can be used as witnesses to the ongoing life of Jewish religious thought and practice, and as context for early Christianity, only with great care, and the rules for such use need to be worked out methodically. Given their Christian transmission, the texts should be seen as a part of the Chris- tian story, alongside the more theological and philosophical writings of the fathers, apologists, and exegetes of the early and medieval church and in conjunc- tion with the so-called . In doing so, we will create a picture of the church that is more variegated than the one that focuses exclusively on the writings of the patristic tradition.22 Following the same line of thought, I would like to emphasize the natural continuity which exists between the ancient Jewish and early Christian pseud- epigraphic trajectories. It is from this perspective that I would like to briefly review two eloquent test cases, which, in my opinion, fit perfectly into the categories of Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha identified by Davila: the so-called Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon, a Jewish Pseudepigraphon copied and translated from Greek into Coptic by Christian scribes, and the Paralei- pomena of Jeremiah, a second century Greek Christian rewriting of the previ- ous text. Let’s begin this quick survey with some good news: Yes, it is still possible to discover authentic Second Temple Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Christian me- dieval manuscripts! This is precisely the case with the Coptic Jeremiah Apoc- ryphon. In 1970 Karl Heinz Kuhn published and translated the Coptic text of the Apocryphon from the codex unicus M. 578 of the Pierpont Morgan ______

21 Especially noteworthy is their agreement on the debatable origins of Joseph and Aseneth. See Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, 190-195; Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (second edition), 332- 338, 343-344, and 420-422. 22 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (second edition), 341.

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Library.23 This manuscript, copied in the ninth century and written in a Sa- hidic dialect with Fayumic influences, comes from the library of the monas- tery of St. at Sopehes (Hamuli), in the Fayum region. Together with this complete text Kuhn also published four fragments taken from two other manuscripts, dating to the seventh and ninth centuries, respectively. The lexi- cal and syntactic peculiarities of the Sahidic text show that what we have is almost certainly a translation from a Greek original that is presently lost. Be- fore 1970, the Apocryphon was known under the title of History of the Cap- tivity of the Sons of Israel in Babylon, in an Arabic (Karshuni) version pub- lished by Leroy and Dib in 1910–1911 and by Alphonse Mingana in 1927.24 Regrettably, it is in this late and inaccurate form that the text is still read.25 The story runs as follows: The apostasy of the inhabitants of and Judea who worship Baal and Astarte stirs up the wrath of the Lord against them (chs. 1-3). Jeremiah’s rebuke of King Zedekiah is ignored and the prophet is thrown into a pit full of mud three times. Jeremiah is rescued from the pit by the Nubian Abimelech, a servant of Agrippa, king of Zebulon (chs. 4-12). Zedekiah’s actions are so monstrous that the Lord decides to deliver him into the hands of the Chaldeans (chs. 13-15). The archangel Michael transmits the divine orders to King Nabuchodonosor, who still hesitates to invade Judea (chs. 16-17). His wife Kelkiane recommends to casting lots in order to determine the Lord’s will, while his generals Cyrus and Amesaros suggest sending an ambassador to Jerusalem in order to verify whether or not ______

23 K.H. Kuhn, ‘A Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon’, Le Muséon 83 (1970), 95-135 and 291-350. Regrettably, this text has not received all the attention it deserves. See J.-M. Rosenstiehl, ‘Histoire de la Captivité de Babylone: Introduction, traduction et notes’, 6 fascicles (unpublished Ph.D. thesis), Strasbourg 1980; G. Aranda Pérez, ‘Apócrifo de Jeremías sobre la cautividad de Babilonia’, in Díez Macho (ed.), Apócrifos del Antiguo Testamento, 2:385-442; P. Piovanelli, ‘Paralipomeni di Geremia (Quarto libro di Baruc) – Storia della cattività babilonese (Apocrifo copto di Geremia)’, in Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento, 3:235-381, at 237-304 (general introduction and full bibliography until 1998) and 334-381 (Italian transla- tion). 24 L. Leroy & P. Dib, ‘Un apocryphe carchouni sur la captivité de Babylone (texte arabe, traduction fran- çaise)’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 15 (1910), 255-274 and 398-409; 16 (1911), 128-154; A. Mingana, ‘Woodbrooke Studies: Editions and Translations of Christian Documents in Syriac and Garshuni, II.1: A New Jeremiah Apocryphon’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 11 (1927), 243-244, 329-342 (J.R. Harris’s introduction), and 352-437 (also published as a separate volume, Cambridge 1927, 125-138, 148- 191, and 192-233). 25 See the recent commentary of J. Herzer, 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena Jeremiou), Atlanta, GA 2005, xxiv- xxvii. Herzer’s exclusive use of Mingana’s edition (xxv, note 61) leads him to underestimate and misrepre- sent the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon as a late and secondary text. Thus, for example, in his opinion, ‘the “vineyard of Agrippa” (4 Bar. 3:10, 15; 5:25) becomes [in the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon] “the garden of his master” (e.g., Apocr. Jer. 167:8, 11), probably because the connotations of the former were no longer comprehensible to the author of the Apocryphon of Jeremiah’ (XXVI) – a judgment that is probably true for the Arabic translator, but not for the Greek author or the Coptic translator, who correctly identified the estate in which Abimelech plucks the fruits with ‘the garden (kvmarion) of Agrippa’ (chs. 22 [bis]; 39).

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 241 the report that its inhabitants are worshipping other gods is reliable (chs. 18- 21). When Nabuchodonosor finally realizes that God is on his side, just before the Babylonian army crosses the Judean border, Abimelech miraculously falls asleep for seventy years (ch. 22). Then, the conquering Nabuchodonosor en- ters Jerusalem and cruelly punishes King Zedekiah and his people (chs. 23- 26). When the prophet Jeremiah realizes that it is impossible to find a single righteous person among the habitants of the town, he has no choice but to hide the Temple vessels and consent to the relocation of his people to Babylon (chs. 27-29). The deportation and the exile are a terrible nightmare for the Judeans and Nabuchodonosor’s successor, Cyrus the Persian, makes their living conditions even worse (chs. 30-31). Among those exiled in Babylon there is a young boy named Ezra. After two miracles that reveal Ezra’s ex- traordinary charisma to his schoolteacher, God accepts his sacrifice for the renewal of the covenant, thus bringing the captivity to an end (chs. 32-34). As a result, the Babylonian leaders are forced to let the Judeans go with all the honors (chs. 35-37). The end of the captivity corresponds to the awaking of Abimelech, who immediately joins Jeremiah at the head of the convoy of former captives. Following the retrieval of the Temple vessels, the prophet reestablishes the sacrificial cult of the Lord amidst joy and festivity (chs. 38- 41). The Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon is a narrative of Psalm 126 (‘When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream…’) inspired by the canonical (especially Jeremiah 36-39) that retells the story of the prophet from the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of its inhabitants to their triumphal return at the end of the exile. It should be stressed that the text bears almost no trace of Christian influence, the only exception being a manifestly secondary interpo- lation inserted into the middle of Jeremiah’s address to the cornerstone of the Temple (ch. 28).26 Throughout the rest of the story, neither Jeremiah nor any other character makes any Christological prophetic statements. From a literary point of view, the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon is ex- tremely close to the Christian Paraleipomena of Jeremiah, to the extent that its Coptic version actually shares a title with the Paraleipomena: ‘These are the Supplements (paralypomhnon) to the Prophet Jeremiah’. However, in contrast to the Paraleipomena, the Apocryphon makes very little use of the

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26 Obviously enough, the typology of the cornerstone is not in itself a Christian invention as the Rule of the Community clearly demonstrates: ‘This is the tested rampart, the precious cornerstone whose foundations do not shake or tremble from their place’ (1QS 8:7-8).

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 242 PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI character of Baruch, and this is only at the beginning of the narrative, when the scribe gives a public lecture of Jeremiah’s words and is forced by Zedekiah to reveal where the prophet is hiding (chs. 8-9). Another major dif- ference is that, contrary to the Paraleipomena, the Apocryphon apparently does not depend on the Jewish Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch) and/or the Christian Ascension of Isaiah. Of particular interest is the presence of Ezra in the role of a younger contemporary of Jeremiah. The origin of such a synchronicity is probably to be found in Nehemiah 12:1, a list of ‘the priests and the Levites who came up with Zerubbabel, the sons of Shealtiel and Jeshua,’ including Jeremiah and Ezra. In any case, this higher chronology is confirmed by 4 Ezra, a late first century C.E. Jewish apocalyptic text that identifies Ezra with Shealtiel, the father of Zerubbabel, and dates his visions to the thirtieth year after the destruction of the First Temple (4 Ezra 3:1). As for the strange water miracles that the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon attributes to Ezra – after he breaks his pitcher, he fills his garment with water, while later on he fails to submerge the entire city of the Chaldeans (ch. 32) –, there is nothing to suggest that they were inspired by late antique Christian apocry- phal texts.27 The opposite could even be more plausible. I must admit that while I can understand perfectly well why Egyptian Christians found the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon so attractive following the Arab conquest of their country, I have a great deal of difficulty explaining how they could eventually have reworked the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah in the writing of a text that is so much longer. The same considerations apply to Christian authors of the fourth century and even earlier, writing in either Greek or Coptic. The amazing part is that the Apocryphon actually resembles the first, Jewish edition that the specialists of source criticism had imagined in the background of the Paraleipomena.28 This brings us to the second, Chris- tian edition of the Apocryphon. In opposition to the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon, the text of the Paralei- pomena of Jeremiah bears a set of distinct Christian signatures that are in no ______

27 Respectively, Infancy of Thomas 11:1-2 (Greek A recension) // Arabic Infancy Gospel 45 and Acts of Andreas and Matthias 29-30. 28 See P. Piovanelli, ‘Les Paralipomènes de Jérémie dépendent-ils de l’Histoire de la captivité babylo- nienne?’, Bulletin de l’AELAC 7 (1997), 10-14; idem, ‘Paralipomeni di Geremia’, in Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento, 3:255-273; idem, ‘Le sommeil séculaire d’Abimélech dans l’Histoire de la cap- tivité babylonienne et les Paralipomènes de Jérémie. Textes – intertextes – contextes’, in D. Marguerat & A.H.W. Curtis (eds.), Intertextualités: La Bible en échos, Geneva 2000, 73-96; idem (in collaboration with C. Zamagni), ‘Abimelec in visita da Eusebio: Eugenio Montale lettore di un frammento dei Paralipomeni di Geremia’, Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale 61 (2000), 157-188. Another excellent bibliography of the Paraleipomena is provided by B. Schaller, ‘Paralipomena Jeremiou: Annotated Bibliography in His- torical Order’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 22 (2000), 91-118.

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 243 way limited to the ending of the work (9:10-32) which describes the - dom of Jeremiah, who is stoned by the people of Jerusalem in reaction to his about the coming of ‘the Christ, the Son of God who awakens and judges you, Jesus, the Son of God, the light of all ages, the inextinguishable lamp, the life of faith’ (9:13, translation based on the Ethiopic version). To mention but a few of these Christian signatures,29 in the famous episode of the hiding of the Temple vessels (3:5-8, 14; 4:3-4) God instructs Jeremiah in how to enjoin the earth to ‘guard the vessels of the cult service until the gathering of the beloved one (~ωςτĞςσυνελε×σεωςτοĻ γαπηµÏνου)’ (3:8). It has been argued that ‘the beloved one’ could refer to ‘the people (of Israel)’.30 How- ever, every time that a similar expression occurs in 2 Baruch (21:21) and the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon (chs. 18; 21), the two Pseudepigrapha that are genetically the closest to the Paraleipomena, the word for ‘people’ is explic- itly mentioned. Moreover, in the parallel passages of the Apocryphon the time for the restitution of the holy vessels is unambiguously fixed to ‘the day in which the Lord will bring back the captivity of his people’ (ch. 28) or when ‘the people will come back from the captivity’ (ch. 29), and this is exactly what will happen at the end of the story (ch. 41). This is not the case of the Greek text of the Paraleipomena, which was clearly understood as delivering a Christological prophecy by all of its late antique and medieval translators (the Ethiopian, Armenian, and Slavic ones), who rendered it as: ‘until the coming (}λευσις) of the Beloved One (i.e., Jesus Christ).’31 This clearly dem- onstrates that the text of the first Jewish edition of the Paraleipomena (to be identified with the Apocryphon) probably interpreted this clause to mean ‘un- til the gathering of the beloved people’ (or the like), while its Christian second edition (that is, the actual text of the Paraleipomena) radically transformed its original meaning through the omission of the word for ‘people’. Another highly significant Christian signature occurs at the end of the divine instructions that Baruch is charged to send by letter to Jeremiah, who is still in Babylon, in order to let him know how to proceed with the testing of ______

29 For a more detailed review, see R. Nir, The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, Atlanta (Ga.) 2003, 203-237. One should remind that even if Nir’s hypothe- sis of a Christian authorship for 2 Baruch is too difficult to justify (cf. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, 130-131), her provocative monograph still contains many insightful and useful observa- tions on the permeable boundaries of late Second Temple Jewish and early Christian Pseudepigraphic lit- erature. 30 See G. Delling, Jüdische Lehre und Frömmigkeit in den Paralipomena Jeremiae, 1967, 65-67; Herzer, 4 Baruch, 61-66. In a similar way, in Jubilees 31:15, 20 the Israelites are called ‘the descendants of the beloved (i.e., Abraham)’. 31 Compare the use of the much more common Christological title ¦hγαπητÕς (Ethiopic fequr) in the As- cension of Isaiah (nineteen times).

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 244 PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI the returnees (6:17-23). ‘You shall test them – Baruch informs Jeremiah – with the waters of the Jordan: this will reveal those who do not listen, (because) this is the sign of the great seal (τοĻτοτÔσηµεĬÕνyστιτĞςµεγÍλης σφραγĬδος)’ (6:23). Some commentators try to explain the intriguing expres- sion ‘the great seal’ with the help of rabbinic parallels as a metaphoric refer- ence to the circumcision,32 while others prefer to interpret it as synonymous with ‘the time of salvation.’ The water of the ordeal at the Jordan thus becomes the ‘sign’ for the beginning of the eschatological period.33 Unfortu- nately in rabbinic literature the word for ‘seal’ (Кôtām/Кatîmā) is never used on its own as a technical term for the circumcision, instead it is always fol- lowed by a specification, such as, ‘the seal of Abraham (in the flesh)’ (Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer 10; Exodus Rabbah 19:5), ‘the seal of the circumcision’ (Targum to the Song of Songs 3:8), or ‘the seal of the covenant of holiness’ ( Yerushalmi, Berakhot 9:3).34 Furthermore, in the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah the crossing of the Jordan is described as a test for those among the former deportees who were really determined to separate themselves from ‘Babylon’ (6:13-14) and its ‘works’ symbolized here by their Babylonian spouses (8:2-3). The ordeal was a decision and a trial that would finally allow them to reintegrate into their true city,35 which included the earthly, and more significantly, the heavenly Jerusalem (5:34; 8:9).36 In this regard one should recall that ‘the seal is the water (of the baptism)’. This is unambiguously stated by Hermas (The Shepherd 16:4) and repeated by the authors of the ______

32 See Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature (first edition), 316-317; J. Riaud, Les Paralipomènes du prophète Jérémie: Présentation, texte original, traduction et commentaires, Angers 1994, 29-30, 64-65, and 192. 33 See Herzer, 4 Baruch, 115-118. For the Mandean connections suggested by M. Philonenko and B. Heininger, see below, note 47. 34 In Romans 4:11 too (‘the sign of circumcision’ that Abraham received as ‘a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised’) the image of the seal is only generically associated with the circumcision. 35 In contrast to those among them who refused to obey the prophet and crossed the river with their Babylonian partners. As a result, they became ‘stranger[s] to Jerusalem and to Babylon’ (6:22) and had no choice but to build the new city of Samaria (8:4-8). I suspect that behind the labels ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Babylon’, and ‘Samaria’ one should recognize the contours of, respectively, 1) the Christian community that produced the Paraleipomena and considered herself to be perfectly mainstream and ‘orthodox’, 2) the Roman Empire and pagan society at large, and 3) some Christian fellows who were perceived by the members of the aforementioned community as ‘heterodox’. Interestingly enough, the episode of the testing with the waters of the Jordan and the subsequent foundation of Samaria is absent from the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon. 36 Compare ’s allegorical interpretation of Joshua 3-5 (the crossing of the Jordan by the Israelites and their entry into the Holy Land), a biblical passage to which Paraleipomena 6:23; 8:1-5 clearly refer. According to the Alexandrian exegete, the crossing of the Jordan foreshadows the rite of baptism, a sacra- ment that allows the faithful to enter into the ‘true’ Holy Land and the heavenly Jerusalem (Commentary on John 6:44-45; Homilies on Joshua 4-5). Also noteworthy is the interpretation of the Jordan as ‘the power of the body, that is, the senses of pleasures’ and its water as ‘the desire for sexual intercourse’, to which Jesus put a definitive end at the moment of being baptized by John, in Testimony of Truth, NHC IX 30:20-31:3.

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 245 second century Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.37 ‘The seal (of the Lord)’ is in fact the baptism tout court for all of the authors, starting with Clement of , who used the word σφραγÓς and the verb σφραγÓζω in a technical sense, rather than as metaphorical terms in the vocabulary of Christian initia- tion. However, in my opinion the most fascinating and problematic Christian signature of the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah has escaped notice thus far. In the response that Jeremiah addresses to Baruch, in which he describes the painful conditions of the deported in Babylon, the current editions and translations now include the following sentence: ‘Frequently as I went out I found (some) of the people hung up (κρεµαµÏνους) by King Nabuchodonosor, weeping and crying, “Have mercy on us, god Zar (yλÏησο통ďς,¦θεÔςΖÍρ)!” ’ (7:25). Who is then this mysterious ‘god Zar’ that the crucified Judeans invoke in vain, and who makes the prophet feel even more sadness ‘because they were calling on a foreign god (θεÔν hλλÕτριον) saying, “Have mercy on us!” ’(7:26)? Actually, the embarrassing verses (24c-26)38 were omitted by the common ancestor from which the large majority of the published Greek wit- nesses (the manuscripts A, B, P, also followed by those representing the short form of the text) and the long Eastern versions (the third Armenian recension and the Slavonic version) are derived. The original, integral text of Jeremiah’s letter is actually only preserved in two Greek manuscripts (C and L) and the Ethiopic version. When James Rendell Harris published the first critical edi- tion of the Paraleipomena in 1889, he preferred the Ethiopic variant Zar to the apparently aberrant reading of manuscript C, which identifies the god as ΣαβαÙθ.39 In his opinion, this ‘ΖÌρ (=Heb rz:, hλλÕτριος)’ was but a translit- eration of the Hebrew adjective zซr that normally describes a ‘foreign god’.40 Such a brilliant conjecture was based on an erroneous appraisal of the three (four) alternative readings – according to Harris, Zar, Sorot, and Sarot – of- fered by the three Ethiopic witnesses published by August Dillmann in 1866. On the one hand, Dillmann’s edition has neither Zar nor Zör, but instead reads ______

37 See Acts of Paul 3:25; Acts of Thomas 131-132 (Greek text). 38 In Herzer’s translation, 4 Baruch, 29: ‘For grief has not left us since we entered this place sixty-six years ago today. For frequently as I went out (of the city) I found (some) of the people hung up by King Nebuchadnezzar, weeping and crying, “Have mercy on us, God Zar!” When I heard that I would grieve and cry a twofold lamentation, not only because they were hung up but because they were calling on a foreign god, saying, “Have mercy on us!” But I remembered the day of the festival that we celebrated in Jerusalem before we were taken captive’. 39 This is also the reading of the Greek manuscript L, belonging to the same textual family as C, to which Harris had no access. See the apparatus of Herzer, 4 Baruch, 28. 40 J.R. Harris, The Rest of the Words of Baruch: A Christian Apocalypse of the Year 136 A.D. The Text Revised with an Introduction, London and Cambridge 1889, 59 (apparatus).

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Sor.41 On the other hand, such a reading is but an abridgment of Sorot, an or- thographic variant of the original form Sซrot which is preserved by the best Ethiopic manuscripts.42 Accordingly, we are left with two alternatives for the name of this enigmatic god. They are either ΣαβαÙθ or ΣαρÙθ (the Greek retroversion of the Ethiopic Sซrot), the second reading being easily explained as a corruption of the first (in Greek uncial script, ΣΑΒΑΩΘ → *ΣΑΡΑΩΘ → ΣΑΡΩΘ). If this deconstruction of the genesis of an unnecessary conjecture is cor- rect – and there is no reason to believe that it is not, – this means that in the original text of the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah, the ‘foreign god’ that the cru- cified Judeans were calling upon for mercy was none other than ‘Sabaoth’, one of the titles most commonly used in the Hebrew Bible to qualify the Lord of Israel! This strange distinction between the legitimate God of Jeremiah and his friends, and the foreign god Sabaoth who is worshipped by some of the deportees43 is not without parallels. The precedents are not to be found in Sec- ond Temple Jewish Pseudepigrapha, or in ‘mainstream’ Christian Apocrypha, but rather in ‘Gnostic’ apocryphal texts. Thus, according to Sethian cos- mogonic traditions, Adonaios Sabaoth is the fifth of the twelve androgynous archons created by the arrogant Yaldabaoth//Sakla. In a more developed version of the same myth, gives Sabaoth ‘great au- thority against all the forces of chaos (since that day he has been called “Lord of the Forces” [i.e., Sabaoth])’ and charge of the seventh following his repentance.44 Moreover, in the late collections of texts known as the Pistis ______

41 A. Dillmann, ‘Liber Baruch’, in Chrestomathia Aethiopica, Leipzig 1866 (second edition, corrected and revised by E. Littmann, 1941; reprinted in E. Hammerschmidt [ed.], Anthologia Aethiopica, Hildesheim 1988), viii-x, 1-15, at 11, note 5. Harris was probably misled by Dillmann’s suggestion, taken on by E. König, ‘Der Rest der Worte Baruchs. Aus dem Äthiopischen übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen’, Theologische Studien und Kritiken 50 (1877), 318-338, at 332, note 2, to see in this Sor a ‘nomen ficticium’ created from the final syllable of the name Nabuchodonosor (Chrestomathia Aethiopica, 199, sub voce). It was then easy to conclude that, because the Greek form Nabuchodonosor corresponds to the Hebrew Nebu- chadnezzar, Sor could also be the equivalent of *Zar. 42 See the new critical edition of P. Piovanelli, ‘Ricerche sugli apocrifi veterotestamentari etiopici, II: La traduzione etiopica dei Paralipomeni di Geremia: Testo critico con introduzione e commento’ (Tesi di Laurea), Firenze 1986, 109-231, at 196 (apparatus). 43 More conventionally, in the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon the citizens of Jerusalem are punished with the exile because of the cult status they accord to Baal and Astarte (chs. 1-2; 4-5; 7; 9-10; 13; 20; 24-25; 27; 30), an explanation also found in a fragment attributed to the Jewish historian Eupolemus (5:2-3, Baal) and in 4QPseudo-Daniel (4Q243 3:2-3 = 4Q244 4:2-3, the demons of error). 44 Adonaios Sabaoth: Gospel of the Egyptians, NCH III 58:13-15; , NHC II 10:33-34 // III 16:23-25 = BG 40:9-10 (Adonaios is the fifth , Sabaoth the sixth); NHC II 11:31-32 = IV 18:19- 20 (Sabaoth has a serpent’s face) // III 18:3-4 = BG 42:3-4 (Adonaios has a serpent’s face); BG 43:20 (Sabaoth); NHC IV 26:19 (Sabaoth); Gospel of Judas, AMC (i.e., Al Minya Codex) 52:11 (Adonaios); cf. Origen, Contra Celsum VI.31 (Sabaoth); Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I.30.5 (Sabaoth is the third archon,

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Sophia and the Books of Jeu there are three different supernatural entities called Sabaoth. The first, known as ‘the Great Sabaoth, the Good’, belongs to the Pleroma of light. This Sabaoth is the father of Jesus, from whom the Savior took the ‘power of light’ that constituted the soul of his physical body. The second, known as ‘the Little Sabaoth, the Good’, ‘who is called in the world ’ and dwells in the intermediary region, received Jesus’ soul and ‘cast it forth into the matter of Barbelo’. The third, called ‘Sabaoth the Adamas’, is the father of the evil god of the inferior world and the chief of the first six rebellious archons; in contrast to his brother Jabraoth, he never repented and it is his receiver Jalouham who hands souls ‘the cup of forgetful- ness’ from which they must drink prior to their reincarnation.45 One possible explanation of such a complicated situation could be that the ‘Gnostic’ theologians of the third century tried to reconcile at least two differing earlier views of Sabaoth, a purely negative one (as found in the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Apocryphon of John) and a more nuanced one (preserved in the Hypostasis of the Archons and On the Origin of the World). Be that as it may, the Paraleipomena shares the same perception of Sabaoth’s otherness to the point that at the end of the story, when Jeremiah begins his prayer with the first words of the Trishagion, ‘Holy, holy, holy…’ (Isaiah 6:3), the impressive series of divine epithets that follows – ‘pleasant fragrance for the human beings, true light that enlightens me until I will arrive in front of you…’ (9:3, according to the Ethiopic version) – makes no mention at all of the‘Lord Sabaoth’ or ‘of hosts’.46 It is extremely difficult to imagine a Jew-

______Adonaios the fourth); Epiphanius, Panarion XXVI.10.6 and 10.11 (Sabaoth has the form of an ass and hair like a woman). The elevation of Sabaoth: Hypostasis of the Archons, NHC II 95:13-96:11; On the Origin of the World, NHC II 101:30-32 (Sabaoth and Adonaios are two different archons); 103:31-106:25; 107:4-5; 113:12-13; 114:16-17; 122:23-24; cf. Testimony of Truth, NHC IX 73:29-30 (the powers of Sabaoth); Epiphanius, Panarion XXVI.10.3 and XL.2.6 (Sabaoth rules from the seventh heaven); XL.2.8 (he gave the Law). See F.T. Fallon, The Enthronement of Sabaoth: Jewish Elements in Gnostic Creation Myths, Leiden 1978; L. Painchaud, ‘ “Something is Rotten in the Kingdom of Sabaoth”. Allégorie et polémique en NH II 103,32 - 106,19’, in D.W. Johnson (ed.), Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Wash- ington, 12-15 August 1992. Volume 2: Papers from the Sections, Part 2, Rome 1993, 339-353; J.A. Trumbower, ‘Traditions Common to the Primary Adam and Eve Books and On the Origin of the World (NHC II.5)’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 14 (1996), 43-54. 45 The Great Sabaoth: Pistis Sophia I.8; 18; 62; II.63-64; 86; 93; III.112; IV.139; Jeu II.50. The Little Sabaoth: Pistis Sophia II.63; IV.137; 139-140; 147. Adamas the Tyrant: Pistis Sophia I.15; 27; II.66-67; 70; 76-77; 79. Sabaoth the Adamas: Pistis Sophia IV.136; 144; 146-147; Jeu II.43; 48; cf. Epiphanius, Panarion XXVI.10.10 (Sabaoth is the last obstacle to the ascent of the souls); XL.5.1 (he begat the ). See Fallon, The Enthronement of Sabaoth, 126-132. 46 With the only exception being the second Armenian recension, which adds ‘Lord of hosts’. Compare this to what seems to be a liturgical (probably baptismal) hymn in the Melchizedek Apocalypse, which begins with ‘Holy are you, holy are you, holy are you, o Father of the All, who truly exists’ and goes on repeating the same invocation to eleven other divine entities (NHC IX 16:16-18:7).

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 248 PIERLUIGI PIOVANELLI ish author, writing on the eve of the Bar Kochbah uprising (132–135 C.E.) during the first decades of the second century C.E., to have dissociated the true God from the Lord Sabaoth (this includes marginal or sectarian authors). It is much easier, though not inevitable, to conclude that the Paraleipomena was written by a Christian for Christians. The real question is: what kind of Christians could have held such a pejorative opinion of the God of Israel? On the one hand, the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah seems to use terminol- ogy, metaphors, and at least some theological interpretations that could be considered, if they were extrapolated from the general context of the story, to be ‘Gnostic’.47 Conversely, the eschatological perspectives of the work are so firmly grounded in a belief in the resurrection of the material body – the ‘tent of flesh’, the ‘holy mansion’ of the soul, perceived as good and without sin48 – that they would be at odds with the large majority of ‘Gnostic’ anthropologi- cal and soteriological doctrines.49 If the perfectly Christian author and audi- ence of the Paraleipomena were ready to identify the ‘god Sabaoth’ with ‘a foreign god’, it was probably not due to a radical rejection of the Jewish heri- tage of the Hebrew Scriptures, but instead, because they were able to see at least two different divine figures at work beyond the curtain of the biblical stories. The first had created the world (3:8) and was the Lord, ‘God of

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47 The presence of these ‘Gnostic’ parallels was already noticed by O.S. Wintermute, in his review of Delling, Jüdische Lehre, published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30 (1968), 442-445, at 443. More recently, M. Philonenko ‘Simples observations sur les Paralipomènes de Jérémie’, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 76 (1996), 157-177, at 160-163, has pointed out that the mention of ‘the great seal’ in Paraleipomena 6:22-23 has a clear parallel in the Mandean baptismal terminology. His theory of a ‘bap- tist and syncretistic Jewish Christian’ authorship has however, been cogently criticized by J. Herzer, ‘Die Paralipomena Jeremiae – eine christlich-gnostische Schrift? Eine Antwort an Marc Philonenko’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 30 (1999), 25-39. Finally, B. Heininger, ‘Totenerweckung oder Weckruf (ParJer 7,12-20)? Gnostische Spurensuche in den Paralipomena Jeremiae’, Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt 23 (1998), 79-112, finds other Mandean parallels in the episode of the eagle resurrecting a dead man in Babylon and suggests attributing the paternity of the Christian edition of the Paraleipomena to a heterodox Johannine ‘Gnostic’ group. Needless to say, the entire question should be reexamined in the light of the methodological and epistemological considerations raised by K.L. King, What is Gnosticism?, Cambridge, Mass. 2003. 48 As explicitly stated in the eulogy that Baruch utters at the sight of the miraculously well preserved figs, sixty-six years after Abimelech had plucked them (6:2c-7). See J. Herzer, Die Paralipomena Jeremiae. Studien zu Tradition und Redaktion einer Haggada des frühen Judentums, Tübingen 1994, 104-114; idem, 4 Baruch, 101-106; J.-D. Kaestli, ‘L’influence du livre de Jérémie dans les Paralipomènes de Jérémie’, in A.H.W. Curtis & T. Römer (eds.), The Book of Jeremiah and Its Reception: Le livre de Jérémie et sa réception, Leuven 1997, 217-231, at 229-230. 49 Even if M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, Princeton, N.J. 1996, 116-138 and 288-292, has convincingly demonstrated that the ‘[t]he familiar clichés about “gnostic hatred of,” “contempt of,” “hostility to” the body fail completely as interpretations of what [the] sources overall have to say about the question’ of ‘what persons commonly classified as “gnostics” imagined about their bodies now’ (136).

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Guest (guest) IP: 170.106.202.58 IN PRAISE OF ‘THE DEFAULT POSITION’ 249 heaven and earth’ (5:32), the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (4:9; 6:18), who had sent Jesus and the prophets that had announced him (including Isaiah and Jeremiah). The ‘other’ was Sabaoth, a false god who was mistakenly called on by some blind members of the chosen people.50 This may also mean that the eschatological (apocalyptic) hopes of those who trusted in such a traditional aspect of the God of Israel were shown to be equally wrong. Written in the aftermath of Hadrian’s victory that brought an end to the dream of a messianic restoration of the Jewish state,51 the Eirenicon of the Paralei- pomena was not only directed at the Synagogue (as Harris believed), but also and especially at the sister Churches of Jewish Christianity.52 After all, those Jewish followers of Jesus who observed the precepts of the and shared the same Aramaic and Greek culture as did their fellow , in Palestine and elsewhere, were the other great losers of the Second Jewish War.53

In the end, any fresh look at the textual traditions of the various Pseudepi- grapha of the Old Testament can be an extremely rewarding task.54 The Cop- tic Apocryphon of Jeremiah clearly illustrates that it is true that some Jewish texts of the are still to be rediscovered. However, one should remember that they are a small minority in comparison with the larger corpus of Christian rewritings and original texts that were copied in the me- dieval manuscripts that rest on the shelves of our libraries. As the case of the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah has hopefully shown, the study of these Christian

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50 In this respect, the point of view of the Paraleipomena is comparable – but not identical – to the Valentinian attitude to the God of Israel and its sacred books, discussed in Fallon, The Enthronement of Sabaoth, 84-87. 51 As demonstrated by the reference to ‘the market of the Gentiles’ (6:16), to be identified with the infa- mous Market of Mamre in Hebron, where at the end of the war the Romans sold thousands of Jewish pris- oners as slaves – pace Herzer, 4 Baruch, xxxiv, who still considers the Paraleipomena as a Jewish Pseud- epigraphon written, in his opinion, on the eve of the Second Jewish War, around 130 C.E., ‘[t]he writer [thinking] it necessary to warn against the one-sided hope of political and temple-cultic restoration held by an influential part of the population’. In order to recover the political and religious perspectives that led to the war, one would be better advised to take into account those truly Jewish Pseudepigrapha, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, to which we can now add the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon. 52 On the various ‘Jewish Christian’ groups (Ebionites, Nazarenes, Elchasaites), see the contributions of F.S. Jones, P. Luomanen, G.P. Luttikhuizen, O. Skarsaune, and other specialists in A. Marjanen & P. Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’, Leiden 2005; M. Jackson-McCabe (ed.), Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, Minneapolis 2007, and O. Skarsaune & R. Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, Peabody, Mass. 2007, as well as the recent monograph of S.C. Mimouni, Les chrétiens d’origine juive dans l’Antiquité, Paris 2004. 53 Not to mention the fact that, according to Apocalypse of Peter 2:7-13, some of them had hesitated in the decision of whether or not to follow Bar Kochbah. 54 This is certainly the case of L. DiTommaso’s remarkably exhaustive survey, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature, Leiden 2005.

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Pseudepigrapha can contribute to a better understanding of the varieties of Christianity that were in dialogue and competition during the formative years of the second century, and also much later. Over the last few decades, spe- cialists of Christian apocryphal literature have become more and more aware of the importance of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that were written by Christian authors for Christian audiences.55 This has led to the publication of new translations and commentaries which include both Christian Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. One notable example is the new two volume French an- thology of the Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, which is edited by François Bovon, Pierre Geoltrain and Jean-Daniel Kaestli.56 Conversely, the situation is not so idyllic for the specialists of Jewish pseudepigraphic literature, who are still prone to using old-fashioned source critical techniques in order to anach- ronistically take possession of late antique and medieval Christian apocryphal productions. This is the reason why a work as bold and groundbreaking as Davila’s monograph is so timely and important.

(Pierluigi Piovanelli is professor of Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity at the Fac- ulty of Arts of the University of Ottawa (Ontario), Canada.)

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55 A point also made by M. de Jonge, ‘Remarks in the Margin of the Paper “The Figure of Jeremiah in the Paralipomena Jeremiae”, by J. Riaud’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 22 (2000), 45-49. 56 F. Bovon, P. Geoltrain & J.-D. Kaestli (eds.), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 2 vols., Paris 1997–2005. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha included are: Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Ezra, Vision of Sedrach, Vision of Ezra, 5 and 6 Ezra, , , Sibylline Oracles 6-8. See the insightful comments of T. Nicklas, ‘ “Écrits apocryphes chrétiens”: ein Sammelband als Spiegel eines Weitreichenden Paradigmenwechsels in der Apokryphenforschung’, Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007), 70-95, at 85-89.

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