110578580 Charlesworth Pseudoepigrapha and Early Bib Inter

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA SUPPLEMENT SERIES

14

Editor James H. Charlesworth

Associate Editors Philip R. Davies

James R. Mueller James C. VanderKam

STUDIES IN SCRIPTURE IN EARLY JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Series Editors Craig A. Evans

James A. Sanders

JSOT Press Sheffield

The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical

Interpretation

edited by James H. Charlesworth

and Craig A. Evans

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 14

Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 2

Copyright 1993 Sheffield Academic Press

Published by JSOT Press JSOT Press is an imprint of

Sheffield Academic Press Ltd 343 Fulwood Road Sheffield SIO 3BP

England

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press and

Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd

Guildford

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Dau

Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation.(JSP Supplement Series, ISSN 0951-8215; No. 14) I. Charlesworth, James H. II. Evans, Craig A. III. Series 220.8

ISBN 1-85075-443-8

CONTENTS

Preface 7 Abbreviations 8 List of Contributors 11

JAMES A. SANDERS

Introduction: Why the Pseudepigrapha? 13

T H E PSEUDEPIGRAPHA A N D JEWISH EXEGESIS

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH

In the Crucible: The Pseudepigrapha as Biblical Interpretation 20 HOWARD CLARK KEE

Appropriating the History of God's People: A Survey of Interpretations of the History of Israel in the Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha and the New Testament 44

GORDON Z E R B E

'Pacificism' and 'Passive Resistance' in Apocalyptic Writings: A Critical Evaluation 65

JAMES C. VANDERKAM

Biblical Interpretation in 1 Enoch and Jubilees 96

T H E PSEUDEPIGRAPHA AND THE N E W TESTAMENT

D A V I D E. A U N E

Charismatic Exegesis in Early Judaism and Early Christianity 126 BRUCE D . CHILTON

God as 'Father' in the Targumim, in Non-Canonical Literatures of Early Judaism and Primitive Christianity, and in Matthew 151

CRAIG A . E V A N S

Luke and the Rewritten Bible: Aspects of Lukan Hagiography 170

6 The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation

D A V I D P. M O E S S N E R

Suffering, Intercession and Eschatological Atonement: An Uncommon Common View in the Testament of Moses and in Luke-Acts 202

P E T E R H . D A V I D S

The Use of the Pseudepigrapha in the Catholic Epistles 228 P E D E R B O R O E N

Heavenly Ascent in Philo: An Examination of Selected Passages 246 RICHARD J. BAUCKHAM

Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead: A Traditional Image of Resurrection in the Pseudepigrapha and the Apocalypse of John 269

Index of Ancient Writings 292 Index of Modern Authors 315

PREFACE

The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation is a collection of essays dedicated to the comparative study of the presence and func-tion of Scripture in the Pseudepigrapha (and other Jewish literature) and the New Testament. One purpose of this collection is to draw the Pseudepigrapha more fully into the discussions of the meaning, function, and place of 'Scripture' in the period from circa the third century BCE to the second century CE.

This volume is the second in a series of related studies that are appearing under the sub-title of Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity (SSEJC), edited by C.A. Evans and J.A. Sanders. The series is an outgrowth of the work that is being undertaken by members of the Society of Biblical Literature who are working in a program unit of the same name.

We extend our appreciations to the contributors to the present volume for their understanding and cooperation. Appreciations are also extended to Scholars Press of Atlanta for permission to publish sections of 'The Pseudepigrapha as Biblical Exegesis', which appeared in Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis: Studies in Memory of William Hugh Brownlee, edited by C.A. Evans and W.F. Stinespring, and to Uitgeversmaatschappij J.H. Kok of Kampen, the Netherlands, for permission to publish portions of 'Biblical Interpretation: The Crucible of the Pseudepigrapha', which appeared in Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honor of A.F.J. Klijn, edited by T. Baarda etal.

J.H. Charlesworth Princeton Theological Seminary

C.A. Evans Trinity Western University

ABBREVIATIONS

AB Anchor Bible AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des

Urchrislentums AnBib Analectabiblica ANRW Aufsrieg und Niedergang der rSnuschen Welt APOT R.H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old

Testament BA Biblical Archaeologist Bib Biblica BNTC Black's New Testament Commentaries BO Bibliotheca orientalis BWANT BeitrSge zur Wissenschaft vom Alien und Ncucn Testament BZNW BeiheftezurZWW CBQ Catholic Bibiical Quarterly CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series ConBNT Coniecianea biblica. New Testament CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad novum testamentum CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium DBSup Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) -ETR Etudes theologiques et religieuses ExpTim Expository Times FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen

Testaments GCS Griechischechristliche Schriftsteller HAT Handbuch zum Allen Testament HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HTR Harvard Theological Review HTS Harvard Theological Studies HVCA Hebrew Union College Annual ICC International Critical Commentary IDB G.A. Buttrick (ed.). Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

Abbreviations

JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JSHRZ W.G. Kummel et at. (eds.), JUdische Schriften aus

hellenistisch-rdmischerZeii (Giiietslcii: Mohn, 1973-) JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and

Roman Period JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement

Series JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal cf Theological Studies LCL Loeb Classical Library MeyerK H. A.W. Meyer, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar uber das

Neue Testament Mom Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums

MNIC Moffatt NT Commentary NCB New Century Bible Neot Neotestamentica NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament NIGTC The New Iniemational Greek Testament Commentary NovTSup Novum Testamentum, Supplements NTS New Testament Studies OIL Old Testament Library OTP J.H. Charlesworth (ed.). The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research RB Revue biblique Rel Religion RevQ Revue de Qumran RHPR Revue d'historie et de philosophie religieuses RSR Recherches de science religieuse SBLASP SBL Abstracts and Seminar Papers SBLSCS SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies SBLDS SBL Dissertation Series SBT Studies in Biblical Theology SC Sources chrdtiennes SJT Scottish Journal of Theology SNT Studien zum Neuen Testament SNTSMS Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Scries SPB Studia postbiblica ST Suidia theologica SVTP Studia in Veteris Testament! pseudepigrapha


TDNT G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (eds.). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

TDOT O.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.). Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament

TNTC Tyndale New Testament Commentaries TZ Theologische Zeitschrift VT Vetus Testamennm VTSup Vettts Testamentum, Supplements WBC Word Biblical Commentary ZA W Zeitschrift ftir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZNW Zeitschrift ftir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

David E. Aune, Professor New Testament and Christian Origins, Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinios, USA

Ricard Bauckham, Professor of New Testament Studies, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK

Peder Borgen, Research Professor of New Testament, University of Trondheim, Dragvoll, Norway

James H. Charlesworth, Georgre L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, USA

Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA

Peter H. Davids, Researcher and Theological Teacher, Langley Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Langley, British Columbia,

Craig (Sanfikins, Professor of Biblical and Intertestamental Studies, Trinity Western University, Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Howard Clark Kee, Aurelio Professor of Biblical Studies, Emeritus, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts, USA; Senior Research Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

David P. Moessner, Associate Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, USA

James A. Sanders, Professor of Intertestamental and Biblical Studies, School of Theology at Claremont, Claremont, Claifornia, USA

James C. VanderKam, Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Gordon M. Zerbe, Assistant Professor of New Testament, Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

INTRODUCTION: WHY THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA?

James A. Sanders

Like many important terms the word Pseudepigrapha is difficult to define. A pseudepigraphon is a discrete piece of literature attributed by its unknown author, or by subsequent community tradition, to a bygone name well-known and highly respected in that community.

In this sense the world's literature is replete with pseudepigrapha; indeed, the Bible itself is largely made up of pseudepigrapha. That is, most of the literature in the Bible is anonymous either in initial com-position or at points of community transmission; then, it is often attributed to one or another great, recognizable name in antiquity such as the whole of the Pentateuch to Moses, the whole of the Psalter to David, or all the 'Pauline' letters to the Apostle Paul. In this manner unidentifiable individuals, even authors of truly great literary compositions, were caught up into community identity at the expense of their own. While this may be baffling to the Western mind which stresses the importance of the individual, especially in terms of genius and concepts of inspiration, it was very common, and even a mark of piety, in the social and cultural milieux from which the Bible and Early Jewish and Christian literature derive. The Bible was formed in cultures of orality, not literacy, and was shaped to be read aloud in community; the focus at all stages was primarily on the community.

What is meant by Pseudepigrapha in this volume is more limited in scope and yet more indeterminate. It is an inept term diat has come since the early eighteenth century to mean roughly the following: the Early Jewish literature (largely in the 200 BCE to 200 CE period) that resembles the Apocrypha or deuterocanonical literature but is not included in the Jewish or Western Christian canons, or in rabbinic literature. ' But even that is not a definition, since there are Jewish

1. There are a few of the so-called Pseudepigrapha that are in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles and/or the Appendix to the Vulgatesome of the Esdras literature.


3 and 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151 (and Psalms of Solomon in Alexandrinus); the Armenian lacks 4 Maccabbees. It is difficult to speak of a widely accepted canon, in the narrow sense (norma normata) of the Greek Old Testament in antiquity since the contents and orders of books differ after Genesis to 4 Kingdoms in the early, more complete LXX manuscripts.

2. See the comments by James H. Charlesworth in the introduction to The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, I, D (= OTP) (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983, 1985), pp. xxiv-xxv, and in A. Caquot (ed.). La Litterature intertestamentaire (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1985), pp. 11-28.

literary works from the period, such as the pes ha rim and other distinctly denominational literature from Qumran, which do not com-fortably fit the mix, while there are others from Qumran that do fit. And the question of fit in those instances is not related to anonymity or pseudepigraphy but rather to certain literary characteristics. No one in the field has found another term that has gained acceptance to designate this important body of literature which has in this century alone grown dramatically by discovery and recovery.^

Why are the Pseudepigrapha, in the sense described, important? First and foremost, they provide us with an immeasurable treasure of primary sources, beyond the Apocrypha, for the intellectual and social history of late Early Judaism. They prove that earlier views of there having been an orthodox, pre-rabbinic (early Pharisaic) Judaism, on the one hand, and a heterodox Judaism, on the other (the consensus until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls), were false. While a few scholars still speak and write of 'normative Judaism' in this period, most now do not. The history of Early Judaism is now seen to have been highly diverse from the early post-exilic days until the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The older tendency to speak of four or five 'parties' in the Early Jewish period is no longer appropriate; there were many, diverse groups whose several contours are evidenced in the Pseudepigrapha and other Jewish literature of the period.

The older tendency to speak or write of Palestinian Judaism over against Hellenistic Judaism is no longer appropriate; the former is now seen as variously hellenized in various parts of Palestine, and the latter is now seen as unlimited by geographic bounds in themselves. It is important now also to allow for there having been so-called ortho-dox Jewish communities scattered throughout the diaspora in the period in question. And though we do not yet know enough about the diverse denominations and groups to identify any pseudepigraphon


with one or another of them, the Pseudepigrapha provide a glimpse into internal divisions and strifes between these differing expressions of the Judaism of the period.

One common feature of the pluriformity within Judaism that emerges with clarity is the pervasive and radical influence of Scripture on Judaism. While the third section of the Jewish canon was not closed until well after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the separation of Christianity from its Jewish matrix, the influence of the Torah and Prophets, and some of the early Writings (the third and final section of the Jewish canon), on subsequent Jewish and Christian literature was immense. All of the literature of the period was written Scriptu-rally in one sense or another, and to one degree or another. The depth and extent of Scriptural intertextuality in this literature is perhaps its most marked common feature. Not only is most of it attributed to great names in Scripture, but it was variously composed in the manner of and in the light of various parts of Scripture. That was how important these anonymous writers felt what they had to communicate was; they were fully willing to lose their own individualities and egos in the convictions their writings reveal.

But ultimately, the salient observation is not that they attributed their convictions to earlier well-known figures from biblical history; the important observation that emerges from close study of the scriptural intertextuality manifest in all this literature is that they were so convinced of what they felt they had been given to say that they wrote it in scriptural phrases, shapes, tones and cadences. There are clear citations of the Hebrew Bible or Septuagint, uncounted para-phrases and weavings of scriptural phrases into the fabric of the newer compositions, many allusions to passages, figures and episodes, and untold echoes of Scripture passages in various combinations; and through them all there was the desire as well to write scripturally in form and structure. Scripture was slowly coming to various forms of closure, and the sorts of inspiration attributed to past authors of Scripture (itself largely pseudepigraphic in the broader sense) were no longer being claimed; there was a tt'adition being handed down that 'prophecy had ceased' in the time of Ezra. But such a tradition could not alter the conviction of these anonymous authors that they had something important to say to their communities and to their day, indeed that they were inspired and impelled to do so. Undeserved suffering inflicted upon Jews by non-Jewish forces, and by internal


strife and conflict, needed to be addressed if Judaism was to survive and belief in the biblical God of justice and mercy to endure. Some of it to us sounds fanatic and overdrawn, and we may well breathe sighs of relief that parts of it did not make it into any current canon of Scripture;^ but its importance for understanding Early Judaism and the matrix of Early Christianity would be difficult to overstate.

If one wants to get a true perspective on the formation of the New Testament and to understand its arguments and claims, one should start at the beginning of Christian canonical literature, the Torah. The per-spective one gains by focusing on the cross-cultural and intertextual dimensions of biblical literature at all its stages of development and formation provides the framework in which to understand the New Testament."

Such a focus begins with what my teacher, Samuel Sandmel, called haggadah within Scriptureanother way of speaking of its inter-textuality; but it also begins with Scripture's pervasive cross-cultural aspects from the Bronze Age, through the Iron Age, the Persian Period, and the Hellenistic-Roman Era. No one period is more impor-tant or more problematic than another, and they all together provide a paradigm in sequence for seeing how the traditioning process moves from the earliest to the latest literature in the Bible.

Each cultural period deposited its peculiar characteristics in the literature it produced. If one moralizes on first reading any of it, one thereby puts the mores and cultural traps and trappings of each period into a false perspective of prominence. If one instead monotheizes

3. Just as many current communities of faith ignore considerable portions of canonical Scripture. There has always been a tendency to focus on favorite parts of Scripture, adopting a kind of canon within a traditional canon; such foci often provide the bases of the various denominations which otherwise claim their identity in the same canon.

4. The intertextual mode of reading the NT is gaining ground. Two recent, fine examples are Richard B. Hayes' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) and Gail R. O'Day, 'Jeremiah 9.22-23 and 1 Corinthians 1.26-31: A Study in Intertextuality', JBL 109/2 (1990), pp. 259-67. If such examples are read along with Michael Fishbane's intertextual mode of reading the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature, they become all the more compelling and powerful; see now Fishbane's beautifully wrought The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1989), esp. pp. 33-46 and 121-33. Unfortunately Fishbane himself does not do the reverse; see the writer's forthcoming review in Theology Today.


5. To imagine that limiting the quantity of literature to a shorter canon, such as the Jewish or Protestant, makes the exercise easier or more manageable (manipulable?) is to attempt to repress and deny the considerable pluralism and dialogue inherently present in those canons. Attempts to harmonize Scripture are basically political efforts to co-opt Scripture (and God) for one point of view (a violation of the Third Commandment) and result in denying the depths of riches any canon contains. To view canon, instead, as basically a hermeneutic paradigm by which to read Scripture and life, and to read subsequent efforts (theologies) to understand Reality, is to affirm its ongoing relevance in ever-changing situations of the human experiment.

while reading all its parts, along with the developing theocentric and monotheizing hermeneutic thrust of Scripture, one does not stumble over the modes and expressions of polytheism, even tribalism, that pervade the Bible from inception through the NT; they were legion.

If one gains that canonical hermeneutic perspective through the Torah and the Prophets and moves with it on through the Writings, the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Qumran literature and Philo, the NT takes its rightful place in the Jewish-Christian canonical mix. Each historical period has its own characteristics which frame the texts; but the cultural traps and trappings need not be the focus of reading. One might ask, why include the Pseudepigrapha in such a diachronic reading? Other bodies of Hebraic and Jewish literature (variously influenced by many cultures including the Hellenic and Hellenistic) form parts of current canons of Scripture.

So why the Pseudepigrapha? Canon in this functional sense is a paradigm, and not a 'box' with rigid boundaries. Some of the writings that we call Pseudepigrapha actually functioned as canon for some Early Jewish communities, and some are included in current canons; others of them may possibly have done so in antiquity. After all, we inherit no autographs of any of them but only apographs (copies of copies), or ancient translations from the original-language copies, which means that some Early Jewish and then Early Christian communities must have thought highly enough of most of them to share them that widely. To include the Pseudepigrapha in the reading is to witness the process in its fullest extent, and especially in its full Hellenistic-Roman guise.'

The canonical process was not a smooth development, far from it. On the contrary, it exhibits the various degrees in which cultural givens shaped the literature. But to monotheize, or perceive the integrity of Reality through these texts, was no easier or less rough in the Iron


6. Richard Simon in his Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: Leers, 1685; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971) stressed that it is impossible fully to understand Christianity without knowledge of Judaism and its history. In addressing the issue of the value of consulting Early Jewish literature and understandings of Scripture, Simon boldly stated that the authority God had given the Hebrew Republic through Moses and the judges he appointed had never been withdrawn (see 'La preface de I'auteur' and pp. 6 ,9 et passim).

Age or Persian period than in Hellenistic and Roman times. The first three commandments of the Decalogue (no polytheism, no idolatry and no co-opting of God's name for one theology, ideology, agenda or point of view) have been humanity's greatest challenge through the ages to the present, whatever the cultural frame.

Arguably (and minimally) only the Book of Jude in the NT exhibits direct intertextuality with any of the Pseudepigrapha (7 Enoch). That is not the point. If one studies all of the literature, Hebraic and Jewish, in whatever language available, from its beginnings through the NT, including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, both intertextually and with the theocentric/monotheizing thrust of the whole (if not of each of die parts), one then comes to the NT with no more nor less than the same necessary cross-cultural and intertextual task for understanding and perception. One gains a perspective it is impossible to gain if one attempts to understand the NT only from its own literature alone, or from its synchronic position in the Hellenistic/Roman world of the first century alone, or, indeed, from a current (and denominationally restricted?) canonical context alone.*

Study of the NT is commonly done synchronically, focusing on its own and contemporary literature, and often with a moralizing hermeneutic that puts the mores and cultural givens of the first-century Hellenistic world in a privileged position and a distorted perspective. It is another way to decanonize the NT. It takes it out of any canon whatever, ancient or current, all of which begin with Genesis and the late Bronze Age paradigm and process, which initiates the task that continues through the NT and beyond to today. The same cultural traps and trappings evident in the NT would already have been dealt with by the time one reaches the NT, if its problems are tackled in the light of the intertextual canonical process that continues through Early Judaism and into Early Christianity, even in the literature which may have been included in no widely recognized canon of which we are aware.


One can then perceive with sharp clarity the truly canonical nature, for the Christian, of the NT. The NT seems quite late in biblical-his-torical terms, and it is written in a strange, vulgar Greek. But if it is read intertextually, with a monotheizing hermeneutic, the NT finds its true place in the full canonical paradigm by which Christians may know who they really are and what they stand for. They may also learn how they should continue the canonical, traditioning process, theologizing and moralizing (preaching), in their own day and within their own cultural traps and trappings, which is by and large what the authors and communities of the various canons, and of the Pseudepigrapha, did in their day.

IN THE CRUCIBLE: T H E PSEUDEPIGRAPHA AS BiBUCAL INTERPRETATION

James H. Charlesworth

For much of my professional life I thought the clash of cultures (Kulturkampf) adequately explained the origin of the writings con-tained in the Pseudepigrapha. For example, the origin of the Jewish struggle over the proper calendar, either the lunar or solar calendar, was thought to be caused by the imposition of the Seleucid lunar calendar on the Palestinian Jews. Thus, in part, it prompted the Maccabean revolution. Now I doubt that explanation. The Qumran Aramaic fragments of so-called / Enoch show that chs. 72 to 82 pre-date the Maccabean rebellion; and they contain a polemic against the lunar calendar (see / En. 75 .1-9 and 82 .1-20). According to this section the 'sinners' are identified as 'the people that err' in 'the com-putation of the year. . .The year is completed in three hundred and sixty-four days' (7 En. 82.5-6). This calendrical struggle must be traced back to at least the third century BCE.

Thus something formative in the shaping of the Pseudepigrapha antedates the Maccabean rebellion. Surely biblical exegesis is part of that unknown phenomenon; it certainly helped to shape other Jewish writings, especially those by Philo and Josephus.' I shall attempt in

1. Philo and Josephus, despite some claims to the contrary, are both exegetically influenced by the Old Testament. H.W. Attridge has persuasively argued that Josephus intcrpretatively presents scriptural narratives. His 'theology is very much an apologetic one, which reworks Jewish u-adition in categories derived from and comprehensible to a Greco-Roman public'. See Attridge, The Interpretation of Biblical History in the Antiquitates Judaicae of Flavius Josephus (HDR, 7; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), p. 17. Likewise, as R.D. Hecht has attempted to show, Philo is 'exclusively engaged in deducing the reasonableness of the Law'. See Hecht, 'The Exegetical Contexts of Philo's Interpretation of Circumcision', in F.E. Greenspahn, E. Hilgertand B.L. Mack (eds.). Nourished with Peace: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism in Memory of Samuel Sandmel (Scholars Press Homage Series;

CHARLESWORTH In the Crucible 21

this essay to demonstrate that the crucible of the Pseudepigrapha was biblical exegesisperhaps the Kulturkampf, which dates at least from the time of Alexander the Great, was the fire of die crucible. But what is meant by this imagery.

'Crucible' defines a vessel in which a substance takes definite shape due to the melting of selected materials. The term 'crucible' is used metaphorically to denote the shaping of ideas, writings, people, and collectives of wide-ranging meaning. It is an appropriate image, therefore, to focus our thoughts and ask the following: What is the crucible in which the early Jewish Pseudepigrapha were shaped?

In revering Torah and struggling to understand its abiding effica-cious force, the early Jewish pseudepigrapha were fashioned in Early Judaism. The heat from this struggle melted the deposits of all the contiguous cultures, including especially the Persians, Parthians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Syrians. The crucible of the Pseude-pigrapha was Torah interpretation. After considering six miscon-ceptions that have hindered this understanding, five categories and five perspectives will be used to illustrate this point.

Six Misconceptions

Six misconceptions hinder the perception of the Pseudepigrapha as exegetical works.

First, biblical exegesis during die period of Early Judaism, or circa 150 BCE to 200 CE, was once Uiought to be primarily reflected in the Targumim and Midrashim;^ but then we learned that each of these is

Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), pp. 51-79 (79). 2. Even Emil Schiirer, the erudite late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-

century expert on Early Judaism, succumbed to this tendency. In his justly famous A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ he tended to U-eat early Jewish exegesis in isolation from the study of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha and, for example, contended that the Targumim in their present form were only 'about one hundred years after the time of Christ' (div. I, vol. I, p. 118). Schiirer unduly restricted his ueatment of Jewish exegesis to haggadah and halakhah, which were too narrowly defined (cf. div. 2, vol. I, section 25). It is now slowly becoming clear that to study the pseudepigrapha is to examine Jewish exegetical work on Tanach. Only to a minor extent did Schiirer observe this insight (cf. div. 2, vol. Ill), and he failed to integrate into his study of early Jewish exegesis the Jewish pseude-pigrapha he labeled as 'sacred legends' (namely Jubilees and the Martyrdom of Isaiah). These pseudepigrapha are not adequately categorized as 'modes of enriching


too late to help us understand the Jewish interpretation of die 'Old Testament' prior to die destruction of die Temple in 70. Witfi die dis-covery of the Dead Sea Scrolls we turned our attention to an attempt to understand the Pesharim and a re-examination of die possibly early nature of Aramaic translations and interpretations of the Scriptures, thanks to the recovery of Targumim in die Qumran caves. A study of Qumranic biblical text types awakened us to the reality that the adjec-tive 'Septuagintal' must no longer be used only to refer to Greek vari-ants, but may also refer to very early Hebrew traditions that are not reflected in the Biblia Hebraica.

We are now in a totally new era in the study of biblical exegesis in Early Judaism. Interpretation begins not widi die writings separate from the Old Testament; it does not even begin with the pointing of a text. It begins with die choosing of consonants in Semitic manuscripts. The subsequent expansions or deletions in the Hebrew text of the Bible itself is unexpected and impressive, and is not limited to the Qumranic fragments of Jeremiah and Samuel.^

It is now widely recognized that the Jewish pseudepigrapha that antedate c. 135 CE represent a chapter in early Jewish biblical exegesis."* The early Jewish writings collected in the Pseudepigrapha are chronologically much closer to die commencement of Jewish exegesis dian post-70 Jewish rabbinic works. As E.P. Sanders recently pointed

the sacred story' (div. 2, vol. Ill, p. 134); they are interpretations of Torah by reciting and expanding the stories, and thereby making them more meaningful and paradigmatic for daily life.

Some pseudepigrapha probably did rival and replace canonical works in some communities, for example in the groups that produced the Books of Enoch (cf. also I IQTemple and IQpHab); but the pseudepigrapha should not be portrayed as rivals of canon. They are supporters of it. Random comments by Schurer indicate that he may well have agreed with this insight; but he did not adequately integrate his voluminous and (at times) brilliant reflections. Of course, the precursor is seldom the perfector.

3. See the brilliant discussions by P.M. Cross, not only in his classic woric The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961 [rev. edn] and recently reprinted) but also in his articles in Bible Review. In 'New Directions in Dead Sea Scroll Research: Original Biblical Text Reconstnicted from Newly Found Fragments' (Bible Review I [1985], pp. 26-35), Cross demonsu-ates dramatically that '4QSam preserves lost bits of the text of Samuel' (p. 26).

4. See especially the chapters in the present book by J.A. Sanders, H.C. Kee, J.C. VanderKam, C.A. Evans and R.J. Bauckham.

CHARLESWORTH In the Crucible 2 3

5. E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-63 CF. (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), p. 197. Also see Sanders's Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990).

6. L. Rost, Einleitung in die alttestamentlichen Apokryphen und Pseudepigra-phen einschliesslich der grossen Qumran-Handschriften (Heidelberg, 1971), p. 22. English translation: Judaism outside the Hebrew Canon (trans. D.E. Green; Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), p. 30.

7. N.J. McEleney, 'Orthodoxy in Judaism of the First Christian Century', JSJ 4 (1973), pp. 19-42 (20).

out, the study of Scripture was a regular feature of so-called common Judaism: 'Jews were generally well educated in the Bible, and diis is attributable to the practice of attending the synagogue, where the scripture was read and expounded'. '

Secondly, the Pseudepigrapha are still claimed by some scholars to be the literary products of groups on the fringes of a 'Normative Judaism'. Usually this understanding is evident as presupposition, never exposed and examined, that miscasts the Pseudepigrapha. It can be seen, for example, in Leonhard Rost's advice to students diat the Pseudepigrapha, unlike the Apocrypha, are 'judisches Schrifttum, das nur innerhalb einzelner Gruppen Geltung gehabt hat, obwohl es beinahe dem gleichen Zeitraum wie die Apokryphen entsprungen ist'.* The Pseudepigrapha were not important only in some groups, but were significant in many groups, and are essential sources for any attempt to portray early Jewish life and dieology.

To be dismissed from scholarly works is the use of the terms 'normative' and 'orthodox' in descriptions of pre -70 Jewish life and thought. It is amazing to read in distinguished journals such ideas as die following one:

The present separation of Judaism and Christianity is explicable histori-cally only if one recognizes that there existed a firmly accepted Jewish orthodoxy in the first century and that this was even then a definable belief (actually expressed in part in the s'ma') which was accepted by all who called themselves Israelites.^

The Qumran group, the Samaritans, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and virtually every group in Early Judaism (c. 2 5 0 BCE to 2 0 0 CE) of which we have any knowledge, thought of themselves as 'Israelites*. Each would have described their own peculiar thoughts as the only right belief. They are so diverse that one cannot describe them as


representing a common ortiiodoxy.* The interpretation of the Shema was not according to some set pattern, and we must confess real problems in discerning what this common confession meant in Early Judaism. To define this belief has produced so many difficulties that scholars have called for a moratorium on assuming one can talk about an essence to Early Judaism. Long ago W.D. Davies wisely empha-sized 'die variety, complexity and transitional character of Jewish religion in die time of Jesus ' . '

This misunderstanding of Early Judaism results in a failure to grasp the historical, sociological and theological importance of the Pseude-pigrapha. If we wish to understand the Pseudepigrapha we must dis-miss any residue left by the once dominant contention that they were insignificant products of Jewish groups on the fringes of a Normative Judaism.

Thirdly, some well-informed scholars have assumed or argued that die Pseudepigrapha were just like all the other sacred writings in pre-70 Judaism. They righUy point to die fact that the canon was not yet closed; but they err in assuming that at that time there was only an amorphous collection of sacred books. Some scholars point to the Hebrew script used at Qumran, and claim that, since the same script was used to copy the Torah books as well as the new Qumranic com-positions, there was no perception at Qumran of the contours of die Torah. Again we can cite Rost, who argued that at Qunmui 'there was no sharp distinction between holy scriptures and those reckoned less holy' because, inter alia, 'die same esteemed form of script (was) used to copy Isaiah or Genesis to copy Sirach, Enoch, die Book of Jubilees' and other writings not in the Tanach."

8. As Morton Smith stated long ago, i f there was any such thing, then, as an "orthodox Judaism", it must have been that which is now almost unknown to us, the religion of the average "people of the land". But the different parts of the country were so different, such gulfs of feeling and practice separated Idumea, Judea, Caesarea, and Galilee, that even on this level there was probably no more agreement between them than between any one of them and a similar area in the Diaspora' (M. Smith, 'Palestinian Judaism in the First Century', in M. Davis [ed.], Israel: Its Role in Civilization [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1956J, p. 8 1 .

9. W.D. Davies. 'Contemporary Jewish Religion', in M. Black and H.H. Rowley (eds.), Peake's Commentary on the Bible (London: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1961), pp. 705-11 (705).

10. Rost, Judaism outside the Hebrew Canon, p. 22.


More than one Hebrew script was used at Qunnran, and each of these were used because they were perceived to be sacred." The ancient and hallowed language of Israel was Hebrew.

The Torah's scripts were the most sacred form of writing. It was only proper, therefore, in light of die powerful influence of the Torah at Qumran to continue the use of this script. The publication of the Leviticus Scroll amply illustrates the presence of paleo-Hebrew at Qumran.'^ The claim that the Holy Spirit continued to be alive in the Qumran community, and that the secrets of a prophet's words were disclosed only to die Moreh Has-sedek (see especially IQpHab 7) illus-trates the high regard for the Torah felt at Qumran. According to the Rule of the Community die Torah was to be read throughout the day and night. The so-called 'new' laws and ordinances were considered ancient, and derivative from the quintessential and primary impor-tance of the Torah. The new was an exegesis of die old; the latter ele-vated die former. I am convinced die same phenomenon characterizes die Pseudepigrapha.

Fourthly, from the foregoing general misunderstanding some scholars tend to suggest that the Pseudepigrapha were produced to replace the Tanach. The impression is sometimes given that the so-called extracanonical works were used in some early Jewish groups as anti-canonical works. This confused idea seems to be present in Solomon Zeitlin's contention that a large portion of the Pseude-pigrapha, namely the apocalypses, were composed 'in opposition to riormative Judaism. Normative Judaism regarded the Apocalyptists as destructive. '"

I shall try to demonstrate that the Pseudepigrapha are not anti-canonical works. Many documents in die Tanach represent vast differ-ences in the interpretation of data and traditions. This healthy debate continues among die Pseudepigrapha. There are no neat literary cate-gories, like pre-rabbinics and anti-rabbinics. 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, among many other writings, reflect the origins of Rabbinic Judaism, which is die type of Judaism Zeitlin labeled 'normative'. Likewise, the

11. The Greek copies of the Septuagint were most likely brought to Qumran. 12. See D.N. Freedman and K.A. Mathews, The Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus

Scroll (UQpaleoLev) (with contributions by R.S. Hanson; American Schools of Oriental Research; distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN, 1985).

13. S. Zeitlin, 'Jewish Apocryphal Literature', Studies in the Early History of Judaism (New York: Ktav, 1974), II, p. 241.


appearance of apocalyptic elements, ideas, symbols and passages in rabbinic literature indicate the frequently close intertwining of pseudepigraphic and earliest rabbinic diought in pre-70 CE Judaism.

Fifthly, some scholars have claimed that the eyes of the audiors of the Pseudepigrapha were not on God's will, nor on sacred and ancient Jewish traditions, nor on Torah scrolls. For such scholars the Pseudepigrapha were contaminated by non-Jewish ideas. Hugo Fuchs, for example, in Judisches Lexikon, described the Pseudepigrapha as follows: 'Da ihr Inhalt aber als halbheidnisch empfunden wurde, verwarf, sie sowohl das offizielle J.-tum wie auch das offizielle Christentum'. ' ' ' This interpretation fails both by perpetuating the old myth that there were no foreign influences in so-called official Judaism, and by caricaturing the Pseudepigrapha as unworthy, because they are un-Jewish.

Sixdily, a wide tendency of scholars is to emphasize too much the visionary aspect of the Pseudepigrapha. These scholars stress that the pseudepigraphical books are preoccupied with revelatory tilings. The vision of the authors is only of the future age or the heavens above. Yehoshua M. Grintz, for example, in the famous Encyclopaedia Judaica wrote that the Pseudepigrapha are 'visionary books attributed to the ancients, characterized by a stringent asceticism and dealing with the mysteries of creation and working out of good and evil from a gnostic standpoint ' ." This statement is fraught with so much mis-information as to cause many to wonder how it was ever passed by the editors. Suffice it only to state that the Pseudepigrapha are not to be branded and discarded as visionary works; as we shall see, they are part of the rich exegetical tradition of Early Judaism.

Why then have the pseudepigraphical writings been systematically neglected in the study of early Jewish exegesis? One reason may be found in die words of Michael E. Stone: 'None of die apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books written in Hebrew or Aramaic was composed as biblical exegesis citing and expounding verses*.'* This statement is potentially misleading, and was written in the context of contrasting

14. H. Fuchs, 'Pseud(o)epigraphen'. in Judisches Lexikon (Berlin: Judischer Verlag, 1927; repr. 1982), IV/I, col. 1175.

15. Y.M. Grintz in EncJud (1971). III. col. 182. 16. M.E. Stone, Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (Compendia

Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, section two, volume II; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. xxi.


17. D.S. Russell, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Patriarchs and Prophets in Early Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p. xi.

the Pseudepigrapha and Rabbinics. Isolated and examined as a description of the relation of the Pseudepigrapha to the Tanach it is misleading. What Stone seems to be trying to clarify is that the Pseudepigrapha have a 'different attitude to scriptural authority' than die rabbinic writings. Yet, it is unfortunate that so many scholars have focused too narrowly on die use of the Tanach in Early Judaism, and have assumed incorrectly that since the Pseudepigrapha have not expounded verses from the Tanach they are not to be seen in terms of primary or secondary exegetical compositions. Moreover, one must not even give the impression that the authors of the Pseudepigrapha never quoted a verse of Scripture. A look at the italics in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha discloses that diese authors did quote from the books collected into the Tanach. There is no question that die author of the Testament of Job had memorized the canonical Job. For example, in ch. 2 4 he quotes verses from Job 2.8b-9d; in ch. 2 8 he cites Job 2 . 1 1 - 1 3 .

D.S. Russell righUy demonstrates die biblical and exegetical nature of the Pseudepigrapha. He offers the opinion that the purpose of his book, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Patriarchs and Prophets in Early Judaism,

is to demonstrate from the books generally called 'the pseudepigrapha' the considerable developments that took place in early Judaism relating to the character and function of the patriarchs and prophets in whose names many of them were written.

Russell succeeds in demonstrating the exegetical link between the Tanach and the Pseudepigrapha. The Pseudepigrapha shine light on the centrality of the Tanach in Early Judaism. Many of the writings were written under the name of one of the biblical 'saints' thus empha-sizing the paradigmatic importance of the Bible.

Criteria

How should one begin to comprehend die Pseudepigrapha as a type of early Jewish biblical exegesis? How should die data be organized? George W.E. Nickelsburg in 'The Bible Rewritten and Expanded' opts for the criteria of dividing die documents into those which are


18. G.W.E. Nickelsburg in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period; see esp. p. 89.

very loosely connected to the biblical traditions and diose which are 'closely related to the biblical texts'. '* Among the documents only loosely connected to the Bible are the following:

Daniel 1-6 The Prayer of Nabonidus Susanna Bel and the Dragon Tobit Judith Martyrdom of Isaiah The Lives of the Prophets The Testament of Abraham Joseph andAseneth Paraleipomena of Jeremiah Epistle ofAristeas and 3 Maccabees.

Among the documents closely linked widi die Bible are diese:

/ Enoch and the Book of the Giants Jubilees The Genesis Apocryphon The Book of Biblical Antiquities The Apocalypse of Moses The Life of Adam and Eve Philo the Epic Poet Theodotus the Epic Poet Ezekiel the Tragedian The Story of Darius' Bodyguards Additions to the Book of Esther David's Compositions Baruch The Episde of Jeremiah, and The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men.

I agree with Nickelsburg that the 'tendency to follow die ancient texts more closely may be seen as a reflecdon of their developing canonical status' (p. 89).

Rather than be seen as writings oblivious or antagonistic to die Tanach, die Pseudepigrapha witness to the centrality of Tanach among early Jews and its movement to a canonical status. The audior of 4 Ezra


celebrates the 2 4 revelatory books that are published, and the 7 0 additional books that are kept secret. As Rost rightly states, 'there can be no question that he is referring to the twenty-four books of the Tanach, consisting of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim' ." This point is important; and it is equally necessary to emphasize diat according to the author of 4 Ezra the 7 0 are related to and continuous with the 2 4 . The Pseudepigrapha are part of die latitudinous ways Jews interpreted die Bible.

The Pseudepigrapha are shaped widiin the crucible of biblical exe-gesis. The early Jewish Pseudepigrapha, that is those which are Jewish and antedate the codification of the Mishnah in 2 0 0 CE, may be provi-sionally studied under five categories, which may be briefly listed:^"

1. Inspiration. The Old Testament serves primarily to inspire the author, who then evidences considerable imagination, per-haps sometimes under influences from nonbiblical writings (ranging from the Books of Enoch to the Arda Viraf).^^

2. Framework. The Old Testament provides the framework for the author 's own work. The original setting of the Old Testament work is employed for appreciably other purposes.

3. Launching. A passage or story in die Old Testament is used to launch another, considerably different reflection. The original setting is replaced.

4 . Inconsequential. The author borrows from the Old Testament only the barest facts, names especially, and composes a new story.

5. Expansions. Most of these documents, in various ways and degrees, start with a passage or story in die Old Testament, and rewrite it, often under the imaginative influence of oral traditions linked somehow to the biblical narrative.

Each of these five categories emerge from and serve to illustrate the exegetical nature of the Pseudepigrapha.

19. Rost, Judaism outside the Hebrew Canon, p. 23. 20. These categories as first proposed by me, which are now expanded, are

included in C.A. Evans, Non-Canonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1992). p. 46.

21. See J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1976), and M. Haug, 'The Book of Arda Viraf, in CF. Home (ed.). Ancient Persia (Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, 7; New York: Parke, Austin & Lipscomb, 1917), pp. 185-207.


Inspiration

Many Pseudepigrapha were written by Jews who were primarily inspired by the Tanach, but were also free to think creatively under die influence, at times, of the insights and advances in the contiguous world cultures. The best example of this exegetical method is found in the category labeled 'Prayers, Psalms and Odes' . The 'More Psalms of David' are structured according to the poetry of the Davidic Psalter, and are frequently indistinguishable from diem. The Psalms are the inspiration for these additions to it. Psalm 151A also evidences the characteristic of the second category; it uses 1 Samuel 16 and 17 as die framework for four verses. Note the following translation of the Hebrew (11 QPs 151):

I was the smallest among my brothers, and the youngest among the sons of my father; and he made me shepherd of his flocks, and the ruler over his kids. (151 A. 1)

He sent his prophet to anoint me, Samuel to make me great;

(151A.5)

But he [God] sent and took me from behind the flock, and he anointed me with holy oil, and he made me leader for his people, and ruler over the sons of his covenant. (151 A.7)

These hues are based upon 1 Sam. 16.1-11, 17.14 and 2 Sam. 7.8, and perhaps also on Pss. 78.70-71 and 89.20. It is understandable why die Hebrew of this psalm contains the title 'A Hallelujah of David the Son of Jesse'.^^

The next psalm, 151B (11 QPs 151), is also based on die Davidic Psalter, and on another episode in the life of David, one which is recorded in 1 Sam. 17.8-25. A translation from the Hebrew is as follows:

Then I s[a]w a Philistine who was uttering taunts from the ra[nks of the enemy.. . ] .

22. The translations are by Charlesworth and are printed in OTP, 11, ad he.


Framework

Framework is a type of exegesis in which the Tanach provides the setting for a work that has a different purpose. A story in the Tanach provides the basis, or framework, for a considerably different narra-tive. The best examples of the type of exegesis called 'Framework' are found in the Fourth Book of Ezra, 2 Baruch, and in die Testaments

The Syriac recension is not so fragmentarily preserved:

I went out to attack the Philistine, and he cursed me by his idols. But after 1 unsheathed his sword, I cut off his head; and I removed the shame from the sons of Israel.

Other verses in the additional psalms, or Psalms 151 through 155, are also inspired by the Davidic Psalter and by episodes in the life of David.

The Prayer of Manasseh, one of the most beautiful penitential psalms ever written, was composed in the century before the destiiic-tion of the Temple by a devout Jew who wished to supply the prayer of Manasseh described in 2 Chronicles 33. Note this comparison:

2 Chronicles 33 Prayer of Manasseh I provoked

[Manasseh]. . . provoking his (Yahweh's] anger your fury (or anger) [Mana.sseh]. . . placed I set up

. . . the i d o l . . . in idols the Temple

Manasseh with hooks I am ensnared . . . in I am bent by a multitude

c h a i n s . . . of iron chains humbling himself I am bending deeply the knees of my I before heart before you the God of his ancestors God of our fathers.

Here we confront a prayer composed pseudonymously to provide the prayer mentioned in 2 Chron. 33.11-13. The Prayer of Manasseh, dierefore, is an exegesis of an Old Testament passage using the model of bodi inspiration, because it is sOTictured according to die style of die Psalter and otiier Hebraic poems, and framework, because it intends to use the story in 2 Chronicles to compose a new psalm or prayer.


collected in die Pseudepigrapha. In each of diese documents an Old Testament passage provides the basis, or framework, for an entirely different story. The apocalypse in 4 Ezra begins as follows:

In the thirtieth year after the desuiiction of our city, I, Salathiel, who am also called Ezra, was in Babylon. I was U'oubled as I lay on my bed, and my thoughts welled up in my heart, because I saw the desolation of Zion and the wealth of those who lived in Babylon {4 Ezra 3.1-2).^

The author has used the framework of the story of the destruction of Jerusalem, Zion, by the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE to tell the story of the devastation wrought by the Romans in the first cen-tury CE. The audior of this passage knew well die traditions related to and based exegetically in 2 Kings 25, according to which Nebuchad-nezzar, king of Babylon, attacked and conquered Jerusalem.

The same source, combined widi Jeremiah traditions, produced the apocalypse called 2 Baruch. Note in particular ch. 6.1-2.

Now it happened on the following day that, behold, an army of the Chaldeans [= Babylonians] surrounded the city. And in the evening I, Baruch [= Jeremiah's scribe], left the people, went outside, and set myself by an oak. And I was grieving over Zion and sighed because of the captivity which had come upon the people.^*

Scholars often explain the use of 'Babylon* for 'Rome' because of the need of die Jews to hide their anti-Roman polemic from them. This attractive suggestion does not exhaust die possibilities or reasons for such pseudepigraphical writing. In my opinion, an equally important one is the powerful paradigmatic force of the biblical text and the ti'aditions related to it. By using an exegesis of 2 Kings and Jeremiah as the framework for articulating the search for meaning in a new day, it _was possible to stress diat as once growdi sprang up from the ruins of 587 so it will be possibleindeed certain in light of the vision revealed to Baruchfor the new to begin again, thanks to the fact that God was indeed in control of the destruction of his Temple and is about to bring in die promised eschaton.

The source for the testamentary literature is the account of Jacob's last word, or testament, to his sons; and in particular the record of diat scene described in Genesis 49.

23. Trans, by B.M. Metzger in OTP, I. p. 528. 24. Trans, by A.F.J. Klijn in OTP, I, p. 622.


Then Jacob called his sons, and said, 'Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come. Assemble and hear, O sons of Jacob,

and hearken to Israel your father' (Gen. 49.1-2, RSV).

A Jewish docuitient, probably composed around 100 BCE and redacted by a Christian sometime in the second century CE,^' reflects this memorable story in Genesis 49. A Jew composed testaments for each of the twelve sons of Jacob by using the account of how Jacob called his twelve sons around his death bed and exhorted and blessed them. Genesis 49 was the framework for composing testaments for each of Jacob's twelve sons. What Jacob had done on his death bed for his sons, each of diem did for their sons, but the content shifted markedly in the direction of thought so prevalent in Early Judaism; large

25. There is considerable controversy over the Jewish or Christian origin of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. It is clear that at least two testaments, one attributed to Levi and the other to Naphtali, are Jewish and pre-Christian, since frag-ments of each were found in medieval manuscripts in the Cairo Geniza and also in Cave IV at Qumran. It is also clear that these testaments are not identical to the Greek testaments in the critical text of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The crucial question is now whether a document of twelve testaments was composed by a Jew or a Christian. Acknowledging that the distinctions between 'Jewish' and 'Christian' are now blurred, and that the Jewish fragments mentioned above are not identical with the critical text of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, M. de Jonge and I have tended to differ on assessing the origin of the document. He continues (since 1953) to favor the possibility that a Christian conceived the idea of twelve testaments in the second century. He is certainly correct to stress that with the Greek document we are faced not with interpolations but with redactions, with extensive deletions as well as additions, of the Jewish sources; I, however, am more convinced that the Jewish strata is far more extensive than he thinks and that it is found behind each of the twelve testaments. My conviction that a Jew composed a document that contained twelve testaments may now be confirmed, in part at least, by the discovery of a Testament of Judah among the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This discovery was presented to specialists in Cambridge and Uppsala and will be published in the near future.

The most recent publications on this debate are the following: M. de Jonge, 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs', in H.F.D. Sparks (ed.). The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 505-12; H.C. Kee, 'Testaments of the Twelve Pauiarchs', in OTP, I, pp. 775-80; J.H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament: Prolegomena for the Study of Christian Origins (SNTS, 54; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); M. de Jonge, Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (NovTSup, 63; Leiden: Brill, 1991).


apocalyptic sections filled out the brief statement by Jacob 'diat I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come' (Gen. 49.1).

Both the old framework and the new content is pellucidly repre-sented in the Testament of Levi; note die following excerpts:

A copy of the words of Levi: the things that he decreed to his sons con-cerning all they were to do, and the things that would happen to them until the day of judgment. He was in good health when he summoned them to him, but it had been revealed to him that he was about to die. When they all were gathered together he said to them: (1.1-2)... 'At this moment the angel opened for me the gates of heaven and I saw the Holy Most High sitting on the throne. And he said to me, "Levi, to you I have given the blessing of the priesthood until I shall come and dwell in the midst of Israel- (5.1-2).^*

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs thus evolves out of the Old Testament narrative, especially Genesis 47 through 50, and in that sense belongs widiin die broad study of exegesis widiin Early Judaism.

The Testament of Job, which was written in the century before the destrucdon of Jerusalem, also evolves out of an exegesis of Jacob's testament. As R.P. Spitder perceives, die Old Testament provided for the composition of the Testament of Job the following framework features:

the blessing from father to sons (Gen. 47.29-50.14): an ill father (Gen. 48.1), who is near death (Gen. 47.29), and on his death bed (Gen. 47.31). calls his sons (Gen. 49.1), disposes of his possessions (Gen. 48.22), and issues a forecast of future events (Gen. 49.1). The father dies (Gen. 49.33), and a lamentation completes the framework

of the .story (Gen. 50.2-14)."

This framework provides the basis for the genre, loosely defined, diat unites the Jewish testaments, namely the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Testament of Job, and to a lesser extent die Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Moses (cf. also I En. 91.1-19, Tob. 14.3-11, Acts 20.17-38, I Tim. 4.1-16 and Jn 17.1-26). Here is die opening to die Testament of Job (which is extant in Greek):

26. Trans. H.C. Kee in OTP, I, pp. 788-89.26. 27. See Spiuler's discussion in OTP. I, pp. 831-32.

CHARLESWORTH in the Crucible 35

Now on the day when, having fallen ill, he [Job] began to settle his affairs, he called his seven sons and his three daughters [cf. Job 1.2]. . . And when he had called his children he said, 'Gather round, my children. Gather round me so that I may show you the things which the Lord did with me and all the things which have happened to me' (1.2-4).^

As can be surmised from the last clause, 'that I may show you the things which the Lord did with me and all the things which have happened to me' , this testament is basically a recital of Job's life. It, therefore, contrasts with the Testament of Levi, and constantly returns, after expansive narratives, to the biblical framework and book of Job. In essence, the Testament of Job is an imaginative exegesis and legendary expansion of the biblical book. For example. Job's wife has a speech of only two lines in the Hebrew text, which is expanded in the Septuagint to a full paragraph; in the Testament of Job she is namedSitisand shares a rather lengthy dialogue with Job. As I stated long ago, the Testament of Job is a type of midrash in the form of a testament on the canonical book.^' It is an example of the early phases of what will later be called midrashim.

The Testament of Abraham (extant only in Greek) continues in the direction taken by the author of the Testament of Levi and away from that followed by the author of the Testament of Job. It does not expand on the life of Abraham; it describes how Abraham refuses to die. Michael is sent by God to help Abraham prepare for death and to write a testament; eventually Michael is to collect his soul. Abraham, however, refuses to die and forces Michael to take him on a celestial journey (somewhat reminiscent of the journeys of Enoch). In contrast to the Testament of Job, as E.P. Sanders states, virtually nothing from die Old Testament is found in the Testament of Abraham, other than the obvious and relatively insignificant references which can be traced back to Genesis.'" Surprisingly, in light of the vast iconographical and documentary evidence, there is no clear reference to Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac. With the authors of many apocalypses and apocalyptic writings the author of the Testament of Abraham is inter-ested in the cosmic dimensions of Jewish theology.^'

28. Trans. R.P. Spittler in OTP, I, p. 839. 29 . Charlesworth, 'Testament of Job', in The Pseudepigrapha and Modem

Research with a Supplement (SBLSCS, 7; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), p. 135. 30. Sanders, 'Testament of Abraham', in OTP, I, p. 879. 3 1 . See Charlesworth, 'The Cosmic Theology of Early Judaism', in The OU


The Testament of Moses (extant in only one Latin palimpsest) received its present form in the first half of the first century CE. It is similar to the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Levi, in that it does refer to the future acts of God, but it is more similar to die Testament of Job in that it also concentrates not upon die predic-uons of the future but on a recitation of the past history of God's people. In a farewell discourse to Joshua, Moses describes the history of Israel and the Jews from the time of the conquest of Palestine dirough the rebuilding of the Temple after the sixth-century exile to die subsequent apostasy (perhaps due to the hellenizing priests or the 'kings' of the late Hasmoneans). The work, as extant in its fragmen-tary form, continues with an eschatological hymn that celebrates the destiuction of the evil one by Israel's guardian angel, and the final exaltation of Israel.

The close relationship between the Testament of Moses and Deuteronomy, especially chs. 31 dirough 34, leads J. Priest to suggest diat it is

a vinual rewriting of them. This is true not only with respect to general ouUine but also regarding specific allusions and theological perspective. Deuteronomy 31-34 is clearly the author's model, though he has recast his own work in light of the history of the people from the conquest to his own day and through the prism of his own apocalyptic outlook.'^ ^

What Priest calls 'model' I have been referring to as 'framework'; yet die Testament of Moses shares much with the apocalyptic dimensions of the Testament of Levi and another model of exegesis, namely 'Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends'. Each of diese are different methods used by the early Jews to comprehend and make contemporary the biblical message.

Launching

Launching is a type of Jewish exegesis by which a passage or story in die Tanach is used to produce, or launch, another different story. The best examples of using a passage in the Old Testament for launching forth into a new setting are die Books of Enoch. The books gadiered together now into what is called / Enoch and 2 Enoch are based upon two verses in Genesis 5:

Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament, pp. 65-67. 32. J. Priest, 'TesUment of Moses', in OTP, I, p. 923.


Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him (Gen. 5.23-24, RSV. See also Sir. 44.16).

From these brief comments the early Jews developed exegetically the ideas that Enoch must be somehow associated with die solar calendar of 365 days, that he was perfecdy righteous, and that he did not die, but is with God. ' ' Since Enoch then tends to transcend time and placehis place is either unknown or hidden (cf. 1 En. 12.1-2)he is the perfect candidate for ascending through the heavens and viewing the world below, its history, and the future ages.

According to I Enoch (extant in its full form only in Ethiopic, although early Aramaic Qumran fragments have been found) he receives from the angels a vision and says, 'I heard from them every-thing and I understood. I look not for this generation but for the dis-tant one that is coming (1.2)'. ' ' ' Enoch falls asleep and has a dream and visions, according to I En. 13.8. According to 2 Enoch (extant only in Slavonic) he is awakened from his sleep and guided by 'two huge men' (2 En. 1.4). Subsequently in both works Enoch journeys dirough the heavens.

Another passage in the Old Testament has significandy influenced the diought of the authors of / Enoch and 2 Enoch. It is the story of the fall of the watchers found in Gen. 6.1-4. In 1 Enoch 1-36 this story is considerably reworked and expanded. In 2 Enoch 18 [J] the fallen angels are seen being punished in the fifth heaven and others are in die second heaven, 'imprisoned in great darkness ' ."

Another passage in Genesiswhich is exceedingly important for understanding early Jewish exegesis, because of a Qumran scroll, Philo, Josephus, and Hebrewshas considerably shaped die ending of 2 Enoch, which unfortunately was excised by R.H. Charles. 2 Enoch 71-72 describes die miraculous birdi of Melchizedek; these chapters, like 11Q Melchizedek, are similar to the early midrashim and to the 'Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Other Legends'. They are an exegesis with fantastic expansions of Gen. 14.17-24, according to

33. A careful study of the origin of apocalyptic thought and the role of Enoch in its development is J.C. VanderKam's Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS, 16; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1984).

34. E. Isaac, '1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse oO Enoch', in OTP, 1, p. 13. 35. See F.I. Andersen, '2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch', in OTP, I, pp. 130-

32.


Inconsequential

Some pseudepigrapha have only an inconsequential relation to the Old Testament. They have inherited from the Tanach only the personae, or other details, in order to create a new story. The link with the Tanach is clear and seminal; but it is inconsequential in contrast with die other three types of exegesis found in the Pseudepigrapha.

The Sibylline Oracles are not essentially shaped or created by biblical exegesis, even diough the third book is influenced by Psalms 2 and 48, Isaiah 11, and the traditions about the pilgrimage of the gentiles to Jerusalem in the eschaton (cf. Isa. 2.1-4; Mic. 4.1-4; 2fech. 14.16-21). Likewise, books four, five and eleven are only marginally influenced by the Old Testament. To understand the Third Sibylline Oracle it is important to understand die exegetical base for some verses, but it is more important to comprehend developments in non-Jewish cultures, especially in Greece, Italy and Egypt.

Similarly the Treatise of Shem and Hoe Apocalypse of Adam received from the Old Testament little more dian the name pseudepigraphically linked with the document. In fact the astrological interest of the former and the present gnostic nature of the latter expose the vast differences between these two pseudepigrapha and die Old Testament, even if the Old Testament is a library of widely differing documents.

Also related to the Tanach in only a relatively inconsequential way are the documents that belong under the category of 'Wisdom and Philosophical Literature'. The Wisdom books in die Tanach are Jewish, but they are profoundly shaped by humanity's common treasury of universal wisdom and morality. Developing later out of diis Wisdom traditionbut certainly not an exegesis of itare 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides and Syriac Menander.

Expansions

The most important category of the Pseudepigrapha for our present purposes is the expansion of the biblical narrative. Here the biblical story has been told and retold until it is discussed and questions arise.

which a mysterious individual, Melchizedek, King of Salem, priest of God Most High, offers bread and wine to Abraham and blesses him. Abraham subsequently gives him a tenth of his spoils from battle.


What was life like in Paradise before Eve and Adam disobeyed God? What were their reactions to the first experience of death and sick-ness? What was the name of Jepthah's daughter, and what was her reaction to her father's vow? What was Asenedi, Joseph's wife, like, and how was it possible for him to marry an Egyptian who wor-shipped idols? Who were Jannes and Jambres, and Eldad and Modad? The answers given to these questions and the lore that developed from retelling the biblical stories produced the expansions of them found in the Life of Adam and Eve, Pseudo-Philo, Joseph and Aseneth, Jannes and Jambres and Eldad and Modad.

Exegesis by expansion is stunning evidence that the Pseudepigrapha were often produced within the crucible of biblical interpretation. The biblical stories were memorized; they were taken seriously, as bruta facta, as revealed truths; but to speak to the curiosities and needs of a later time die stories needed to be retold and completed widi details. All die evidence seems to suggest diat what we call additional facts and details were considered by the early Jews who revered these Pseude-pigrapha to be part of the true story. Now they were revealed to serve the curiosities and needs of later generations.

The following are the Pseudepigrapha that are 'Expansions of die Old Testament' in one column and the portion of the Tanach that is expanded in die second column:

Jubilees Genesis 1.1-Exodus 12.50 Martyrdom of Isaiah 1, 2 Kings Joseph and Aseneth Genesis 37-50 Life of Adam and Eve Genesis 1 -6 Pseudo-Philo Genesis to 2 Samuel Lives of the Prophets Kings, Clironicles, Prophets Ladder of Jacob Genesis 28 4 Baruch Jeremiah, 2 Kings

2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah Jannes and Jambres Exodus 7-8 History of the Rechabites Jeremiah 35 Eldad and Modad Numbers 11.26-29

Like die Dead Sea Scrolls and die documents collected into die New Testament, the Pseudepigrapha tend to treat the Tanach in ways that are shockingly cavalier to modern biblical critics. It seems obvious that die text was considered divine, but the spirit for interpretation allowed the Jewish exegete to alter, ignore, expand, and even rewrite the sacred Scripture. Pneumatic exegesis was a phenomenon which at once


36. E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (trans. H. Hoskins; New York: Crossroad, 1974), p. 257.

was shaped by and in turn shaped the received text and accompanying tradition. The study of the use of the Tanach in the Pseudepigrapha accentuates a major insight brilliantly expressed by Edward Schillebeeckx: scholars too often forget that in Early Judaism the Tanach 'was not functioning per se or in isolation but in the context of late Jewish piety as diat had since been developing. One cannot with impunity skip over die time that had elapsed between the great prophets and Jesus.' '*

Essential Perspectives

To grasp the ways the Pseudepigrapha were fashioned by biblical interpretation five perspectives are essential. First, we must leave behind the once dominant conceptions of pre-70 Judaism. It was not categorized by a clear separation of Palestinian Judaism from Diasporic Judaism, by a monolidiic closed and 'normative Judaism', by the continuing purity of an indigenous well-defined Judaism, or by some identifiable and wide spread orthodoxy. Once these modern mydis are removed, it is possible to see diat the Pseudepigrapha are the products of many divergent groups within Early Judaism. Some, like I Enoch, Jubilees smA the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, move us close to the various types of Essenes. The Psalms of Solomon, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch show us some movements in die direction of Pharisaism and early rabbinic thought. 4 Baruch and Pseudo-Eupolemus show us affinities with the Samaritans. The Testament of Moses and Psalms of Solomon 17 and 18 reveal what might be polemics against the earliest phases of the Zealots. But most importandy, the Pseudepigrapha warn us not to think about Judaism as divided into four sects. There were more than a dozen groups and many more subgroups.

Secondly, the tendency of the audiors of the Pseudepigrapha was not to replace but to heighten Torah. This well known phenomenon, dianks to die recovery of die Temple Scroll, is most clearly evident in Jubilees, sometimes called the 'Littie Genesis'. The audior of 2 Baruch especially elevated the Torah. Recall Klijn's translation of 2 Baruch 77.15-16, which reads as follows:

CHARLESWORTH in the Crucible 4 1

Shepherds and lamps and fountains came from the Law, and when we go away, the Law will abide. If you, therefore, look upon the Law and are intent upon wisdom, then the lamp will not be wanting and the shepherd will not give way and the fountain will not dry up (OTP, 1, p. 647).

Along with the same trend came the elevation of biblical heroes. Some, like Jacob, were accorded angelic and divine status, as Mardn Hengel in Germany,'^ James D.G. Dunn,'* Christopher Rowland" and D.S. Russell*" in England, and G. Nickelsburg,"' odiers, and I myself^ in the USA have attempted to illustrate. The interpretation of die status of the biblical saints, which is exegesis of Scripture, was the crucible in which the Pseudepigrapha were fashioned. These so-called extra-canonical writings shine light on the importance of Tanach, or the canonical Scriptures.

Thirdly, early Jewish lore deposited in the Pseudepigrapha reveal how much Palestinian Jews cherished die biblical tales. One diat must have been popular, judging from the Apocalypse of Abraham, was the altercation between Terah, the idol maker, and his son, Abraham, to whom the Jews allocated die belief in one and only one God. Many works in the Pseudepigraphaespecially the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Testament of Job, the Lives of the Prophets and Pseudo-Philo attest to folk tales developing around the Tanach. They show how Torah permeated the far reaching corners of Early Judaism and helped produce die Pseudepigrapha.

Fourthly, we have learned to see how sociologically conditioned are the documents in the Pseudepigrapha, reflecting consecutively the crises of the Maccabean era, and the growing stranglehold on Palestine by the Romans, beginning with Pompey's entrance into the Temple in 63 BCE and culminating with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Now, we need to perceive the exegetical dimensions that have also

37. M. Hengel in The Son of God (trans. J. Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), pp. 47-48.

38. J.D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster Piss, 1970), p. 17.

39. C. Rowland, Christian Origins: From Messianic Movement to Christian Religion (London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Ausburg, 1985), pp. 17-38.

40. D.S. Rus,sell, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, pp. 1-8. 41. G.W.E. Nickelsburg and J.J.Collins (eds.). Ideal Figures in Ancient

Judaism (Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 12; Chico, CA: Scholars Press. 1980). 42. J.H. Charlesworth, 'The Portrayal of the Righteous as an Angel', in Ideal

Figures, pp. 135-51.


43. L.H. Feldman, 'Judaism, History of , in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia (1974), X, p. 314.

produced the Pseudepigrapha. Louis H. Feldman rightly stressed that the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Psalms of Solomon and die Prayer of Manasseh, as well as many of the Qumran Scrolls and some of the Apocrypha, 'are generally conscious imitadons of biblical books . . . "" Imitating is certainly a form of interpreting. In some cases it is clear exegesis.

The reviews of history in many of the apocalypses in die Pseude-pigrapha are exegetical reflections on die histories in the Tanach. To retell die drama of salvation from protological time to the eschatolo-gical age is to interpret the Tanach. This exegetical component of the apocalypses has not been perceived in die examination of the reviews of history.

Fifth, the works in the Pseudepigrapha are not fully or adequately represented by the contention diat they are visionary writings. Studies of the ethical sections of 2 Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs reveal the strong paradigmatic links widi God's command-ments recorded in the Torah, and the ethical teachings of the great prophets. To study the descriptions of die heavenly tablets. Paradise, the coming of God's messenger or Messiah, and God's holy dwelling in the Temple is to be drawn to the large swirling pool of biblical interpretation that permeated all groups in Early Judaism.

Conclusion

A change has occurred in the study of pre-70 Palestinian Judaism. In the last twenty years the Pseudepigrapha have come into their own. Now diese writings are accorded some respect, and it is generally and internationally recognized that the history of pre-70 Judaism must depend upon diem in describing the fluid and vibrant culture known as Early Judaism.

If we desire to understand the origins and sociological functions of the Pseudepigrapha, we must now recognize that diey were fashioned in the crucible of biblical interpretation. They point to the importance of Torah in the daily life of the religious Jew, especially in Palestine before the destruction of die nation in 70. As die late Samuel Sandmel stated in a very popular article on die Pseudepigrapha,


44. S. Sandmel, 'The Books That Were Left Out', Keeping Posted (February, 1973), pp. 19-23 (23).

Without a Genesis, there could never have been a 'Jubilees'. Indeed, had there not already been a Bible, there could have been no Pseudepigrapha for, in one way or another, these books all derive from the Bible."'*

Biblical exegesis is the crucible of the Pseudepigrapha. In it ancient humanity's wisdom, scientific observations, and speculations were melted down and shaped to reappear as Jewish tradition.

APPROPRIATING THE HISTORY OF G O D ' S PEOPLE: A SURVEY OF INTERPRETATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL

IN THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, APOCRYPHA A N D THE NEW TESTAMENT

Howard Clark Kee

Claims made by post-exilic Jews and by early Christians that they were the true heirs of the covenant promises to Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets required them to develop a framework for interpreting and appropriating that central strand in the biblical tradition. Inevitably, the dominant conceptual framework of the dme and culture of each specific segment of the religious communities had a deter-minative effect on how this tradition was perceived and appropriated.'

Comparative analysis of these interpretative phenomena requires more than merely noting which historical figures or events were highlighted by the different groups in this process of appropriadon of die tradition. By looking at die larger context and the specifics of the world-view of each document under analysis, the interpreter must ask what are die dominant features implicit and explicit widiin die wridng concerning such basic features as the view of reality, the nature of knowledge, the mode of interpretation of Scripture, and the idendty of the social group making the claims to be heirs of this tradition. In abstract terms, the modern interpreter must consider ontological, epistemological, hermeneudcal, cultural and sociological factors in analyzing the relevant texts.

That treatment of the early history of die covenant people was an important ingredient in very different documents within the biblical tradition is not surprising, since basic to the claim of participation in die people of God was the affirmation diat God called and guided the

1. The methodological principles on which this essay is based are set out in my book. Knowing the Truth: A Sociological Approach to New Testament Interpretation (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 1989).

K E E Appropriating the History of God's People 45

patriarchs from the period of dieir earlier nomadic existence and their experience of slavery in Egypt undl their settlement in the land of Canaan. It was in that land that the formerly mobile, portable pre-sence of God in die covenant box was given a fixed location, although the tradition is in disagreement as to whedier die holy place should be Bethel, Shechem or Jerusalem. Central in all diese corporate, histori-cal experiences are the leaders called and empowered by God, since through them die purpose of God is disclosed and effected in behalf of God's people. As scholars have long noted, in ancient Israel the equivalent of die creeds is the recital of what God has done to call and constitute his covenant people, as in Deut. 26.1-11. In Deuteronomy, following that confession, is an ostensibly predictive description of die establishment of the central sanctuary at Shechem (Deut. 27) and of the monarchy, its failure and the exile (Deut. 28), followed by the restoration of the people in the land (Deut. 30). Obviously, there is almost universal scholarly agreement that the closing chapters of Deuteronomy were written centuries after Israel had in fact settled in die land. Clearly essential to die maintenance of the covenant relation-ship and of the special place of the people in the purpose of God is dieir obedience to the commandments (Deut. 30.19-20):

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LX>RD your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you, and length of days, that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

That Israel was to identify with its history, with covenant promises and responsibilities, is obvious. The process and the differences in appropriation of diat historical tradition are also obvious when it com-pares documents produced before, during and shortly after the exile: Deuteronomy, the books of Samuel and Kings; die books of Chronicles. But, given the more radically changed and changing circumstances of the post-exilic period, how was the community to understand and appropriate its history and perceive its future? Far more than a conceptual, theological issue was involved in Deuteronomy: the promises were made to die twelve tribes, but apparendy after the exile Judah alone remained as an identifiable entity. Initially, following the return from the exile, die sanctuary was operated under what seem to have been the generous policies of the Persian government, but by the


Hellenistic era Jews were under enormous pressure culturally and politically to conform to the patterns of Hellenistic life and thought. By the Roman period, the century of autonomy under the Maccabees had passed, with its odd blend of royal and priestly authority charac-terized by internecine conflict and courting the favor of Rome. By die middle of the first century BCE, both the monarchs and priests who ruled die people of Israel did so only by authorization of the Roman emperor and senate. How, during these times of major political, social and cultural change, was the covenant relationship to be defined? How was it to be tangibly expressed in terms of social structures? What were to be die qualifications for participation in it?

From Jewish and early Christian sources, it is evident that during die Hellenistic and Roman periods, a variety of answers to diese ques-tions were being offered, several of them building explicitly on the biblical traditions of die history of the covenant people, and some of them clearly influenced by the concepts and axioms of Hellenistic culture. Accordingly, analysis of representative documents shows how central it is to the present-day interpretation of each that attention be given to the cultural context and worldview represented by die writer and original readers who stand behind these materials. The writings we examine in relation to diese interpretative issues include two from the Jewish wisdom traditionthe Wisdom of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomonone from the apocalyptic tradition of Judaism / Enochand two from the early Christian tradition: Acts and the Letter to die Hebrews.

1. The Wisdom of Sirach

The prologue of die Wisdom of Sirach states the dual aim of reading die Scr

Documents

110578580 Charlesworth Pseudoepigrapha and Early Bib Inter