Introducing the Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism

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Legends and Expansions of Biblical Traditions

A variety of narrative texts relating in various ways to the Hebrew Bible were written and preserved among Jews of the Second Temple period. However, defining a single genre to which they belong fails to deal adequately with the nature of the respective documents. To a large extent they are narratives that do not simply intend to narrate. In his introduction to many of these writings, James H. Charlesworth calls them “expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and legends,”1 explaining that early Judaism “was a religion bound to and defined by the Book, the Torah,” and that the “biblical narratives were clarified, enriched, expanded, and sometimes retold from a different perspective.”2 And this aptly describes many of these writings, though Charlesworth goes on to explain how some, like the Letter of Aristeas, are not about a biblical narrative at all but about the Greek translation (Septuagint) of the Hebrew Scriptures, while others, like the book of Jubilees, though containing narrative elements, are also clearly related to apocalyptic writings.3 Daniel J. Harrington employs a general approach for his use of the term “rewritten Bible,” identifying this literature as “those products of Palestinian Judaism at the turn of the era that take as their literary framework the flow of the biblical text itself and apparently have as their major purpose the clarification and actualization of the biblical story.”4 For his part, George W. E. Nickelsburg categorizes such writings generally as “stories of biblical and early post-biblical times,”5 noting the commonality of narrative literature related to situations and characters known from Israelite history. Some expand, paraphrase, and implicitly comment on biblical texts. Like Charlesworth, Nickelsburg notes the ambiguity, stating that these “narrative writings do not admit of easy classification, and some of them could, with good reason, have been grouped with [other genres of] texts.”6 Some have regarded these works as “parabiblical,” which constitute the largest category of the Dead Sea Scrolls.7 However, many would object to the use of the term “biblical” at this time, since it is often held among scholars that the notion of a fixed and complete “canon” of unique, clearly defined, and authoritative texts was not in place during the Second Temple period. For his part Daniel K. Falk uses the term “parascriptural,” which, in his view, serves “as an umbrella term for a broad class of texts that in various ways extend the authority of Scripture by imitation and interpretation.”8

With such cautions in mind, we proceed with both writings that are narrative and those that are not. While the genres may defy simple categorization, all are in some way or another, as Nickelsburg says, “loosely connected with biblical traditions about Israel’s past.”9 Or, as Falk puts it, they “in various ways extend the Scriptures in terms of content, meaning and/or application.”10 For each of these works, matters pertaining to genre will be addressed on an individual basis, as suits the diversity of texts here addressed. However, there is one kind of literature that is more particularly identifiable within this wide swath of writings, often called “rewritten scripture.” Here Nickelsburg uses the nomenclature of “the Bible rewritten and expanded,” which he says relates to literature expanding and paraphrasing biblical texts and implicitly commenting on them, and he includes in this category such works as 1 Enoch, the Book of Giants, Jubilees, and the Genesis Apocryphon, among others.11 More recent scholarship has advanced understanding of the phenomena involved.

In an important recent essay on the subject with respect to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Molly M. Zahn explains that the term “rewritten scripture” is typically used “to denote a group of texts which reproduce substantial portions of one or more biblical books, but modify the scriptural text by means of addition, omission, paraphrase, rearrangement, or other types of changes.”12 Scholarly debate continues regarding a terminology suitable for expressing the conceptual models that account for the development, interpretation, and status of biblical texts.13 From the Dead Sea Scrolls, Zahn discusses four key texts usually seen as paradigmatically representing rewritten scripture—Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Temple Scroll, and the Reworked Pentateuch (4QRP, composed of five manuscripts). She notes the problematic overlaps between expanded and revised copies of biblical books, including translations, on the one hand and the body of Jewish literature that builds on themes or expands on stories of biblical narratives on the other, which necessarily complicates a clear delineation of this kind of literature.14 In other words, how does one distinguish, particularly among the Dead Sea Scrolls, between a copy of a biblical book that may include some variation from other extant traditions15 and a document in which an author deliberately adds, rearranges, or paraphrases a text so as to create or elucidate a distinct meaning? Some have sought to alleviate the problem by categorizing texts not according to the genre of their final form but according to the procedural manner in which they were composed.16 Here is not the place to pursue these complex issues, except to note that Zahn and others have observed that the flexibility of genre theory offers a helpful way forward.17 It is also debated to what degree a rewritten text is regarded as authoritative. Though cases may vary, Zahn cites the example of the books of Chronicles, which she regards as a form of rewritten scripture based on the books of Samuel and Kings, and yet they are preserved as canonical.18 Another problem with the phenomena of rewritten scripture is the relation of the rewritten text to that which it rewrites. Whether it replaces or merely supplements is the subject of considerable discussion.19 Sidnie White Crawford notes that with respect to the book of Jeremiah, which has a version found in the Septuagint as well as among the Qumran manuscripts, there is evidence that scribes are not creating new compositions but “rework[ing] the existing tradition into a new, perhaps updated, edition.”20

Crawford’s work is expansive and distinct in several respects. First, she contends that a “rewritten scripture” is first of all an exegetical work that can be distinguished from other exegetical works.21 Building on the work of other scholars,22 Crawford contends that rewritten scriptures constitute a distinct category or group of writings that “are characterized by a close adherence to a recognizable and already authoritative base text (narrative or legal) and a recognizable degree of scribal intervention into that base text for the purpose of exegesis.”23 She also suggests that the rewritten texts often—though not always—make a claim to an authority equal to that of its base text, though not all receiving communities would accept this claim.24 The breadth of this definition compels Crawford to introduce the concept of a four-tiered “spectrum of texts.” At one end are texts that are recognizably authoritative across groups and use nothing from outside the existing base text. Next are rewritten texts whose scribal interventions do incorporate material outside the base text but without the intention of creating new compositions (e.g., 4QRP). Third in Crawford’s spectrum are texts that exhibit such extensive scribal manipulation of the base text that they create recognizably new works (e.g., Jubilees and the Temple Scroll). Finally, at the opposite end of her spectrum, Crawford places works with a recognizable authoritative base text reworked using a variety of techniques of inner-scriptural exegesis but without claiming the authority of the base text (e.g., Genesis Apocryphon). Helpfully, Crawford explains a kind of literature that she regards as beyond the spectrum of rewritten scripture but that nonetheless has a place in our discussion for this volume. These are works that use a passage, event, or character from a scriptural work as a jumping-off point to create a new narrative or work. For these she uses the term “parabiblical” and includes writings such as the Life of Adam and Eve as well as Joseph and Aseneth.25 While the categories of literature—“rewritten scripture”26 or “parabiblical”—may be allusive, the identification of which texts to discuss will follow our familiar pattern. Again, we will follow our familiar rubric of texts that are demonstrably Jewish from the Second Temple period and allocate those that are marginal to a brief discussion at the end of this section.

1. Charlesworth, “Expansions of the ‘Old Testament,’” 2:5.

2. Charlesworth, “Expansions of the ‘Old Testament,’” 2:5. The exception, he notes, is the Letter of Aristeas.

3. Charlesworth, “Expansions of the ‘Old Testament,’” 2:5.

4. Harrington, “Bible Rewritten (Narratives),” 239.

5. Nickelsburg, “Stories,” 33.

6. Nickelsburg, “Stories,” 33.

7. Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 1.

8. Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 7.

9. Nickelsburg, “Stories,” 33.

10. Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 1.

11. Nickelsburg, “Bible Rewritten and Expanded,” 89.

12. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 323. The expression “rewritten Bible” was coined in 1961 by Geza Vermes (Scripture and Tradition in Judaism, 95), who describes this material as the insertion of “haggadic development into the biblical narrative” to resolve interpretive questions raised by the text.

13. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 324.

14. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 326.

15. See, e.g., Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls, 23–33.

16. Harrington, “Bible Rewritten (Narratives),” 243; Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 2:780; Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 17.

17. See most helpfully Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 326–30.

18. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 329. Michael Fishbane calls this type of interpretive rewriting “inner biblical exegesis.” See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel; Fishbane, “Inner Biblical Exegesis.”

19. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 331; Brooke, “Temple Scroll,” 41–42; Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation; Najman, Seconding Sinai, 46–50; Stackert, Rewriting the Torah, 211–24.

20. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 4, citing the further discussion in Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls, 34–120.

21. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 9.

22. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” 116–18; Bernstein, “‘Rewritten Bible’”; Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 2:777; Tov, “Rewritten Bible Compositions,” 334.

23. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 12–13.

24. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 13.

25. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 14.

26. Typically, the works considered “rewritten scripture” are limited to a few—the Book of Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, and Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities—though some scholars include other writings in this category. Harrington (“Bible Rewritten [Narratives],” 239) also includes the Qumran Temple Scroll (11QTemple), Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, and, secondarily, Paralipomena of Jeremiah, Life of Adam and Eve/Apocalypse of Moses, and Ascension of Isaiah.