PSEUDEPIGRAPHA, OLD TESTAMENT.
I. Preliminary Discussion.
Name and Place in Study (§ 1). Object and Character (§ 2). Varied Interests Touched (§3). Transmission (§4). II. Poetic Pseudepigrapha. 1-3. The Psalms of Solomon, etc. III. Prophetic Pseudepigrapha. 4. The Ethiopic Enoch.
Contents and Composition (§ 1).
Date (§ 2).
5. The Slavonic Enoch.
6. The Assumption of Moses.
7. II (IV) Ezra.
Texts, Editions, and Character
(§ 1). Contents and Date (§ 2).
8. V and VI Ezra.
9. The Logos of Ezra. 10-11. The Baruch Apocalypses.
12-21. Other Apocalypses. 22-23. Protoplasts and Twelve Patriarchs. 24-32. Other Testaments.
IV. Historical Pseudepigrapha.
33. Jubilees.
34. The Martyrdom of Isaiah. 35-41. Other Historical Pseudepigrapha.
V Philosophical Pseudepigrapha.
I. Preliminary Discussion: By Pseudepigrapha is commonly understood in the Protestant Church a scries of writings having a Biblical cast of character which in some ecclesiastical regions have been held in more or less regard, but which, so far as is
known, are not found in the manuscripts of the Greek Bible or in the Vulgate. " Pseudepigrapha " is not altogether a happy title, since in both canonical writings and in the Apocrypha there are books which bear a name not that of the author; yet since
Pseudepigrapha
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
pseudonymity is the chief external characteristic of these books, and is also that by which collectively they are best known, the title has won i. Name a certain right. By Old-Testament and Place Pseudepigrapha are meant writings in Study, which, whether of Jewish or Christian authorship, are ostensibly by some personage belonging to the Old Testament or concern such a one; the name New-Testament Pseudepigrapha is kept for gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses which go under Christian names, otherwise called New-Testament Apocrypha. The study of the Pseudepigrapha was once left for those whose reputation was for the study of whatever was outre. Serious attention to them came first through the Tubingen school as a means to knowledge of the transition from Judaism to Christianity. After the work of Fabricius, Dillmann was the first to investigate them; Schiirer has done notable work in vol. iii. of his well-known work; light has been thrown from the Assyriological side by Gunkel ; and rays have come even from Persia and Egypt to illumine the subject.
These writings, so far as they are Jewish in origin, are a product of the late period in the development of that religion, partly belonging to 170-135 B.C. They have a polemic purpose against heathenism both within and without the Jewish fold, and the key word is separation from the Gen- 2. Object tiles. On another side the purpose and was a strongly framed Jewish propa- Character. ganda. The writings constitute a national theodicy, the apotheosis of a Judaism that was hastening to its fall. Bound up with an inherent apology for Judaism was the intent to strengthen believers in their faith. Since the persecutions by the Greek overlord, the Jewhad been prepared to suffer and to die for the Law which had been the ground of the persecution, expecting his reward in the blessedness of the final eon attained through resurrection. The chief concern of these writings is, therefore, revelation concerning this final state, and many of them bear the name apocalypse or revelation of the end. This is true whether the method is haggadic-midrashic or philosophic. In the eschatological treatment of the future the varied hopes of preexilic prophecy become magnified into gigantic illusion, furthered in part by the magnitude of the world powers concerned. While the predictions of Amos and his contemporaries seemed to have been ended by the exile, the hopes of the Deutero-Isaiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Joel for a Jerusalem which was to be the world-city of the future were seized upon, and the thought of the times pictured a future beyond a final conflict which was to end the present age and usher in a new one born of heaven. This heaven, however, was not the old one, but a new and spiritualized one already foreshadowed in Isaiah xl. sqq. The world of the then present belonged to the heathen; God had given it up to angels to govern, and was permitting the evil to rule. This dualism was to come to an end in the final day, and Satan was to be shut up in hell; the kingdom of darkness was to give way to the kingdom of light. Then Israel was to come into its own as the
dominant nation, though as a newborn Israel of such character that its triumph was to be that of the good over the bad. In some of the minor apocalypses alone did the preexistent Messiah figureelsewhere God was in the foreground. In order to gain strength to endure the last period of distress the reawakened hopes of Israel for a better world drew upon the most varied sources, including a mythological and esoteric philosophy of nature, by which to solve the riddle of the past and the future. As Saul sought the witch of Endor co read for him what the future held, so the new seers sought answer to their questioning even in heathen mantic. They underwent a course of discipline to gain the position of adepts in the unraveling of the future. The apocalyptic therefore takes on a half heathen, half monotheistic dress, and out of this come the imagery of beasts, and predictions made by means of secrets and riddles and numbers (see Apocalyptic Literature, Jewish). This apocalyptic became the new medium of the propaganda, the new wisdom. As a result, such literature as, e.g., the Book of Enoch, reads like a narrative of great wonders in nature and history, serving curiosity rather than edification. It satisfied, however, the taste of the times for the grotesque. But the form required was that of prophecy, and pseudonymity naturally took the form of apocalyptic. The new prophecy put on the mantle of the old in order to veil itself from the observation of the overlords. The names of Biblical heroes became the designation of communities of disciples, who probably revered saintwise the hero whose name they took. The past was portrayed in the dress of the future, and this feature is sometimes of value in determining the date of the writing. The seer receives readier credence because he is believed in his spiritual state to read the records in heaven, where all is recorded, and to traverse all space and all regions with angels as his guides. The apocalyptic of these writings assumes to be the successor of the earlier prophecy, continues the prediction of the final judgment and of the era of salvation in which this judgment issues, but with the added elements of the transcendental and the universal as constituents of the total presentation.
The character of these books, therefore, makes them appeal to varied interests. They contain indications of facts in the realm of the history of culture and religion; they teach much concerning the character of later Judaism, supplement- 3. Varied ing the canonical writings of the Old Interests Testament and revealing the receptiv- Touched. ity exhibited by Jews toward ethnic influences in the period of the creation of these books; they bridge the gap between the Old Testament and the New, heralding the new ideas which appear in the latter. The ideas and imagery of the pseudepigraphic writings influenced not only the Christians of the first generations, but they continued to be reflected in the productions and thought-world of the Middle Ages. The profounder knowledge gained by the present age of the culture of the ancient East has shown that even the culture of the present is ringed about and conditioned by what appears in the writings under consideration;