Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

The allegorical quartet of birds which prey upon the sheep in 1 Enoch 90.2 have been variously identified by early-modern and modern scholars, with no solution reaching consensus. This article proposes the “hobay” should be translated as “ibises” and accordingly represent an Egyptian people-group. I first advance this argument with the help of a parallel usage of terminology in the Greek Testament of Judah. I next confirm the utility of this identification with a brief survey of roughly contemporary primary sources (textual and material) which connect ibises and Egypt. Finally, with these cultural discourses in mind, I re-integrate the ibises into the Animal Apocalypse, suggesting that the recasting of a graceful national bird as a carnivorous monster is a deviously clever imperial critique.

This paper explores the references to atonement for the land in Early Jewish literature. The notion that sexual misconduct, idolatry, and bloodshed defile the land is well known from such scriptural texts as Lev 18:6–25, 27 and Num 35:33–34. Recent biblical scholarship distinguishes between ritual and moral impurities and places the defilement of the land within the latter category. For such moral impurities, the Torah makes no provision for a ritual removal. And yet, the book of Jubilees and Genesis Apocryphon depict Noah as offering a sacrifice to atone for the earth immediately after the Flood. Moreover, 1QWords of Moses (1Q22) in its description of the Day of Atonement mentions an atonement for the land. Finally, such sectarian texts as Community Rule (S), Rule of the Congregation, and 4QMiscellaneous Rules (4Q265) depict the sectarian community(ies) as atoning for the land. Looking closely at all these sources, this paper suggests that underlying all of them is a shared halakhic tradition that land can and should be atoned for by means of a sacrifice.

Despite the elaborative nature of Theodotionic Susanna, it is not merely an expansion. The narrative details of the different versions betray consistent institutional differences. One notable difference is the near elimination of the public synagogue as a place of assembly, and instead this source speaks of a more generalized, associational assembly that meets in Joachim’s house. The Theodotionic version’s associational, domestic assembly space is closer to the polity of a diasporic collegia assembly. Conversely, in the Old Greek, the perverse elders preside over an assembly building, which is at one point designated as “the synagogue of the city” (OG Sus 28). The Old Greek’s emphasis on a civic synagogue is closer to Palestinian Jewish texts, despite the exilic setting of this story. While such institutional designations are more of a spectrum than a binary difference, such difference in outlook offers invaluable data regarding the contexts of the two versions of this Danielic composition and the parallel presentation of these two different types of synagogues at such an early date is significant.

Pseudepigrapha research continues to slowly embrace the “default position” when working with texts of uncertain origin: start by investigating the Christian reception of a text, before attempting to work back toward its purported Jewish provenance. Taking a pseudepigraphon as Christian until proven otherwise—as a theoretical and methodological stance—has led some scholars to break with the general consensus concerning the Jewish origins of the Testament of Job, citing a lack of any identifiable Jewish or Christian “signature features” in the work. While sympathetic to the default position, this paper considers features of the Testament that should each be considered distinctively characteristic of Judaism (the intermarriage prohibition, T. Job 45:3) and Christianity (the use of the Greek compounds ἀπροσωπόληπτός, T. Job 4:8 and προσωπολήπτης, 43:13, attested only in Christian texts). The conclusions drawn from this study support the position that the Testament of Job is a Jewish diaspora text and that the instances of Christian language are most satisfactorily explained as later Christian scribal emendation.

It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely been content either to recognize a basic relationship, or to distinguish temple-in-heaven from temple-as-universe, sometimes construing the former as “apocalyptic” and the latter as “Hellenistic.” Jonathan Klawans’ work represents an important articulation of this distinction. This article summarizes his contribution, and critiques it on the grounds that it remains overly dichotomous and does not do full justice to the evidence. Instead, a fresh taxonomy is proposed with four key categories, each illustrated from Second Temple and biblical texts. None of these categories is discrete; rather they demarcate a spectrum or scale of ways that ancient Jewish and early Christian writers conceptualized the heaven–temple relationship.