Review: J. H. Charlesworth, ‘The Pseudepigraphica and Modern Research’, Septuagint and Cognates Studies 7, Scholares Press for S.B.L. 1981

This text was originally published in Irish Biblical Studies 4, January 1982, pp. 46–49.

When the first edition of this work was published in 1976 it was at once evident that here was an exceedingly valuable and important tool for use in the study of the so-called Pseudepigrapha. The heart of the work consisted of a bibliography, identifying and listing over a hundred documents (so p. 21), either Jewish or Jewish-Christian, from the period 200 BC to AD 200. One humble benefit to be derived from such a bibliography immediately suggested itself: scholars like me (if there are any) who could never remember for long at a time which Esdras was which, and whether indeed 4 Ezra was really 4 Ezra or an alias for 2 Esdras, 2 Ezra, or 4 Esdras, could now discover with ease their true identities, along with the identity and contents of other works hitherto unheard of, set out with admirable efficiency and clarity. But of course the book served higher purposes than this. Each work listed in the main bibliography was supplied with an introduction, which in the case of less known works like, for instance, 5 Maccabees, or The Apocalypse of Sedrach, extended to two or three pages, and which summarized the views held on the work in question by different scholars. Then after each introduction there were listed all the scholarly articles and books published on the work from 1960 to 1975, excluding only those listed in Delling's Bibliographie, which had attempted to cover the period up to 1965 (and even these have now been included in the Supplement). In addition to all this, numerous other articles and books on general or special themes relevant to the Pseudepigrapha were listed under fourteen different heads such as, for example, the Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the NT, and Gnosticism, Dualism, Messianism, Prayer, Resurrection and Eschatology, and Sin. In sum, this bibliographical report, as its author called it (p. 15), was obviously going to be not only a very valuable aid to scholars working in neighbouring disciplines, but an indispensable tool for specialists in Pseudepigraphical studies as well.

Now this excellent volume has been brought up to date in a second edition which includes all the publications on the Pseudepigrapha known to the author from 1960 to the spring of 1979. This second edition adds a few more pseudepigrapha to the list, and among the sections dealing with related topics includes an additional one on The Pseudepigrapha and Art. Something of the extent of the ever increasing interest in the Pseudepigrapha is shown by the fact that the new edition, appearing only three years after the first, contains an additional 264 names in all its list of scholars who have published works in this field. Prominent amid all this scholarly activity and singled out for special mention it is pleasant to see the work of Ireland's M. McNamara.

At several places in the book (pp. vii 17–26) Charlesworth frankly expresses his own unease, and that of other scholars, at the unsatisfactoriness of the term Pseudepigrapha as a general classification for these numerous and diverse Jewish works coming from no less than four centuries. Charlesworth uses the term simply because at the moment none better has been invented; but the present reviewer would add his voice to the general chorus of unease. In the scheme which Charlesworth tentatively advances (p. 22; he has a better idea on p. 25 footnote 26) the Fragments of the Historical Works and the Fragments of the Poetical Works are classified as Pseudepigrapha of the Third Degree, i.e. works which might be included under the title, Pseudepigrapha (p. 21). But the work of the chronographer Demetrius, which appears among the Fragments of the Historical Works, can surely not be styled pseudepigraphical by any stretch of imagination or category. Demetrius was, according to his lights, a sober historian and critic whose scholarly work on the OT resembles the work on Homer and other Greek scholars of the Mouseion in Alexandria, at least by those of the second rank. Like Sosibius, nicknamed 'ho Lytikos', who was famed for his skill in solving Homeric problems, Demetrius attempted not only to write a history of his people down to his own time but also to use chronology and any other scholarly resource he had, to solve difficulties in the OT. From one of his surviving fragments (Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, Dritter Teil C, p. 670, 5: note his 'epizētein de tina') it would appear that he may have run a seminar, or even a school, of biblical criticism. It would startle classicists to find the works of Demetrius' ancient Greek counterparts, like Sosibius, classified as Pseudepigrapha, as no doubt it would startle OT scholars to find the works of his modern counterparts, like, say, S.R. Driver, listed under the same head. Similarly Ezekial, the Playwright's drama, the Exagōgē, based on the Exodus, cannot fairly be called pseudepigraphical any more than Dorothy Sayers' The Man Born to be King could be. Neither Demetrius' work nor Ezekial's professes to be by an author other than its real author. Neither meets the third of Charlesworth's criteria (p. 21) for a pseudepigraphon, namely that it should claim to be inspired.

Come to that, no more does the famous work, the so-called Letter of Aristeas, anywhere claim to be inspired either, although Charlesworth continues the long established tradition of including it among the Pseudepigrapha of the first rank. Pseudepigraphical it is, of course, in the sense that the author adopts the fictional pose of a Greek, when he is in fact a Jew. But that device is a rather special kind of pseudepigraphy. As M. Hadas has pointed out in his edition of that work (pp. 57–58), ps.—Aristeas' so-called Letter, is not a letter (never in fact claims to be) but is rather an example of a well known, and, in the ancient Greek world, well understood type of literature, a plasma, that is ‘an imaginative treatment of history which should however preserve historical verisimilitude and present higher “poetical” truth’. That is an altogether different kind of work from a religious tract or treatise that professes to be the inspired words of an ancient, biblical prophet. The whole point of creating the fictional Greek character, Aristeas, was that his story would carry the more weight for his not being Jewish, let alone inspired.

If, then, after the establishment of a sound text, the correct classification of a work's literary type is the foundation of scientific literary criticism, the assigning of ancient works to wrong general literary categories can in the end only impede our true understanding of them. Let us hope that if one general title is in fact necessary (which may be doubted) to cover all these works of such diverse character, someone may soon be able to think up a more satisfactory and appropriate one. The present reviewer confesses he cannot.

None of this, however, detracts from the gratitude which all scholars must feel for the immense amount of labour which James Charlesworth and his team have put into the creation and updating of this volume and for the splendid tool that they have thereby put into our hands.