{"title":"Gnostic","authors":"D. Burns","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0023","url":null,"abstract":"The corpus of extant Gnostic literature, preserved almost exclusively in Coptic codices of the ca. fourth–sixth centuries CE, constitutes an invaluable witness for the transmission of Second Temple Jewish traditions in late antiquity. The most famous of these concern the hypostasis Sophia (“Wisdom”) and the dual creation of Adam (Gen 2–3). Other important traditions found throughout Coptic Gnostic literature deal with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, divine “youths” (Metatron?), the Fall of the Watchers, Noah and the Flood, Seth’s sister and wife Norea and the Sibyl, Melchizedek, and Solomon. Sodom and Gomorrah pop up in famous cases of Gnostic “reverse exegesis,” where the Sodomites are valorized. Traditions of the apocalypses, such as heavenly journeys and the glorification and transformation of human seers, are also of paramount importance to Gnostic literature. More “philosophically-inclined” currents related to Gnosticism, such as Valentinianism and Hermetism, transmit many Jewish traditions as well. Gnostic literature thus constitutes a source of deep value not only for the importance of Jewish traditions for the formation of Christian and Gnostic thought, but also for the transmission of apocalyptic and mystical ideas during a period for which our “Jewish sources” are relatively scarce.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127949784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flavius Josephus","authors":"Michael Tuval","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"The works of first century CE Jewish historian Flavius Josephus constitute our main source for the study of Jewish history of the Second Temple period. In this chapter, we briefly discuss Josephus’ career and his four compositions, as well as the condition of the Greek manuscript tradition of his works. The chapter also deals with the Latin translations of Josephus, a late antique Christian adaptation of mainly Judean War in Latin, known as Hegesippus, and the remnants of Judean War in Syriac. Next comes Josippon, a medieval Hebrew adaptation of Josephus and some other sources, and finally the much-discussed Slavonic, or Old Russian, version of the Judean War.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122468211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” as Category and Corpus","authors":"L. Ditommaso","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"The recent publication of the first volume of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures offers scholars an ideal vantage point from which to review the major trends in Pseudepigrapha research since the publication of the last milestone collection, James H. Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, thirty years ago. Most significant in this regard is the radical expansion of the corpus in the new collection, which signals a return to the “maximalist” conception of the Pseudepigrapha that defined the category during its early history. This chapter discusses the Pseudepigrapha as category and corpus, their historical relationship and the dynamics of change, and the impact of changes over time on issues regarding early Jewish texts and traditions in Christian transmission.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122495019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethiopic","authors":"P. Piovanelli","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The first wave of Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha reached Eritrea and Ethiopia in the wake of the Christianization of the Aksumite kingdom, in the middle of the fourth century of our era. Their Ethiopian acculturation was a part of the process of translating the ensemble of the Scriptures, including “apocryphal” texts, from Greek originals into Gǝʿǝz, or Classical Ethiopic. As a result, the pseudepigrapha were copied for centuries in the same manuscripts as other biblical texts. After a long period of relative isolation, the re-establishing of regular relations with Egyptian Christianity, in the thirteenth century, led to a complete re-examination and revision of Ethiopian Scriptures and other religious texts. The pseudepigrapha were scrutinized, discussed, edited, eventually newly translated from the Arabic or, in a few cases, abandoned. The theological debates about the status of some of these texts played a major role in their active preservation in Ethiopian culture.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122512426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Qumran Texts","authors":"D. Hamidović","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0019","url":null,"abstract":"The intellectual inheritance of the Qumran texts has suggested numerous hypotheses since their discovery. Some scholars pretended to find a relationship with Christian groups, others shed light on the links with Jewish groups. This chapter deals with a new approach to the transmission of the Qumran texts. Three levels of transmission are considered: (1) the “narrow” transmission of the Qumran manuscripts; (2) a “broader” definition of the transmission concerns the Qumran texts; it means the Essene compositions with some interrogations for several documents excavated in Qumran caves; (3) and the “broadest” definition of Qumran manuscripts and of their transmission needs to consider not only the Essene compositions but also the Scriptural manuscripts and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha—that is, the whole preserved Qumran texts.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"17 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122597520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic","authors":"J. C. Reeves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0025","url":null,"abstract":"The present chapter explores the likelihood that Second Temple–era Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts have an important role to play in the history of classical Islamic literature. It makes a preliminary start toward identifying and outlining some of the ways in which Jewish noncanonical lore might shed light on certain terms or expressions, some narrative features, and particular ideological trajectories resident within distinctively Muslim literary formulations such as Qur’ān, tafsīr, “tales of the prophets” (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’) collections, and the early universal histories of Ya‘qūbī (d. 897) and Ṭabarī (d. 923). It is hoped that the present chapter will stimulate further comparative work and contributions to this important field of study.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127008245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Christian Arabic","authors":"J. C. Reeves","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Christian Arabic literature represents an enormous corpus of biblically affiliated lore which remains remarkably underexploited by most modern scholars of Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature. The present chapter focuses primarily on some textual examples culled from the popular and influential universal histories produced by Christian writers Eutychius (Sa‘īd b. Biṭrīq) of Alexandria (d. 940), Agapius (Maḥbūb b. Qusṭanṭīn) of Manbij (d. c. 950), and the Arabic version of the so-called secular history of the justly celebrated Bar Hebraeus (Abu’l-Faraj b. al-‘Ibrī, d. 1286). It is hoped that the present chapter will stimulate further comparative work and contributions to this important field of study.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133678808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coptic","authors":"J. van der Vliet","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Going beyond an inventory of “Old Testament apocrypha” transmitted in Coptic, this chapter focuses on the conceptual problems inherent in the study of Coptic literature, and of Coptic apocrypha in particular. First, the complicated linguistic situation of late antique and early medieval Egypt is sketched, which as far as Coptic sources are concerned resulted in a fragmentary and discontinuous record. Secondly, the Coptic sources are considered in their social setting, which is primarily the liturgical life of Christian, predominantly monastic communities between the fourth and the twelfth centuries. It is argued that terminology such as “Old Testament apocrypha” is not only descriptively inadequate but bars a proper understanding of the texts as embedded in local Christian genres and practices.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128896873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enochic Traditions","authors":"G. Boccaccini","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0020","url":null,"abstract":"The period between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries is a crucial yet neglected period in the reception history of Enochic traditions. The Enoch books were “lost” in the West; Enoch, however, was anything but forgotten in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hermetic circles. The Christian Cabalists (Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Guillaume Postel) were the first to actively pursue the search for the lost Enoch. In the mid-sixteenth century with the arrival of the first Ethiopic monks from Ethiopia also came the news that 1 Enoch was there preserved. Rumors about the presence of an Enoch manuscript in the library of Nicolas de Pereics were widespread but proved to be unfounded. While Enoch remained popular in esoteric and visionary circles, the publication of the Greek fragments by Scaliger in 1606 led to the composition of the first scholarly commentaries by Sgambati (1703), Sarnelli (1710), and Fabricius (1713). Eventually, in 1773, James Bruce came back from Ethiopia with four MSS of 1 Enoch. Having emancipated the text from esoteric and magic concerns, contemporary research on Enoch could now begin with the publication, in 1821, of the first English translation of 1 Enoch by Richard Laurence.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116905901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Jewish Calendar and Jewish Sciences","authors":"J. Ben-dov","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190863074.003.0021","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter surveys the reception and development of the Enochic 364-day calendar in later Jewish and Christian traditions, focusing on sources from Ethiopia. It traces the creation of Enochic astronomy and of the 364-day calendar in their Mesopotamian and ancient Jewish setting, and then continues to assess this legacy in the Book of Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, in a rather different way, in 2 Enoch and other Jewish apocalypses. This is done with an eye toward the transmission of other branches of ancient sciences, such as astrology and physiognomy. The chapter then continues to assess the path of the Enochic teaching in Christian Ethiopia, dwelling on the tension between the preservation of the ancient tradition and its acculturation to other, later, branches of Ethiopic astronomy.","PeriodicalId":240988,"journal":{"name":"A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133484990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}