INTRODUCTION

When Hindy Najman proposed that I contribute a volume of essays to this series, I was at first resistant, since I would want to update and to some extent coordinate the materials, which would take significant time and energy, and my own commitments to publication had been, since around 1990, to electronic distribution. Nevertheless, in addition to Hindy’s powers of persuasion and her promise to provide some graduate student help at the initial stage, there was a certain logic to gathering together some of the materials that had appeared over the years and presenting a more coherent package that could highlight their attempted contributions to scholarly discussion.

   These essays span about a third of a century and focus on interfaces between Jewish materials and the worlds in which they were transmitted and/or perceived, especially Christian contexts. The lead essay, which was first delivered to the 1976 SNTS congress at Duke University, spent most of its early life as an electronic publication (on IOUDAIOS from 1990, updated version on http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//publics/pseudepig/pseudepold) before Bill Adler and John Reeves rescued it for hardcopy appearance.¹ Some of my colleagues jokingly spoke of it as one of the most cited non-publications (conventionally speaking, of course) of which they were aware. In any event, it became a conventionally published essay in 1994 with filled out and updated footnotes by John Reeves, which led to further reflection and updating in a presentation I gave at the Tel Aviv Conference of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS) in 2000.² For the present purposes, I’ve attempted to supply cross references and cut down on any overt overlaps between those two initial essays in hopes that they will illustrate some progress more than mere repetition. They are, in many ways, the heart and backbone of this collection. For the title, I’ve adopted the term “scripturesque” to cover all those materials and traditions, whether they later became canonical or not, that seem to have been respected [[viii]] as “scriptural” by some individuals or communities in the period prior to (or apart from) the development of an exclusivistic canonical consciousness in some Jewish and Christian circles.

¹ Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (ed. John C. Reeves; SBLEJL 6; Atlanta: Scholars, 1994) 55–86.

² “Setting the Stage and Framing Some Central Questions,” JSJ 32 (2001) 371–395 (below, Chapter Two).

   Also of a more general nature, providing further conceptual context, are the essays on the “parting of the ways,” the review of Charlesworth and Sparks, and the survey of early Christian accusations of Jewish textual tampering. Although these appeared originally over a similarly long period of time, the need for adjustment to the present format has been relatively minor, apart from inserting various cross references and occasionally adding more recent bibliographical references as appropriate.

   Most of the other essays gathered here deal with details, whether for those unknown authors and compilers of the materials here called “pseudepigrapha” (a category designation that I have come to view as inappropriate and/or misleading, without yet finding a more satisfactory substitute) or for known authors such as Philo and Josephus. Some of the sections started out as electronic publications of a quite unpolished nature (e.g., the concluding section on the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, based on the minutes from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins in 1970-1971, here combined with more recent material), while others were more formal hardcopy print publications. I’ve attempted to provide some sort of historical context for each, as well as a bit of new “glue” where needed to pull things together. Almost all of the essays in this anthology have been (and will continue to be) available electronically through my web page, and in the electronic versions of some of these materials, different colors have been used to distinguish “original” from updates and modifications. Since this sort of approach does not seem to be practical or desirable in this print form, the hardcopy reader will not be burdened with such developmental mapping. One exception: where my own hardcopy publications are represented, the original pagination is indicated in double square brackets, although there has been no attempt to retain the original hardcopy footnote numbers.

   A word is in order about my desire to update the information in the notes -- and sometimes also in the text -- with reference to other (especially more recent) relevant publications and related materials. I began to do this note by note, but soon realized that at almost every point, it would be appropriate to refer to the extensive bibliography [[ix]] compiled in print form by Lorenzo DiTommaso³ and also to say something like “pursue these topics through your internet search engine” (e.g., google.com). The internet is full of additional information (and sometimes misinformation) -- and especially bibliography -- that can help the reader to fill out the pictures being presented, and there are many responsible sites to facilitate the task, such as the online “Research Guide for Christianity” from the Yale University Divinity School Library at http://www.library.yale.edu/div/indexgde.htm. Frequent reference will also be made to the links found on my own web page at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html, especially for my own electronic publications and projects. The explicit listing of internet addresses can become tedious in printed form, and for that I apologize. Hopefully the listing of these materials in the comprehensive index will help those who are interested. The electronic version of these essays is more convenient in this regard, since it can include clickable links without the redundancy of the visible internet addresses. And for readers with access to JSTOR (the online Journal STORage project), many of the articles cited herein are available online, along with reviews of many of the books.

³ Lorenzo DiTommaso, A Bibliography of Pseudepigrapha Research 1850–1999 (JSPSup 39; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) -- unfortunately not (yet [2008]) available online.