Happy Advent. Here’s a sneak peak of what new readers are coming in January 2025!
Pude ponerme al día con @Timothy_A_Lee y planear algunas de las cosas que vienen en español junto a los nuevos materiales que vienen en inglés de @TimothyALeePub
— Fausto Liriano (@FaustoLiriano) November 28, 2024
Para los que están esperando: Ya casi, casi vienen los lectores de hebreo. pic.twitter.com/uAwlgboS4E
Hardcover readers for the Greek New Testament are now available!
Greek NT #BibleReaders are now available in hardback! pic.twitter.com/p32jHHbqbK
— Timothy A. Lee Publishing (@TimothyALeePub) October 15, 2024
I suggest there are several reasons why these writings should be read.
Firstly, these texts were very important for many people in early Judaism and the early church so they should be for us, whether a Jew or Christian. In several communities, many of these works were authoritative and even considered scripture on par with the books that we now consider Scripture. The Dead Sea Scroll community (almost certainly Essenes) had more copies (and often luxurious ones) of 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Temple Scroll than most books of scripture. In fact, as mentioned previously, books like 4 Ezra, Jubilees, and 1 Enoch are still considered scripture by various churches and Jewish groups today.
Secondly, the Pseudepigrapha is saturated with examples of early Jewish biblical interpretation. If one wants to know how Jews and early Christians understood scripture they should study the exegetical practices employed in these writings. They contain some of the earliest examples of biblical hermeneutics, commentary, and theological reasoning. These texts record developing and competing theologies of determinism, free-will, messianism, resurrection, and the origins of evil.
Thirdly, related to this, reading these texts are important for correcting false ideas about early Judaism. In Protestant scholarship since the days of Martin Luther, later ideas of legalism, often inspired by narrow readings of Rabbinical Judaism were assumed to reflect the scene in Second Temple Judaism. However, reading these writings, and the Dead Sea Scrolls shows this not to be exactly the case.
Fourthly, for Christians the New Testament itself quotes and depends upon these writings. Here are three examples. Jude 14 cites 1 Enoch 1.9 with the same formula the synoptic gospels use to cite Isaiah.[1] Likewise, Paul makes a typological reference of Jesus being a rock that followed the Israelities in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10.4). Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (sometimes labelled Pseudo-Philo) describes a well of water following the Israelites to miraculously water them in the Exodus (LAB 10.7). This – by extension – implies the rock Moses struck to supply water (Exodus 17.6) is supposed to have miraculously followed them – a theme developed further in Rabbinic literature. Finally, the magicians who assist Pharoah during the plagues of Egypt are never named in Exodus. However, 2 Timothy 3.8 supplies the names Jamnes and Mambres. Origen notes these names are found in a secret (pseudepigraphical) work titled ‘the book of Jamnes and Mambres’ (Commentariorum Series 117)[2]
Fifthly, these writings were not only read throughout early Judaism and the early church, but even more recently. It was used in debates over the origins of native Americans in the New World. One might think Protestants have flatly rejected them with an insistence on sola scriptura. However, history is more complex. Bruce Metzger draws attention to one unexpected allusion to 4 Ezra by none other than Hugh Latimer, one of the architects of the English Reformation.[3] The spot where he was burned alive is marked with a cross on Broad Street in Oxford. On the stake with his fellow reformer Nicholas Ridley, Latimer echoed 4 Ezra,
Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
I will light a lamp of understanding in your heart which will not be put out until the things have ended about which you will write. (4 Ezra 14.25)I suggest these writings are not only relevant to Jews, and Catholics, but also to Protestant heirs of Latimer.
[1] Προεφήτευσεν δὲ καὶ τούτοις ἕβδομος ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ Ἑνὼχ λέγων·
‘about these things Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied’ (Jude 14
Καλῶς ἐπροφήτευσεν Ἠσαΐας περὶ ὑμῶν
‘Well did Isaiah prophesy concerning you’ (Mark 7.6)
καλῶς ἐπροφήτευσεν περὶ ὑμῶν Ἠσαΐας ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you’ (Matt 15.7)[2] item quod ait »sicut Iamnes et Mambres restiterunt Moysi« non invenitur publicis libris, sed in libro secreto qui suprascribitur liber Iamnes et Mambres. Likewise, what he says, “as Jamnes and Mambres resisted Moses,” is not found in public books, but in a secret book which is titled the book of Jamnes and Mambres. (This section of his commentary is only extant in its Latin translation.)
[3] The Fourth Book of Ezra in Charlsworth (ed.) Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Doubleday 1983), p. 523.
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