Composite Citations in Antiquity, vol. 1, Jewish, Graeco-Roman, and Early Christian Uses ed. by Sean A. Adams and Seth M. Ehorn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Composite Citations in Antiquity, vol. 1, Jewish, Graeco-Roman, and Early Christian Uses ed. by Sean A. Adams and Seth M. Ehorn Peter R. Rodgers sean a. adams and seth m. ehorn (eds.), Composite Citations in Antiquity, vol. 1, Jewish, Graeco-Roman, and Early Christian Uses (LNTS 525; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). Pp. xiii + 242. $120. In this collection of essays, Adams and Ehorn have drawn together studies of composite citations in the writings of antiquity. This work anticipates and provides background for a second volume that will treat the phenomenon in the NT. Each of the studies makes a valuable contribution in its own right, and together they demonstrate that composite citation was a common practice in the ancient world. After an introductory chapter by the editors defining composite citations ("What Is a Composite Citation? An Introduction"), there are ten chapters on specific areas of ancient literature: "Greek Education and Composite Citations of Homer," by Sean A. Adams; "Composite Citations in Plutarch," by Seth M. Ehorn; "Citation in Elite Roman Epistolary Writing: The Letters of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny," by Margaret H. Williams; "Composite Quotations in Philo of Alexandria," by James R. Royse; "Composite Quotations in the Damascus Document," by Jonathan D. H. Norton; "Composite Citations in the Septuagint Apocrypha," by Sean A. Adams and Seth M. Ehorn; "Composite Citations in Jewish Pseudepi graphic Works: Re-presenting Legal Traditions in the Second Temple Period," by Garrick V. Allen; "Composite Features and Citations in Justin Martyr's Textual Composition," by Philippe Bobichon; "The Testimony Hypothesis and Composite Citations," by Martin C. Albl; "Composite Citations: Retrospect and Prospect," by Christopher D. Stanley. At the outset, Adams and Ehorn offer a working definition of composite citation. The text must be noted with explicit attribution to an author or speaker and marked out either with an introductory formula, a notable break in the syntax, or be a text that is cited elsewhere by the same author. More allusive examples "must only be considered with caution" (p. 3). The composite nature of the citation is equally important. Two or more texts must be fused together, the fusing must not include conjunctions that break between the texts, and should not refer to a plurality of authors (p. 4). Working within these parameters, the contributors present their findings, some of which are more fruitful than others as regards composite citations. For example, composite citations are frequent in the Damascus Document and the Apocrypha, whereas examples according to the strict definition of Adams and Ehorn are less a feature of the writings of Plutarch or the elite Roman writers: the letters of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny. Composite citations are more frequent in the Greek school texts, showing that "composite citations were an established literary practice and an accepted part of Greek literary culture" (Adams, p. 33). The definition offered by Adams and Ehorn sets up clear parameters, but both the [End Page 538] terminology and the methodology are problematic. The use of the term "citation" in itself is not without difficulty. This may be detected even in the table of contents, where two of the authors prefer the term quotations (Royse and Norton). In recent years, there has been much discussion as to what constitutes a quotation, an allusion, or an echo of a Scripture text. The term "citation" has often been used in an imprecise way to refer to any of these categories. But the editors use it with precision to refer to quotations with an introductory formula. But the whole phenomenon of the combination of texts in antiquity is much more wide-ranging and diverse than the narrow confines that they have established. It is curious that, with the exception of the Damascus Document and the Temple Scroll, the combination of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls is not treated in this study. At least 4Q174 and 4Q175 are relevant to the discussion but do not fit the strict criteria for "composite citations" as set forth in this volume. So the question remains: how do we define a citation? Royse asserts that the ancients had no way, as we do, of marking out a quotation (pp. 77,84); however, this is...