In Praise of ‘The Default Position’, or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphic Heritage

Abstract

Many ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha have been preserved in their integrality only through secondary versions and Christian late antique and medieval manuscript traditions. James R. Davila’s new monograph on The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? provides us with a useful survey not only of Christian ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish’ but also of ‘Pseudepigrapha of Debatable Origin’ that were previously deemed to be Jewish but that probably are of Christian origins. Following the same line of thought, I will discuss the case of a Jewish Pseudepigraphon copied and translated by Christian scribes (the so-called Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon) and the subsequent Christian rewriting of it (the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah).