The Modern Invention of 'Old Testament Pseudepigrapha'

Abstract

This article explores the pre-history of our present notion of 'the Old Testament pseudepigrapha' through a focus on Johann Albert Fabricius's Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti (1713). It considers Fabricius's work from four perspectives: as a compendium of knowledge recovered during and after the Renaissance, as a reflection of debates about Scripture in the wake of the Reformation, as a literary artefact of anxieties about authorship in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and as the foundation for nineteenth- and twentiety-century research on the materials collected therein. By revisiting the origins of the concept and category of 'pseudepigrapha', the article attempts to bring a broader historical perspective to bear on current debates about the heurism of the label.