Reviewed by: Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism by Jonathan Klawans Eva Mroczek Jonathan Klawans. Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 216 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000209 Heresy, Forgery, Novelty argues for the interrelationships of these three concepts in early Judaism and Christianity. While heresiology, identified here with accusations of theological innovation, is considered a Christian phenomenon, Klawans argues that it is incipient in early Judaism. One key piece of evidence for this argument is the persistence of pseudepigraphy, equated with forgery, which indicates that writers needed to conceal innovation by claiming ancient origins for new texts. Early Christians, however, recoded innovation as positive, creating a supersessionist model of the relationship between Judaism (obsolete, old) and Christianity (vital, new). But this early Christian valorization of the new was limited: Christian heresiologists then redeployed the rhetoric of novelty as negative, accusing competing groups ("heretics") of innovation. The book's major contribution is, first, to show that claims to novelty and antiquity are key to Jewish and Christian identity, and that we must consider this shifting rhetoric to understand the "parting of the ways." Such claims may not reflect actual novelty or antiquity; Klawans carefully emphasizes that he is interested in the ideological deployment of these concepts, recognizing that they have varying degrees of correspondence to actual innovation or traditionalism. A second [End Page 449] contribution is methodological: Klawans invites scholars to use bolder frameworks, setting aside excessive fears of anachronism to name concepts and draw new comparisons. This is an important challenge, and the book succeeds in revealing surprising patterns in Jewish and Christian self-presentation. At times, however, the robust framework seems to drive the selection of data and detaches ideas from their cultural contexts, sometimes with direct implications for the argument. Chapter 1 introduces the terms in the title, presenting the definitions on which the book's framework depends. It shows how Jewish writers rhetorically rejected innovation even as they produced new material, presenting new writings as ancient revelations. This work might be placed in conversation with John Barton's Oracles of God (1984), which shows that although claims to revelation continued in Second Temple Judaism, prophecy of a certain kind was considered a thing of the past. We might also ask if early Jewish claims to antiquity are continuous with the strategy Scholem identified in rabbinic ideology, which claimed that everything ostensibly new was already revealed on Sinai. The goal here, however, is to identify a rejection of innovation in two religious cultures/practices: early Judaism, with "forgeries" passed off as ancient revelation, and Christian heresiology, identified with a demonization of novelty. This comparison corrects a still-common stereotype that ancient Judaism was a free-for-all, allowing and even valuing disagreement, while Christians imposed a single system with no room for deviation. Klawans suggests an alternative model in chapter 2, "Heresy without Orthodoxy: Josephus and the Rabbis on Dangerous Beliefs." While no drive toward a codified "orthodoxy" existed, a loose "consensus" model allowed variety, but placed some groups clearly out of bounds. The major example is Josephus's account of the "Fourth Philosophy," where Klawans finds "incipient heresiology" (39): constructing a particular group with a parvenu founder, and accusing them of having no roots in tradition. But while structural similarities exist, Josephus's political context matters. The "Fourth Philosophy" is associated with armed resistance to the empire: constructing them as a fringe faction, essentially outside the Jewish community, had political utility for a Jewish general in Rome. While Klawans mentions that Josephus wished to associate violence with a small group, not Jews in general, the political dimension is not central to the analysis, which emphasizes ideological opposition to innovation. Similarly, questions of social power might be invited into the analysis of rabbinic evidence. Klawans analyzes discourses about lineage and unbroken transmission to illustrate a "consensus" model and a basic conservatism in early rabbinic thought. Here, I read "consensus" as patriarchal and class interests in consolidating power. Expanding the analysis from a somewhat abstract demonization of novelty to considering how such discourse consolidates power networks could buttress Klawans's argument for the...