Daniel Gurtner’s Introducing the Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism offers an accessible and up-to-date entrée into the diverse body of literature categorized as “pseudepigrapha.” He wisely positions his book as an attempt to appreciate the significance of pseudepigrapha in their own right—as diverse, creative scribal acts of identity construction, as windows into the complex nature of Second Temple Judaism, and as textual sites that problematize the boundaries erected by the labels “Jewish” and “Christian”—rather than present them as “background” to the NT. My review draws selectively on the contents of the book in order to evaluate how Gurtner organizes, summarizes, and synthesizes his material.Among the many salutary features of the book is its introduction. Here, Gurtner deftly summarizes critical issues and recent developments in the study of pseudepigrapha: the challenge of dating and determining the provenance of pseudepigrapha, whether one can classify a certain pseudepigraphon as “Jewish” or “Christian,” the variety of genres enfolded into pseudepigrapha, and so forth. He points out, for example, that “more recent scholarship is shifting from the assumption that a text with both Jewish and Christian elements is Jewish and then reworked as Christian to the assumption that it is a Christian document influenced by Jewish traditions” (p. 13). That is to say, the confidence with which scholars have detected “Christian interpolations” in “Jewish” pseudepigrapha is unfounded. Indeed, as Gurtner notes, there are no accepted criteria by which one may definitively label a pseudepigraphon of unknown provenance as “Jewish” rather than “Christian.”Initially, Gurtner states that he will restrict the scope of the book to “Jewish pseudepigrapha composed before or around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE)” (p. 12, his emphasis). Later, however, he clarifies that “primary attention here is devoted to works whose Jewish provenance in the Second Temple period is largely establish,” while “cursory attention will be given to those works whose provenance remains generally unresolved” (p. 16). Gurtner organizes pseudepigrapha based on their genre, broadly conceived: (1) apocalypses, (2) testaments, (3) expansions of biblical narratives and rewritten Scripture, and (4) poetic literature, wisdom literature, and prayers (more or less the delineations one finds in Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha). So, for example, of the apocalypses, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and Sibylline Oracles 3–5, 11 receive primary consideration, while 2 Enoch, 3 Baruch, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Testament of Abraham, and fragmentary apocalyptic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls receive secondary consideration.Each chapter, or section, follows the same basic structure. Gurtner begins with a succinct account of a pseudepigraphon’s manuscripts, language(s), provenance, and date. Next, he provides an overview of its contents. The size of these sections varies—from a single paragraph to close to ten pages—depending on the length of text and on whether it receives primary or secondary consideration. He then discusses “critical issues,” followed by “contribution and context.” For example, in the chapter on Jubilees, Gurtner delves into questions of genre and methods of scriptural reuse (pp. 245–47), followed by a substantive discussion of the ways in which Jubilees sheds light on Second Temple halakha, Priestly traditions, cosmology, and much more. He concludes each section with a summary (typically a paragraph) of the book’s purpose, followed by a short section on its reception history.On the whole, the book is extremely well done. The introduction will benefit all readers, beginning students and seasoned scholars alike. The remainder of the book provides a judicious summary of current scholarship in a format that nonexperts should be able to digest. Naturally, one can find places where Gurtner might have done more. For instance, while he masterfully brings readers up to date on the various challenges entailed in the category loosely described as “re-written scripture” (223–27), his introduction to apocalypses is somewhat cursory, and may give the impression that John Collins has the last word on the matter. Yet when one considers the array of challenges involved with introducing pseudepigrapha—an amorphous, even arbitrary, body of literature that dwarfs, for example, the so-called Apocrypha—it is hard to take issue with the occasional lacuna.Since the book is designed as an introduction, and thus ostensively has nonexperts as its target audience, I conclude this review with a brief assessment of its value as a resource for those who are new to the study of pseudepigrapha. I should start by saying outright that Gurnter’s book is now the best single-volume introduction to the pseudepigrapha. It offers students (and scholars) a handy and reliable resource to a very diverse body of literature. That said, I believe he might have done more to position the book as a pathway to primary sources. For example, he offers little direction (outside of footnotes) as to where readers might acquire reliable English translations of pseudepigrapha. Granted, some readers will already be familiar with Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, and perhaps with Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov’s more recent and ongoing project, Old Testament Pseudepigraph: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Yet they may still wonder, for example, about the value of older editions, e.g., Charles’s Apocrypha and Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, or they may have questions about where to find critical edition of specific pseudepigrapha, important secondary literature, and so forth. Here is where, to my mind, an annotated bibliography, or something of the equivalent, becomes a desideratum.None of these suggestions should in any way detract from Gurtner’s achievement. Rather, I find myself in agreement with David deSilva, “This is now perhaps the premier point of entry into these writings, which might otherwise seem inaccessible.” No small feat.