pseudo-pseudepigrapha: a taxonomy of attribution in ancient literature

A salient feature of a vast number of works of ancient literature is the attribution of subsets of their content to particular persons. For example, the book of Deuteronomy is the work of an anonymous narrator – “These are the words which Moses addressed to all Israel” (Deut 1:1). At the same time, long speeches within the book are attributed to Moses; in turn, the words of Moses contain pivotal tracts of speech attributed to “the Lord our God” (Deut 1:6). In what sense the attributions to Moses and God were meant to be taken at face value or as hermeneutical constructs is a matter of great interest. In what sense the distinction between “take at face value” and “hermeneutical construct” is a helpful one is also a matter of considerable interest.

This holds for the book of Deuteronomy. It is no different when it comes to the attributions in, for example, Jubilees, Enoch, Baruch, Daniel, the Temple Scroll, 2 Baruch, and the Talmud. But if that is so, it makes sense to do away with the scholarly convention according to which some works and not others in traditional and less traditional repertoires of ancient literature are described as pseudepigrapha. The characterization covers a multitude of sins, of the characterizer no less than the characterized.

The term pseudepigraphon insofar as it is used such that it characterizes some of the works mentioned and not others is arbitrary from the point of view of textual appearances. Consciously or unconsciously, the selective use of the term is an artifact of a confessional stance. The use of the term still tends to vehiculate a corollary judgment that attributions of the kind referred to are morally reprehensible. As if, whenever the anonymous narrator of Deuteronomy, Daniel, or the Temple Scroll put words in the mouth of God, of Moses, or of Daniel, deception were involved.

Maybe, maybe not. It is the kind of thing intelligent people are bound to disagree about.  

I would argue that literary attributions are always hermeneutical constructs, and are always meant to be taken seriously within a specific set of cultural assumptions. Deception, like love, is in the eyes of the beholder.

There are cases, certainly, in which an author sets out to deceive her readers in terms of the attributions she makes. On the other hand, there is a sense in which all literature and all art depend on fictions. It is a very interesting and very complex topic.

I am certainly within my rights, if I so choose, to characterize any or all of the books already mentioned as pseudepigrapha which, in the final analysis, are grossly fraudulent. They claim to report the words of God, Moses, and so on, but in reality, the attributions are part of an elaborate deception.

I am no less within my rights to characterize such characterizations as the product of a gross misunderstanding. The attributions the works make, though not uncontroversial, reflect a set of assumptions their authors shared with their ideal readers. They are not deceptive in the least. All these works are pseudo-pseudepigrapha.

The facts are not that difficult to describe. Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Daniel are anonymous works. At the same time, subsets of their content are attributed to particular persona: Moses / Jeremiah / Daniel; God; a quoted “you” addressee; a king; and so on. Therefore, all of these works are correctly described as anonymous in one sense (insofar as the onset narrator is anonymous), theonymous in another (insofar as a pivotal amount of speech is attributed to God), and eponymous in still another (insofar as a pivotal subset of text is attributed to a “person of interest”: Moses, Jeremiah, Daniel).

Esther, on the other hand, is anonymous in one sense and eponymous in another, but not, on the surface, theonymous. The Temple Scroll in its extant parts is, on its part, entirely theonymous. In Jeremiah, the anonymous narrator makes use of a biographical register – “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests of Anatot in the land of Benjamin . . . the word of the Lord came to him” – but also incorporates autobiographical narrative – “the word of the Lord came to me.” The onset narrator of both Jeremiah and Daniel is sometimes anonymous and sometimes autobiographical. The narrator of Deuteronomy is always anonymous and always biographical, but within that frame, Moses appears as an autobiographical narrator: “The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying” (Deut 1:6).

Attributions such as “The proverbs of Solomon” (Prov 10:1); “A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom” (Ps 3:1); “The words of Kohelet son of David, king in Jerusalem” (Qoh 1:1); “The Wisdom of Solomon” (title of a book in Greek); and “The Odes of Solomon” (title of a book in Syriac) are only apparently straightforward.

At the very least, if one wishes to characterize any of these works as pseudepigrapha it ought to be explained why all of the set discussed are not so characterized.

It would be far more to the point to regard all literary attributions as neither false nor true in the first instance, but as extraordinarily productive literary constructs. In the case of texts in the Bible with a long history of reception, it is obvious that the attributed function of the attributions changed over time. 

Comments

[Simon Holloway]

"There are cases, certainly, in which an author sets out to deceive her readers in terms of the attributions she makes."

There may indeed also be cases in which an author truly believes their text to have originated with Moses (or Enoch, Solomon, etc) despite the fact that it is issuing forth from their own quill. One should not discount the possibility that the ascription is intended earnestly.

[JohnFH]

There is a lot of truth to that, Simon, in some cases. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra come to mind, in which it seems clear that the visions are the fruit of intense prayer and fasting (incubation if you will).

Somewhere I believe Michael Stone has written about this.

[mikelioso]

I would say there are different levels of pseudepigrapha. In some cases an author may honestly believe that a work came from the person it is ascribed to. By the time proverbs was written, folk lore may have attributed much of this material to Solomon.

Then there is a work like Daniel which is attributed to an ancient prophet for propagandistic reasons, to get the rub of an established figure.

Or there are works like the Wisdom of Solomon. While the author seems to speak as Solomon, there doesn't seem to be much of an attempt to establish this as a work by Solomon, it wasn't received as authentic by those who compiled the Jewish cannon (though one might imagine that the simple minded accepted it as Solomon's) and it is possible that the author was not attempting to fool any one but is instead creating a work of his own reflections in the form of a conversation from a legendary sage. An open fraud, if you will. I suspect Enoch may have been received the same way. I have thought that if the Middle Ages were a less literate, "A Divine Comedy" might have been taken as Dante's actual spirit journey.

[JohnFH]

Hi Mike,

My first point is that there is a "politics of attribution" at work in all works of literature, in a work of scholarship no less than a work of mythology.

The complexity of it all is usually overlooked.

For example, individual instances of attribution are prone to involve a combination of intentional and unintentional deception in a work of scholarship. For example, through an exact quote another person's point of view is easily misrepresented.

On the other hand, attribution in a work of mythology, or in the genre of literature the book of Daniel belongs to, a sort of backward-looking historical fiction, deception is not a useful category. This is paradoxical.

Things change again when a work like Daniel, to be taken in the first instance as a highly suggestive example of retrospective attribution the power of which would have been enormous in the crisis of the 2nd cent. BCE during which it was "unsealed" (to use the language of the book itself), is later taken at face value with respect to attribution but *no longer* taken at face value at the level of sign and signified; that is, references to the last kingdom before that of God's are systematically re-applied to the Roman or another era. Complex shifts of this kind are necessary when an occasional work becomes a canonical work. An analogous complex shift is evident for example in the way in which the US Constitution is received.

A passing epiphenomenon to be sure, but something like that also happened with the "Da Vinci Code." The author of that work followed to a tee the conventions of the genre of historical fiction, but I remember arguing with well-meaning people in the heyday of its popularity, people who simply didn't get that. They wanted to know if the book was "true or not."

Never mind that Brown did not see himself as a scholar engaged in the search for the historical Jesus in the sense of a Tom Wright, Marcus Borg, or Joseph Ratzinger, or even in the sense of (the fabulator) Schonfeld.

Brown after all couldn't care less about the historical Jesus.

Then you have a theologian like Spong, a serious comedian (for that reason taken seriously above all by people with a commitment to the notion that truth is, or at least ought to be, a pain-killer), who credits Brown with discoveries.

Bottom line: whereas I think it is fair to say that people like Brown and Spong are not interested in truth in the sense of the ways things were, but only in the sense of the way things ought to be, the author of the book of Daniel had a more complex sense of interests, as do his canonical interpreters. They are stuck at that place in which what is and what ought to be meet. It is, to think politically, the place of revolution. Brown and Spong instead are nothing more than court jesters.

[mikelioso]

Interesting thoughts. The mental workings o the Spong's and Brown's is of interest to me in regard to an phenomenon in the the Primary History, of the myths of the ancestors being worked to reflect the political realities of the time. I mean, if it were a product of the priest of Dan, we could imagine Dan the patriarch would get a much higher billing than he does in the present work. Presumably the powers that be in the Judean state would have been aware that the legends had been different, but the needs of making the myth conform to the political reality is the deciding factor. I hear that this a common process in Arabic genealogies, for ancestors to move around depending on the current tribal alliances. I haven't confirmed this from a good source however.

[JohnFH]

To this day, people love genealogy.

The rules of the genre are different now. For example, genealogies no longer mix divine and human pedigree as in Greece and Rome; that approach got the can in light of protological narrative in Genesis which thinks of mixed ancestry of that kind as a source of violence (a true analysis I submit).

Nor is a genealogical tree adjustable nowadays to reflect changed political alliances. It was in biblical times. It was also acceptable to stylize a lineage to make a theopolitical point (see the genealogies in Matthew and Luke).

Since polity formation is as important now as it ever was, ethnogenesis (in a best-case scenario) moves forward on the "e pluribus unum" principle. I doubt this assumption would ever have had a far-reaching effect except within the matrix of a predominantly Christian culture. This is one example is which the United States is quite literally a Christian nation.