Michael Stone, Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-6636-3.

256 pages, $30.00. 2011.

Reviewed by Jim West

Chapter SevenThe Transmission of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

Finally, Stone addresses one of the more interesting aspects of the subject asking the vexing question, why is it that so much Jewish literature has been transmitted by Christians instead of Jews? Thats an excellent question and Stone has a good answer. But before he gets to it he talks about the rediscovery of apocrypha and pseudepigrapha and ancient Jewish Greek translations. Of this material he notes that the story of the Pseudepigrapha starts from the translation by Jews of works, composed originally in Semitic languages, into Greek. And he continues This demands that we reconsider some aspects of Hellenistic Judaism and its culture. Works like the Book of the Watchers existed, it seems, in Greek, and consequently the phenomena of compositions written in a biblical style in Greek are not just the result of the enormous influence rightly attributed to the Greek translation of the Torah and other authoritative writings. They may also reflect the influence of extrabiblical Hebrew and Aramaic works known in Greek translation (p. 181). This interesting observation deserves further and wider consideration. So Stone offers a bit before he moves on to a consideration of Christian transmission of Jewish texts. Its here that he poses the central question, framing it thusly: A severe conundrum arises at this level of discussion of the transmission of Second Temple period Jewish writing: why was all this literature that was composed in Hebrew and Aramaic not preserved in the Jewish tradition (p. 184). His answer? Certain works may have been rejected because of their content, while other materials simply were abandoned. He writes

 we may hypothesize that this loss is related to a change in the understanding of authority (p. 184). In short, some works were preserved by Christians because they found value in them and saw them as somewhat instructive (or perhaps even authoritative) while for Jews, those same materials lacked authority. Its a simple, brilliant, and perfectly sensible explanation. The chapter and the volume conclude with a glance at the various critical editions of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal materials. But then Stone offers an interesting aside in addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we may expect to have new texts turn up from further research into existing manuscripts in Jewish and Christian traditions, and those new texts will form part of the complex picture of Second Temple period Judaism (p. 194). That may be wishful thinking, but if it turns out to be right, the discovery of such materials will give plenty of doctoral students something to do. Nonetheless, it is doubtful in equal measure that those doctoral students will manage to produce something as useful as Stone has. The breadth of knowledge he possesses is found in fewer and fewer as more and more specialize in less and less. Finis