Studying Early Judaism: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

A Guide to Resources for New Testament Studies

Studying Early Judaism

This is a Substack series studying early Judaism, check out the first post.

In this post, we are recommending resources for studying The OT Pseudepigrapha

What Are the OT Pseudepigrapha?

This is a scholarly designation for a collection of Jewish or Jewish-related writings written approximately between 300 BC and AD 300. Many texts focus on a biblical character like Enoch, Abraham, or Adam. The academic term “pseudepigrapha” means “false writing” and implies that these works were rejected by the early church for not being authentically produced by the patriarchs, prophets, or biblical figures. Unlike the OT Apocrypha (which is included in Bibles in some traditions), the OT Pseudepigrapha texts are not given any authoritative status in Christian traditions (though the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes 1 Enoch in their Bible).

These texts are immensely important for understanding Jewish religious vocabulary, traditions, perspectives, teachings, liturgy, social dynamics, and much more.

Here are the lists of texts in the OTP (based on the collection organized by James Charlesworth).

Reading the OTP

The standard English translation is Charlesworth. You can find it archives and viewable for FREE on Archive.org.

The older R.H. Charles (1913) edition can be found for free HERE.

As more ancient Jewish religious texts have been organized and translated, they have been loosely added to the list of OT “pseudepigrapha.” Eerdmans has published a some new collections in recent years.

Studying the OTP

The best focused guidebook to this literature is Dan Gurtner’s Introducing the Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism.

For a great demonstration of how the OTP and OT Apocrypha are helpful for contextualizing the New Testament, check out David deSilva’s outstanding book The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.