Thursday, December 09, 2004

Blogging at its best @ Paleojudaica

On Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson suggests that this post on Paleojudaica might be come a classic:

Philo or the Pseudepigrapha

I agree; great post. I'm interested by this paragraph in particular:
Some other pseudepigrapha are likely to be Jewish but cannot be shown to be so beyond reasonable doubt, such as various bits of the Sibylline Oracles. Other texts may be Jewish but then again may not be, such as the Testament of Job and Joseph and Aseneth. Still others are often used as Jewish texts but in my opinion are probably Christian compositions; for example, the Testament of Abraham.
I had never read the Testament of Abraham before until we covered it in our post-graduate Greek class here in Birmingham this term. What an interesting text. And the thing that continually occurred to us was that this could so easily be a Christian text in toto. Reading it with a knowledge of the Greek NT continually reminds one of little phrases and ideas from the Greek NT, especially the fascinating section on the broad and narrow way but also elsewhere.

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