Introduction

A History of Research on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

“…Reed, Peters, and Perrin) have also shown that these textual traditions have the potential to contribute to ongoing theoretical discussions on the practice of pseudepigraphic attribution in ancient Judaism. In the past few decades, scholars like Najman (2003, 2010) and Mroczek (2016) have advanced our understanding of Jewish pseudepigraphy in significant ways, challenging the notion that pseudepigraphic attribution was simply an attempt at investing new texts with scriptural authority by associating them with a venerable (or ‘biblical’) figure from Israel’s sacred past. This is not to say that pseudepigraphic attribution was never used to authorize new texts, but rather that this model does not exhaust the reasons an ancient author or scribal community might choose to compose pseudepigrapha.…”

“…Here, the author(s) of 4 Ezra participated in and extended the Ezra discourse so as to construct an ‘Ezra’ suitable to emulate and imitate after the cataclysmic events of 70 CE. Mroczek (2016), building on the work of Najman, also sought to complicate earlier treatments of Jewish pseudepigraphy, using the figure of David and Second Temple David traditions as her example. For her (2016: 53), Davidic attribution is not primarily about investing the psalms with authority or even about Davidic ‘authorship’ per se.…”

“…Instead, she (2016: 53) proposed another way of understanding pseudepigraphic practices, namely, ‘to think of them also as effusions of historical, ethical, and aesthetic interest in a compelling character—as biography, not bibliography’. Mroczek (2016: 58) suggested that the practice of what we typically call pseudepigraphic attribution is not always a way to ‘confer authority on a text’, but is more often ‘borne out of the compulsion and desire to continue telling stories about a favorite character’.…”