Saturday, January 08, 2005

"PREVIOUSLY KNOWN WRITINGS?" Someone at Deinde (permalinks malfunctioning, at least in my browser) who doesn't seem to give a name, in an aside in a post dealing with "biblioblogger" terminology, writes the following:
I think of the discussions of terminology like 'Pseudepigrapha' and 'Rewritten Bible' which are misleading and are being renamed by some scholars ('Previously Known Writings' and 'Reworked Scriptures' respectively).

I've never heard "previously known writings" applied to pseudepigrapha and I don't know what it means. The term "parabiblical literature" is sometimes used fairly similarly to "pseudepigrapha," but the match isn't exact - depending on your canon, some OT Apocrypha could be regarded as parabiblical, as could the NT Apocrypha in general. Pseudepigrapha is one of those terms that is dreadful, but so entrenched it's unlikely to be replaced.

Anyhow, please say more on this.

Incidentally, I'll take biblioblogger over any of the other options proposed in the post.

UPDATE: Should have thought to Google the phrase. Stephen Carlson has done so and explains that the suggested usage comes from a misreading of something Peter Flint wrote. Some of the nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls (material from 1 Enoch, the book of Jubilees, Aramaic Levi, etc.) are previously known writings whereas the others are not: we know them only from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Thanks Stephen. That was fast.

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