Saturday, October 17, 2015

Anxious Noah

PHILIP JENKINS has published a new series of posts at the Anxious Bench, this one on the (more or less) lost Book of Noah. Since this week's reading in the Jewish liturgy is the story of Noah, this seems like a good time to link to his posts.

Noah’s Book

Reading Noah

Noah’s Magic

The More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project is working on some of the material that Professor Jenkins mentions and has already published one text relevant to the Book of Noah which escaped his attention. In Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1, Martha Himmelfarb published an excerpt from a medieval Hebrew text call the Book of Asap which fragment may be an excerpt from the Book of Noah. See her chapter "The Book of Noah" on pp. 40-45. In volume 2 we intend to publish all surviving fragments of the Book of Giants in any language. Also for volume 2, I am currently working on a new translation of the Hebrew magical treatise Sefer HaRazim (the Book of Mysteries, on which more here and links) which takes into account recently published manuscript evidence.

Additional past posts on ancient lost books are collected here and links.