Pseudepigrapha are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed authorship is unfounded; a work, simply, "whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past." The word "pseudepigrapha" (from the ,
pseudēs, "false" and ,
epigraphē, "inscription"; see the related
epigraphyEpigraphy is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs engraved into stone or other durable materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them as to cultural context and date, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them...
) is the plural of "pseudepigraphon" (sometimes Latinized as "pseudepigraphum"); the Anglicized forms "pseudepigraph" and "pseudepigraphs" are also used.
The
Book of EnochThe Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared .While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian churches, it was explicitly quoted in the New Testament and by many of the early Church Fathers...
is an example of a pseudepigraph; no Hebrew scholars would ascribe its authorship to
EnochEnoch is a name occurring twice in the generations of Adam. In one reference, Enoch is described as a grandson of Adam via Cain, and as having had a city named after him...
, a figure mentioned in
Genesis 5"Generations of Adam" is a concept in in the Hebrew Bible. It is typically taken as name of Adam's line of descent going through Seth. Another view equates the generations of Adam with material about a second line of descent starting with Cain in Genesis 4, while Genesis 5 is taken as the...
. Nevertheless, in some cases, especially for books belonging to a religious
canonCanon law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
, the question of whether a text is pseudepigraphical or not elicits sensations of loyalty and can become a matter of heavy dispute. The authenticity or value of the work itself, which is a separate question for experienced readers, often becomes sentimentally entangled in the association. Though the inherent value of the text may not be called into question, the weight of a revered or even apostolic author lends authority to a text: in Antiquity pseudepigraphy was "an accepted and honored custom practiced by students/admirers of a revered figure". This is the essential motivation for pseudepigraphy in the first place.
Pseudepigraphy covers the false ascription of names of
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
s to works, even to perfectly authentic works that make no such claim within their text. Thus a widely accepted but incorrect attribution of authorship may make a perfectly authentic text pseudepigraphical. Assessing the actual writer of a text brings questions of pseudepigraphical attributions within the discipline of
literary criticismLiterary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
. In a parallel case,
forgersForgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents , with the intent to deceive. The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery...
have been known to improve the market value of a perfectly genuine 17th-century Dutch painting by adding a painted signature
Rembrandt fecitRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history...
.
On a related note, a famous name assumed by the author of a work is an
allonymA pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or sometimes, a group.Pseudonyms are often used to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre and computer hackers' handles. Actors, musicians, and other...
.
These are the basic and original meanings of the terms.
In Biblical studies, the Pseudepigrapha are Jewish religious works written
c 200 BC to 200 AD, not all of which are literally pseudepigraphical. They are distinguished by Protestants from the Deuterocanonical (Catholic and Orthodox) or
ApocryphaApocrypha comes from the Greek word , which means those having been hidden away. The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the Church as useful, but not divinely inspired...
(Protestant), the books that appear in the
SeptuagintThe Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
and
VulgateThe Vulgate is an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of old Latin translations...
but not in the Hebrew Bible or in Protestant Bibles.
CatholicsThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
distinguish only between the Deuterocanonical and all the other books, that are called
ApocryphaApocrypha comes from the Greek word , which means those having been hidden away. The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the Church as useful, but not divinely inspired...
, a name that is used also for the Pseudepigrapha in the Catholic usage.
Classical and Biblical studies
There have probably been pseudepigrapha almost from
the invention of full writingThe history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempts to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all...
. For example ancient
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
authors often refer to texts which claimed to be by
OrpheusOrpheus is an important figure from Greek mythology, the inspiration for subsequent Orphic cults, much of the literature, poetry and drama of ancient Greece and Rome and, due to his association with singing and the lyre, much dramatic Western classical music.Orpheus was called by Pindar "the...
or his pupil
MusaeusMusaeus was the name attributed to three Greek poets.-Pupil of Orpheus:Musaeus was a mythical seer and priest, the pupil or son of Orpheus, and was said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Attica. According to Pausanias, he was buried on the Museum Hill, south-west of the Acropolis...
but which attributions were generally disregarded. Already in Antiquity the collection known as the "Homeric hymns" was recognized as pseudepigraphical, that is, not actually written by Homer.
Literary studies
In secular literary studies, when works of Antiquity have been demonstrated not to have been written by the authors to whom they have traditionally been ascribed, some writers apply the prefix
pseudo- to their names. Thus the encyclopedic compilation of Greek myth called
Bibliotheke is often now attributed, not to
ApollodorusApollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
, but to "pseudo-Apollodorus" and the
CatasterismiCatasterismi is an Alexandrian prose retelling of the mythic origins of stars and constellations, as they were interpreted in Hellenistic culture...
, recounting the translations of mythic figure into
asterismAsterism may refer to:* Asterism , a pattern of stars* Asterism , an optical phenomenon in gemstones* Asterism , a moderately rare typographical symbol denoting a break in passages...
s and constellations, not to the serious astronomer
EratosthenesEratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, elegiac poet, athlete, geographer, and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude...
, but to a "pseudo-Eratosthenes". The prefix may be abbreviated, as in "ps-Apollodorus" or "ps-Eratosthenes".
Biblical studies
In Biblical studies,
pseudepigrapha refers particularly to works which purport to be written by noted authorities in either the Old and New Testaments or by persons involved in Jewish or Christian religious study or history. These works can also be written about Biblical matters, often in such a way that they appear to be as authoritative as works which have been included in the many versions of the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
Eusebius of CaesareaEusebius of Caesarea became the bishop of Caesarea Palaestina, the capital of Iudaea province, c 314...
indicates this usage dates back at least to
Serapion, bishop of AntiochSerapion was Patriarch of Antioch . He is known primarily through his theological writings. Eusebius refers to three works of Serapion in his history, but admits that others probably existed: first is a private letter addressed to Caricus and Pontius against Montanism, from which Eusebius quotes an...
) whom Eusebius records as having said: "But those writings which are falsely inscribed with their name (
ta pseudepigrapha), we as experienced persons reject...."
Many such works were also referred to as
ApocryphaApocrypha comes from the Greek word , which means those having been hidden away. The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the Church as useful, but not divinely inspired...
, which originally connoted "secret writings", those that were rejected for liturgical public reading. An example of a text that is both apocryphal and pseudepigraphical is the
Odes of SolomonThe Odes of Solomon is a collection of 42 odes attributed to Solomon. Various scholars have dated the composition of these religious poems to anywhere in the range of the first three centuries AD...
, pseudepigraphical because it was not actually written by Solomon but instead is a collection of early Christian (first to second century) hymns and poems, originally written not in Hebrew, and apocryphal because not accepted in either the Tanach or the
New TestamentThe New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament, both terms being associated with Supersessionism...
.
But Protestants have also applied the word
Apocrypha to texts found in the Roman Catholic and
OrthodoxEastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity. The term is generally used in Western Christianity to...
scriptures which were not found in
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
manuscripts. Roman Catholics called those texts "deuterocanonical". Accordingly, there arose in some Protestant Biblical scholarship an extended use of the term
pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the Bibical canon, because of the authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the
Biblical canonA Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Biblical books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity. The term itself was first coined by Christians, but the idea is found in Jewish sources...
s recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called
deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term
pseudepigraphical, as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for the clarity it brings to discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter even more, Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of the books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants accept. The same is true of some
Jewish sectsSeveral groups, sometimes called "denominations", "branches," or "movements", have developed among Jews of the modern era, especially Ashkenazi Jews living in anglophone countries...
.
There is a tendency not to use the word
pseudepigrapha when describing works later than about 300 AD when referring to Biblical matters. But the late-appearing
Gospel of BarnabasThe Gospel of Barnabas is a substantial book depicting the life of Jesus; and claiming to be by Jesus's disciple Barnabas, who in this work is one of the twelve apostles...
,
Apocalypse of Pseudo-MethodiusThe Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius is a 7th-century apocalypse that shaped the eschatological imagination of Christendom throughout the Middle Ages. The work was written in Syriac in the late 7th century, in reaction to the Islamic conquest of the Near East, and is falsely attributed to the...
, the
Pseudo-ApuleiusPseudo-Apuleius refers to the author of a Herbarium or De herbarum virtutibus, also referred as Herbarium Apuleii Platonici; it is a medical herbal of the 5th century, A.D....
(author of a fifth-century
herbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
ascribed to Apuleius), and the author traditionally referred to as the "
Pseudo-Dionysius the AreopagitePseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as Pseudo-Denys, is the anonymous theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century whose Corpus Areopagiticum was pseudonymously ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul mentioned in...
", are classic examples of pseudepigraphy. In the fifth century the moralist
SalvianSalvian, was a Christian writer of the 5th century, born probably at Cologne, some time between 400 and 405.-Personal life:He was educated at the school of Treves and seems to have been brought up as a Christian...
published
Contra avaritiam under the name of Timothy; the letter in which he explained to his former pupil, Bishop Salonius, his motives for so doing survives. There is also a category of
modern pseudepigraphaModern pseudepigrapha, or modern apocrypha, are terms sometimes used to refer to pseudepigrapha of recent origin – any book written in the style of the books of the Bible or other religious scriptures, and claiming to be of similar age, but written in a much later period...
.
Examples of
Old TestamentIn Christianity, the Old Testament is the collection of books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the comparable texts are known as the Septuagint, from the...
pseudepigrapha are the
EthiopianEthiopian may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to the country of Ethiopia* A person from Ethiopia, or of Ethiopian descent. For information about the Ethiopian people, see Demographics of Ethiopia and Culture of Ethiopia. For specific persons, see List of Ethiopians.* Ethiopian Semitic...
Book of EnochThe Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared .While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian churches, it was explicitly quoted in the New Testament and by many of the early Church Fathers...
,
JubileesThe Book of Jubilees , sometimes called the Lesser Genesis , is an ancient Jewish religious work, considered one of the Pseudepigrapha by most Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christians. It was well known to Early Christian writers in the East and the West, as well as by the Rabbis...
(both of which are canonical in the Abyssinian Church of Ethiopia); the
Life of Adam and EveThe Life of Adam and Eve, also known, in its Greek version, as the Apocalypse of Moses, is a Jewish pseudepigraphical group of writings. It recounts the lives of Adam and Eve from after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden to their deaths. It provides more detail about the Fall of Man, including...
and the
Pseudo-PhiloPseudo-Philo is the name commonly used for a Jewish pseudepigraphical work in Latin, so called because it was transmitted along with Latin translations of the works of Philo of Alexandria but is very obviously not written by Philo...
. Examples of New Testament pseudepigrapha (but in these cases also likely to be called
New Testament ApocryphaThe New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with those books which are regarded as "canonical"...
) are the
Gospel of PeterThe Gospel of Peter may have been a prominent passion narrative in the early history of Christianity, but over time it passed out of common usage. Only fragments survive...
and the attribution of the
Epistle to the LaodiceansAn Epistle to the Laodiceans, purportedly written by Paul of Tarsus to the Laodicean Church, is, according to some, mentioned in the canonical Epistle to the Colossians...
to Paul. Further examples of New Testament pseudepigrapha include the aforementioned
Gospel of Barnabas, and the
Gospel of JudasThe Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel purported to document conversations between the apostle Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ. The document is not claimed to have been written by Judas himself, but rather by Gnostic followers of Jesus...
, which begins by presenting itself as "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot".
Biblical Pseudepigrapha
The term Pseudepigrapha commonly refers to numerous works of Jewish religious literature written from about 200 BC to 200 AD. Not all of these works are actually pseudepigraphical. Such works include the following:
- 3 Maccabees
The book of the 3 Maccabees is found in most Orthodox Bibles as a part of the Anagignoskomena, while Protestants and Catholics consider it non-canonical, except the Moravian Brethren who included it in the Apocrypha of the Czech Kralicka Bible....
- 4 Maccabees
The book of 4 Maccabees is a homily or philosophic discourse praising the supremacy of pious reason over passion. It is not in the Bible for most churches, but is an appendix to the Greek Bible, and in the canon of the Georgian Bible. It was in the 1688 Romanian Bible where it was called "Iosip"...
- Assumption of Moses
The Assumption of Moses is a Jewish apocryphal pseudepigraphical work. It is known from a single sixth-century incomplete manuscript in Latin that was discovered by Antonio Ceriani in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in the mid-nineteenth century and published by him in 1861.-Identification:The...
- Ethiopic Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared .While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian churches, it was explicitly quoted in the New Testament and by many of the early Church Fathers...
(1 Enoch)
- Slavonic Book of Enoch
The Second Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic of the Old Testament. It is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature. Late 1st century CE is the dating often preferred...
(2 Enoch)
- Book of Jubilees
- Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch)
- Letter of Aristeas
The so-called Letter of Aristeas or Letter to Philocrates is a Hellenistic work of the second century BCE, one of the Pseudepigrapha. Josephus who paraphrases about two-fifths of the letter, ascribes it to Aristeas and written to Philocrates, describing the Greek translation of the Hebrew Law by...
- Life of Adam and Eve
The Life of Adam and Eve, also known, in its Greek version, as the Apocalypse of Moses, is a Jewish pseudepigraphical group of writings. It recounts the lives of Adam and Eve from after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden to their deaths. It provides more detail about the Fall of Man, including...
- Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah
- Psalms of Solomon
One of the Pseudepigrapha, the Psalms of Solomon is a group of eighteen psalms that are not part of any scriptural canon . They are distinct from, but may be modeled after or derived from the Book of Psalms of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, which are traditionally attributed to David rather than...
- Sibylline Oracles
* This article is about the Sibylline Oracles. For the books, see Sibylline Books.The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Twelve books of Sibylline Oracles...
- Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch)
- Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Torah. It is a pseudepigraphical work comprising the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob. It is part of the Oscan Armenian Orthodox Bible of 1666. Fragments of similar writings were...
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