Old Testament Abstracts

This volume carries forward A.'s long-standing interest in the Psalms of Solomon (PsSol) that found expression in his 2017 Göttingen dissertation on this writing and his 2018 edition of the book in the Göttingen LXX. It opens with brief remarks about the texts of PsSol, its attribution to Solomon, and its historical-theological significance. It then continues with the Greek text of the 18 "psalms" and a German translation of these, accompanied by text-critical and translational annotations in the footnotes. The volume's end matter comprises a bibliography and a series of indexes that cover both the present work and A.'s above-mentioned edition of the Greek text. The indexes provide references to, [End Page 982] e.g., manuscripts used, passages cited, names of persons, places, and topics, and words in Greek and other ancient languages. On the last page, A. presents his stemma codicum for PsSol.—C.T.B.

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In this reworking of his University of Manchester dissertation directed by George J. Brooke, C. sets out to show that the Book of Leviticus, chaps. 16–27 in particular, was a major influence on the movement whose adherents resided at Qumran and other nearby sites in the late Second Temple period, both in its earlier ("pre-sectarian") and later ("sectarian") stages. In making his case, C. first notes that the caves at Qumran and its environs have yielded no less than 25 manuscripts of Leviticus in varying formats and states of preservation. From this basis, C. proceeds to examine in some detail 4 DSS texts in which the influence of Leviticus on the given's document's structure, themes, and ideological emphases proves significant. Of these, the first two, i.e., Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, are likely earlier/pre-sectarian in origin, while the remaining two, i.e., the Damascus Document and MMT, are later/"sectarian" productions. Prior to his synthesizing conclusion, C. summarily surveys a number of other DSS, both earlier and later, i.e., the Aramaic Levi Document, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Apocryphon of Jeremiah, as well as 4Q274; 4Q251; and 1QS, all of which evidence the influence of Leviticus on their content and respective ideologies. Overall, C. concludes that the writers of the above texts in their utilization of Leviticus typically did so in ways that, e.g., elaborated on the source text, clarified its meaning, and made its provisions more stringent in accordance with the cultic and educational purposes that inform their compositions.—C.T.B.

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G.'s volume provides interested readers with an up-to-date orientation to a body of writings that have been the object of much scholarly attention in recent decades. The volume opens with a foreword by Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and a preface and an introduction by G. In his introduction, G. addresses a series of topics related to the corpus featured in his work and his approach to this organized under the headings of Pseudepigraphy in Antiquity; Types of Ancient Pseudepigraphy; Rationale for Pseudepigraphy; Reception of Pseudepigraphy; Study of Old Testament Pseudepigraphy (with subsections Pseudepigrapha in their Judaic Context and Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha); and The Books of the Pseudepigrapha (with sub-sections Overview and Scope of the Present Work). The introduction concludes with a listing of the four generic categories of pseudepigraphical writings that G. will treat in the continuation of...