The Pseudepigrapha are among the most important non-canonical texts for biblical study, second only to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Students of the Bible engage the literature of the Pseudepigrapha (Greek portions as well as those in Hebrew and Aramaic) because this material provides sharp insight into how the Jewish community of Jesus’ day approached and interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures.
...an invaluable resource for the study of both early rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. —Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology includes morphologically tagged and lemmatized Greek texts for 81 books, letters, and fragments, making it the most complete electronic assemblage of Greek pseudepigraphal texts available! Currently, people who want to study the OT Greek Pseudepigrapha must track down and acquire dozens of critical editions in hard copy, scattered across libraries and publishers around the globe.
The Greek running text in the Logos edition is drawn from the best available scholarly editions in the public domain. All Greek texts have been morphologically tagged and lemmatized by Dr. Ken M. Penner, a project director and general editor for The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha project. Dr. Penner also helped prepare a number of the texts.
A complete list of included texts can be found below. The list of public domain Greek texts in the Logos edition essentially mirrors what you'd find in Charlesworth’s The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 Vols., Doubleday) and M. Denis’s Concordance grecque des pseudépigraphes d’Ancien Testament. Concordance, corpus des texts, indices (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1987). We have also been supplied with Greek texts from the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha project to ensure that we have the best public domain editions available.
Several texts left out of other electronic editions on the market (e.g., Apocalypse of Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon) are included in the Logos edition! The Logos edition also includes brand new introductions, written by Michael Heiser, Ph.D. (see samples below). These introductions provide a summary of the significant features of each text and explain how each plays a role in biblical studies.
Value of the Pseudepigrapha for Biblical Studies
The Pseudepigrapha are key documents for biblical study, cited broadly in the literature of the field. A simple search for references to the Books of Enoch, for example, returns over 1,100 hits in the Word Biblical Commentary, and over 440 hits in Anchor Bible Dictionary. That's more than 1,500 references in just two sets of books—just for Enoch!
Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible summarizes the significance of the Pseudepigrapha as follows:
Though not included in any of the major Western canons of Scripture, these texts, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, are important for any attempt to understand the religious, political, and social world at the turn of the eras. They represent the multifaceted Jewish responses to the encroachment of Hellenism, the establishment of Maccabean power, Roman conquest and hegemony, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the rise of Christianity. Christian preservation and adaptation of nearly all of these texts also enhance our knowledge of Jewish-Christian relations in the first several centuries C.E. In addition, many theological notions present in embryonic form in the OT are explored and expressed with increased sophistication within the Pseudepigrapha, making this literature an invaluable resource for the study of both early rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
It is common for Christian pastors and students to assume that they can best understand early Judaism through rabbinical material like the Talmud and Mishnah. These works are a useful tool for contextualizing the New Testament, but the Pseudepigrapha offer unparalleled insight into the diversity and nature of Jewish doctrinal beliefs during the pre-Christian era.
In addition to doctrinal issues, the Greek Pseudepigrapha are essential for the light they shed on lexigraphical and grammatical issues in NT studies. If you're familiar with BDAG you've seen the frequency with which the authors cite pseudepigraphical material. Having a searchable Greek Pseudepigrapha resource makes it possible to very quickly track down these citations and read the broader context...or find examples of your own!
If you are a scholar or a student who has reasonable facility in Greek, Logos Bible Software’s collection of Greek Pseudepigrapha will come as a welcome tool. Not only is this the most complete collection of morphologically-tagged Greek Pseudepigrapha available in any computer platform, but Logos has added to its value by including short introductions for each book. Background information includes discussion of genre, date, authorship, original language, content summary, and relevance for those who do exegesis in the canonical material of the Old and New Testament. The total output of these introductions exceeds 50,000 words, easily the equivalent of an introductory book on the subject. Bibliography for each book is also included.
