Liv Ingeborg Lied

Look to the East: New and Forgotten Sources of 4 Ezra

In this essay we will trace some new and some almost forgotten lines of the history of transmission and use of 4Ezra in the Christian East. We are pleased to dedicate this essay to Michael E. Stone and his monumental contribution to scholarship, both on 4Ezra and on Armenian text and manuscript traditions.1 In recent years, some important manuscripts have come to light—some fragmented and some complete—that give us a better picture of the transmission and reception of 4Ezra. In the current essay we want to address some of these manuscripts and fragments, as well as the implications they have for the study of 4Ezra. We will begin by exploring two surviving fragments which, despite havingbeenknown to the scholarly community for some time, havenot been actively engaged by scholars.We will discuss the way in which these fragments and the manuscripts they were once part of have been used, both historically and in the scholarly discussion of 4Ezra, how they can be approached in scholarship, and how our approaches affect perceptions of both the surviving manuscript materials and of 4Ezra as a book.2 We will also present a lectionary manuscript that was not known to the scholarly world until 2014 and that can be seen as a “new” manuscript containing passages excerpted from 4Ezra, or alternatively as a new source for the history of transmission of 4Ezra. Finally, we will develop some of the implications of these specific manuscripts and fragments for the understanding of the conception and circulation of 4Ezra, with a particular focus on the transmission and use in the Syriac tradition. It has long been known that 4Ezra survives in a complete copy in the oldest extant Syriac Old Testament pandect (full-bible codex), the socalled Codex Ambrosianus: Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 21 Inf. and B 21

2 Baruch and the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus (7a1): Studying Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in Their Manuscript Context

This article presents three hypotheses that may shed light on the place of 2 Baruch in the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus, the sixth-/seventh-century Old Testament codex that contains the only known complete copy of 2 Baruch. Whereas scholars of 2 Baruch have generally treated this copy in isolation from the rest of the manuscript, using it primarily as a witness to the (hypothetical) early Jewish text, this essay approaches 2 Baruch as an integral part of the codex, exploring codicological elements, the order and organization of books, as well as paratextual features. Inspired by the perspective of New Philology, this article contributes to the ongoing discussions about the origins, transmission and transformation of the so-called Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, claiming the importance of studying them in the manuscript contexts in which they are copied. The article will also be a contribution to the further study of the Codex Ambrosianus and the engagement with 2 Baruch among Syriac Christians.

Text–Work–Manuscript: What Is an ‘Old Testament Pseudepigraphon’?*

The 2013 volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila and Alexander Panayotov, is a highly important contribution to the field of Pseudepigrapha studies, making previously unpublished material available for further study. This review essay discusses the editorial strategies that have shaped this volume, focusing in particular on the representation of its basic building block, the pseudepigraphon. Exploring two entries in the volume, ‘The Book of Noah’ and ‘The Story of Melchizedek with the Melchizedek Legend and the Chronicon Paschale’, this article demonstrates how privileging the early ‘work’ as the default mode of representation creates imaginations of pseudepigrapha that may not match the manuscript sources that have in fact survived.

Recent Scholarship on 2 Baruch: 2000—2009

This essay presents scholarship on 2 Baruch published from 2000 to 2009 and discusses the main topics, perspectives and debates addressed in these recent contributions. The first part of the essay provides a general introduction to 2 Baruch, offering a brief overview of the literary contents and historical context of the text, as well as a short résumé of the main debates of scholarship in the period 1866—1999. The second, main, part addresses four topics: (1) recent text editions, translations and critical editions, (2) contributions addressing the composition of 2 Baruch, (3) significant thematic studies, and (4) studies dedicated to the provenance, social situation and reception of 2 Baruch. These issues are discussed with an eye for two prominent debates in recent scholarship on the Pseudepigrapha: first, the debate of the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, and second, the methodological debate of the relationship between narrative fiction and the historical situation of ancient writings.