Textual Identity in Jewish and Christian Antiquity

Harvard FAS

Modern concepts of "book" and "authorship" often do not fit much of our ancient Jewish and Christian evidence for literary production. In many cases--from biblical and NT literature to the Dead Sea Scrolls to LXX to Old Testament pseudepigrapha to New Testament apocrypha to Hekhalot literature--our evidence resists the limitation of "authorial creativity" to one closed and complete moment of composition, let alone a single "author," instead reflecting processes more akin to what we call…