Notes on the Seforim Chitzonim - pt.3

Further on Book of Ben Sira ; Definitions of literary forgery and Pseudepigrapha, as it relates to Seforim Chitzonim

Part of a series on Seforim Chitzonim. Previous part here:

Ben Sira

“Book of Sirach” - Wikipedia, with minor adjustments:

"Ben Sira is not part of Tanakh, perhaps due to its late authorship, although it is not clear that the canon was completely closed at the time of Ben Sira. 

Others have suggested that Ben Sira's self-identification as the author precluded it from attaining canonical status, which was reserved for works that were attributed (or could be attributed) to the prophets. 

Others say that it was denied entry to the canon as a rabbinical counter-reaction to its embrace by the nascent Christian community.

Some Jews in the diaspora considered Ben Sira to be scripture. For instance, the Greek translation made by Ben Sira's grandson was included in the Septuagint, the 2nd-century BCE Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures used by Diaspora Jews, through which it became part of the Greek canon. 

The multiplicity of manuscript fragments uncovered in the Cairo Genizah evince its authoritative status among Egyptian Jewry until the Middle Ages."

Definitions of literary forgery and Pseudepigrapha, as it relates to Seforim Chitzonim

One of the central themes of the Seforim Chitzonim, is the fact that many of them claim to be written by earlier authorities, when clearly they are later. Ben Sira is an exception to this, as mentioned.

Wikipedia defines Literary forgery:

Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir or other presumably nonfictional writing deceptively presented as true when, in fact, it presents untrue or imaginary information or content.

And Pseudepigrapha as follows: 

“Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past [...]

In biblical studies, the term pseudepigrapha can refer to an assorted collection of Jewish religious works thought to be written around 300 BCE to 300 CE [...]

In addition to the sets of generally agreed to be non-canonical works, scholars will also apply the term to canonical works who make a direct claim of authorship, yet this authorship is doubted. For example, the Book of Daniel is considered by some to have been written in the 2nd century BC, 400 years after the prophet Daniel lived, and thus the work is pseudepigraphic.”

Bart D. Ehrman, in his book Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (2011), famously argues that many early Christian works were literary forgeries, plain and simple.

I'd like to quote a few relevant quotes on this topic, from Jonathan Klawans’s impressive book, Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism (2019. in this quote and the next one, I split Klawans quote into further paragraphs):

[W]ile modern poets (and, I should add, modern scholars) struggle to establish originality vis-à-vis their predecessors, ancient Jewish writers--as well as a number of the earliest Christian ones--largely struggled to conceal their identities and deny any authorial originality. 

But the difference is cultural, not chronological; Greeks and Romans valued individual authorship, while this was not the case in other parts of the ancient Near East [...] 

Christians come in time to side with the Greeks (the vast majority of patristic literature is authored), while the rabbis, as we have noted, produced anonymous, collective works.

Klawans also writes: 

This does not necessarily mean that all pseudepigraphs are premeditated forgeries. In some cases a work falsely titled may have been composed anonymously or otherwise without any intention to deceive—the false title enters later. 

Another important argument against linking pseudepigraphy with forgery across the board relates to the recognition that some authors of pseudepigraphic apocalypses (like 4 Ezra) may have been inspired by visionary experiences. 

Some assert that pseudepigraphy—or at least certain forms of it—had become conventional. 

For any one or another of these reasons, it is not uncommon to find scholars distinguishing between pseudepigraphy and forgery, deeming these ancient Jewish authors innocent of the charge of deception.