Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Biographical note
- Abbreviations
- 1 An assessment of recent developments
- THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
- BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS
- 6 Translating the Old Testament
- 7 Retelling the Old Testament
- 8 Commenting on the Old Testament
- 9 Citing the Old Testament
- 10 Apocalyptic literature
- THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
- Indexes
7 - Retelling the Old Testament
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Biographical note
- Abbreviations
- 1 An assessment of recent developments
- THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
- BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS
- 6 Translating the Old Testament
- 7 Retelling the Old Testament
- 8 Commenting on the Old Testament
- 9 Citing the Old Testament
- 10 Apocalyptic literature
- THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
- Indexes
Summary
THE ‘REWRITTEN BIBLE’: THE PROBLEM
Within the corpus of post-biblical Jewish literature are a number of texts devoted to retelling in their own words the story of the Bible. These texts are often treated as constituting a literary genre, for which the titles ‘rewritten Bible’ (Vermes, 1973, pp. 67–126) and ‘texte continue’ (Perrot and Bogaert, 1976, pp. 22–8) have been proposed. This type of composition has been briefly defined as ‘a narrative that follows Scripture but includes a substantial amount of supplements and interpretative developments’ (Vermes in Schürer, 1986, p. 326). Much has been written about the content of these texts – its relationship to Scripture and to the midrashic tradition as a whole. Little, however, has been said about their formal literary characteristics. The supposed genre as such remains ill-defined. No one has yet established the differentia of the genre, or compared and contrasted it with the other genres attested in early Jewish literature. This lack of clarity becomes obvious once we raise the question of which texts belong to the genre. There is little agreement. Vermes (in Schürer, 1986, pp. 308–41) includes the following: Jubilees; Genesis Apocryphon; Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblkarum; the Book of Noah (1Q19, 19bis = 1QNoah); the Testament of Kohath (4QTQahat); the Testament of Amram (4QAmrama−e); the Samuel Apocryphon (4Q160 = 4QVisSamuel); the Martyrdom of Isaiah; and Josephus' Jewish Antiquities (cf. p. 326).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- It Is Written: Scripture Citing ScriptureEssays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, SSF, pp. 99 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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