Pseudepigrapha: Influential ancient Jewish fanfiction.

PSEUDEPIGRAPHUM su.də'pɪ.ɡrə.fəm noun. A document definitely not written by the author it claims, nor in the time it claims. Sometimes fraud; sometimes just fanfiction.

2. A Jewish writing ascribed to one of the patriarchs or prophets of bible times, but actually written after 200BC.

[Plural, pseudepigrapha su.də'pɪ.ɡrə.fə noun; pseudepigraphic su.de.pɪ'ɡræ.fɪk adjective.]

The bible isn’t the only ancient Israeli book in history. Same as today—though certainly not in the same volume as today—tons of books were written, distributed, and became popular. And same as today, many were about God. Were they as Spirit-inspired as the bible? Nah. That’s why they weren’t included in the book collection which became our bible.

Well, most of them. There’s also apocrypha. Certain books were revered by certain churches, and got added to their bibles. Hence Ethiopian Christians have 81 books in their bibles, Orthodox Christians have 79, and Roman Catholics have 73. I’ve read most of their apocrypha; largely it’s good stuff. Good advice to follow; it’s like some of the better writings of Christian saints. Won’t hurt you to read it! But I don’t believe it’s as inspired as bible—same as the better writings of Christian saints. Good stuff, but is it infallible stuff? Meh; be wary.

Then there are the books to be really wary about, and that’d be the pseudepigrapha (Greek for “fake writings”). Whenever I write about Jewish mythology, these books are where these myths come from. They were popular in ancient Judea. Popular even in Jesus’s day. Jesus’s followers grew up hearing about ’em, even reading them.

There are even references to them in the bible. We have a full-on quote from one of ’em in Jude:

Jude 1.14-15 NET

14Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, “Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones, 15to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds that they have committed, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Jude wasn’t quoting the Old Testament, ’cause the OT has absolutely no Enoch quotes whatsoever. And no, Jude didn’t have any special revelation from God about what Enoch did or didn’t say. Jude was quoting a popular book, 1 Enoch, specifically this verse here:

1 Enoch 1.9

“Behold, he comes with myriads of the holy to pass judgment upon them, and will destroy the impious, and will call to account all flesh for everything the sinners and the impious have done and committed against him.”

The book was supposedly written by Enoch ben Jared, the great-grandfather of Noah the ark-builder. Somehow it survived the great flood, then 10,000 years or so of human history, then managed to not get into the Hebrew Old Testament and Septuagint, but leapfrogged them both and got into the Ethiopian bible.

Wait, Enoch wrote a book? No.

How these books came to be. Still come to be.

Books like 1 Enoch (and the 1 should tip you off there’s more than one of them!) claimed to be written by various patriarchs, prophets, kings, angels, and other bible characters. Same as Muhammad claimed the Quran was dictated to him by Gabriel, or Joseph Smith claimed the book of Abraham was written by Abraham. But there’s no reasonable way these bible characters could’ve written these books. The books didn’t crop up till the time of the Hasmonean kings of Judea, written in a version of Aramaic or Greek which these bible characters wouldn’t have spoken or even known. Enoch certainly didn’t speak Greek!

“Well, but what if Enoch did speak Greek? What if Greek was the original Adamite language?” Yeah, kids have actually asked me this question. It’s like asking me whether 21st-century American English could’ve somehow been the original Adamite language; it’s just as ridiculous.

Nope. These books are fiction. Now, the question is whether they’re innocent fiction, or malicious fiction. Were people making up stories about bible characters so they could tell fun, imaginative, Narnia-style stories to their friends and kids? Or were people claiming this stuff was all true, and trying to bend the Pharisee religion of the day into something weird and heretic?

Obviously we believe Jesus’s brother Jude quoted 1 Enoch for all the right reasons. It’s like when a pastor quotes the latest Marvel superhero movie, or Mel Gibson’s 1995 movie Braveheart. They’re trying to illustrate their sermons; they’re borrowing ideas from popular culture that’ll stick in their listeners’ minds. Hopefully they’re using these illustrations to emphasize the teaching in the scriptures, not the things these movies intentionally or unwittingly teach. A good preacher will stick to the scriptures. A bad preacher, not so much.

Here’s the thing about those movies: The Marvel movie is pure fiction. We all know this; much as we might love Thor movies, we know Thor Odinson’s not real, and we definitely know better than to worship him like the ancient Europeans used to. Braveheart, on the other hand, is a little trickier. Screenwriter Randall Wallace and director Mel Gibson made it look like an historical movie biography of Sir William Wallace. But it’s pure fiction. It took huge liberties with Blind Harry’s 1488 Scots poem The Wallace, which is also quite a bit fictional. But it looks historical, and plenty of people unknowingly think it is historical. Good luck informing people who straight-up love that movie.

So, 1 Enoch: It’s likewise pure fiction. And I tend to give it the benefit of the doubt: It’s largely innocent fanfiction. Ancient kids were clamoring for more stories about bible characters, so inventive writers wrote some! Don’t take them seriously. If they happen to teach something moral and useful, feel free to quote that; if they don’t, skip that—same as you do with all popular fiction, right?

Pseudepigraphic books were part of first-century Israeli popular culture. Jesus and the apostles grew up with these stories. They’re like our superhero stories… where, sad to say, some Christians know ’em better than they do bible. Because these stories contain bible characters, it’s totally understandable if an apostle mixed up what a character did in the stories, with what a character did in the bible. Which is why we sometimes get weird quotes like this one:

Acts 7.53 NET

“You received the law by decrees given by angels, but you did not obey it.”

St. Stephen the martyr said this right before the Judean senate dragged him out of his trial and lynched him. It strikes Christians as weird because the scriptures never say angels decreed the Law; the LORD did. That idea comes from the Enoch myths. In them, angels taught the Law to the Adamites, millennia before the LORD gave it to Moses. Stephen wasn’t referencing bible. He was referencing popular fiction. Fiction everybody in his culture knew; fiction some Jews know even today. But it’s fiction very few people in popular Christian culture know.

No, I’m not therefore suggesting you read every single pseudepigraphum. You can; I’ve read a bunch of ’em. I got James H. Charlesworth’s two volumes, but other (and cheaper!) editions exist, and of course some are posted on the internet. Some of these stories are super weird. Others are super boring. But my point is you oughta know this is where Jewish mythology comes from. We scholars aren’t just guessing what ancient Jews might’ve read for fun, and believed: We got the books.

And lest you scoff at them for this behavior, you oughta bear in mind we Christians likewise have our fanfiction… which heavily, heavily influence the way Christian popular culture tends to think about bible.

We got Frank Peretti’s novels on spiritual warfare, which still lead Christians to believe our prayers contribute to an ongoing swordfight in the heavens between angels and devils. We got Tim LaHaye’s novels on the End Times, which are already out of date when it comes to technology (they were written 30 years ago, y’know), but Christians still think they generally describe how the End will come. We have John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which depicts how Satan fell because the bible doesn’t give us details—and it’s still how Christians depict how Satan fell. Christian fanfiction goes back centuries, and your average Christian has no idea that some of our popular beliefs aren’t based on bible, but on some poet or author who had a clever idea.

When humans don’t have all the details, we regularly fill in the blanks with whatever we can find. Often ourselves. And sometimes popular fiction. That’s what pseudepigrapha was. Still is. Heads up.