What Are the Pseudepigrapha?

Picture a secret society lurking in the shadows, working stealthily to prevent the disclosure of hidden information from ancient manuscripts. That is the premise of the 2003 best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code—which became a popular movie in 2006.

Largely due to the influence of The Da Vinci Code, curiosity has grown about ancient, nonbiblical religious writings. Among those writings is a collection of books called the pseudepigrapha.

But what are the pseudepigrapha?

Defining the pseudepigrapha

Scholars do not have a complete and final list of writings that should be included in this collection. It is a loose assortment of mostly Jewish writings generally dating from 200 B.C. through A.D. 100, though some scholars have included works between 300 B.C. and A.D. 300.

Jewish rabbis rejected all of these books, not considering them to be part of the inspired Bible. Though many were written by Jews, they were preserved and adapted—and in a few cases composed—mostly by Christians.

The term pseudepigrapha itself is a combination of two Greek words that together mean falsely inscribed. That’s because some of these ancient works are attributed to well-known biblical and historical figures.

For example, the Apocalypse of Moses implies Moses is the author, even though it didn’t appear until about 1,500 years after his death. Other books of the pseudepigrapha were also written in the apocalyptic style.

“To authenticate their message, they wrote under the pseudonym of some great Old Testament figure. By taking the standpoint of someone in the distant past they were also able to ‘predict’ events up to their own time” (Eerdmans’ Handbook to the Bible, p. 651). For more about this style of writing, see our online article “Apocalyptic Literature.”

Identifying false attribution

Several clues allow scholars to determine that an ancient book was falsely attributed to a biblical or historical personality. Here are three:

• Anachronisms. The book mentions people who had not yet been born, or events that had not yet occurred, when the supposed author lived.
• Language. The style and language of the written work do not match the time period of the supposed author. It would be like crediting Shakespeare with using a modern slang term.
• External evidence. The book is not mentioned by any other writers prior to a time centuries after the attributed author died.

Unfortunately, the term pseudepigrapha is not the best label because not all the books were “falsely inscribed.” Some are simply anonymous.

Even so, historians have not been able to agree upon another label, so the label pseudepigrapha persists.

Deliberate deceit or literary convention?

Falsely attributing a book to a famous historical person was not unique to Jewish and Christian authors, but was also done by pagan writers. Some scholars believe this practice was accepted as a common literary convention in the ancient Near East.

After admitting that some writers did falsely attribute their books to deceive, a Bible Odyssey article on the subject contends that “given the prevalence of pseudepigraphy in ancient Mediterranean literatures, we cannot describe all pseudepigraphy as forgery.”

Whether forgery or fiction, obviously the “God of truth” (Deuteronomy 32:4) would not inspire or approve lying about who wrote a book.

And a number of biblical scholars believe that these falsely inscribed books were viewed with suspicion by the ancients.

One such individual, Marko Marina, wrote that “pseudepigraphy wasn’t considered to be a morally acceptable act in any circumstances.”

Why, then, would someone falsely attribute a book to another person? The short answer is to establish some degree of credibility and authority up front so that more people would read and accept the ideas of the writer.

The Bible gives an example of people writing in the name of a biblical character to deceive. Paul warned the Thessalonians not to be confused or deceived “by word or by letter, as if from us” (2 Thessalonians 2:2).

No matter whether any particular book was following a commonly accepted literary convention, or was an outright fraud, none of these books are considered sacred by any major religion.

Unlike the Apocrypha, which is included in Catholic Bibles, the pseudepigrapha are not part of any major sacred canon. They are not part of Catholic, Protestant or Jewish Scriptures, though the Ethiopian canon includes books such as 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees.

Contents of the pseudepigrapha

As noted above, there is no widespread consensus about exactly which books should be considered pseudepigrapha. In fact, experts cannot even agree on some of the major issues pertaining to the pseudepigrapha.

James H. Charlesworth lists 85 books in the explanation of abbreviations at the beginning of his two-volume work, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Other authorities have other numbers.

One of the reasons for the discrepancies relate to the term pseudepigrapha itself. As mentioned previously, some books are not falsely attributed to an author, even though they may seem to fit with the collection in other respects.

Another reason is the religious background or, more specifically, the different viewpoints of Catholic and Protestant scholars. What Protestants label as the Apocrypha, Catholics call deuterocanonical. Catholics then use the term apocrypha to describe what Protestants refer to as the pseudepigrapha.

A third reason is that archaeologists have discovered additional ancient writings. Whether any of these books should be included among the pseudepigrapha is still being debated.

One well-known discovery of ancient manuscripts occurred in 1947 in a desert cave near the Dead Sea. Those manuscripts, which came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were the first of many found in the area around Qumran in the Judean wilderness from 1947 through 1956. They included biblical books as well as many nonbiblical texts.

Just what are the pseudepigrapha, then?

According to Encyclopedia.com, the pseudepigrapha manuscripts are “visionary books attributed to the ancients, characterized by a stringent asceticism and dealing with the mysteries of creation and the working out of good and evil from a gnostic standpoint.”

It’s important to notice the last phrase of that quote. Many of these books are gnostic or proto-gnostic. (Gnosticism was a heretical movement of the second century. Proto-gnosticism is a term used to refer to religious ideas developed during the first century that set the stage for Gnosticism.)

You can learn more about the New Testament’s warnings about proto-gnostic heresies that were attacking the Church in our articles “Twisting the Scriptures,” “Colossians” and “1 John.”

Not all the books considered to be pseudepigrapha are gnostic or proto-gnostic. Some, written as early as the second century B.C., predated that movement. However, all these books were rejected and not considered scriptural by Jews, Catholics and Protestants.

Some significant books of the pseudepigrapha

The limited scope of this article does not allow even a brief look at all of the books of the pseudepigrapha. However, we can look at four of the more well-known works to gain a perspective on this collection.

• The book of Enoch may be the most significant text among the pseudepigrapha. It promotes a calendar of 364 days, rejecting the existing Hebrew calendar. As a result, it contradicts biblical commands to keep God’s feasts “at their appointed times” (Leviticus 23:4). It also promotes other nonbiblical teachings.
• The Book of Jubilees, sometimes referred to as “Little Genesis,” elaborates on the biblical story with nonbiblical stories that contradict the Bible or add to the law (which God said not to do in Deuteronomy 4:2). The book considers the history of the world from the time of Adam and Eve until Moses, dividing history into jubilee periods. (See Leviticus 25 for a biblical explanation of the jubilee.)
• The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is presented as ethical exhortations of Jacob’s 12 sons. One noteworthy aspect of this work is the nonbiblical concept of two messiahs, one each from Judah and Levi.
• The book of 2 Baruch (or the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch) was written by a Jewish author not long after the destruction of the second temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. It claims to include visions that Baruch purportedly had prior to the destruction of the first temple in 586 B.C.

Is there any value to the pseudepigrapha?

There is some historical value to this loose collection of books, though readers need to beware of many factual and doctrinal errors. The pseudepigrapha should never be regarded with the same esteem reserved for Scripture.

Historians and theologians draw on these manuscripts to understand the cultural and historical context of the New Testament. This is particularly useful because of the four-century gap between the Old Testament and the New Testament periods.

Because researchers have access to these ancient books, they can trace the development of theological ideas and doctrines through the centuries.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs sums up the value of this collection of books this way:

“The contribution of the study of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to the understanding of the New Testament should not be underrated . . . As a result of these studies, we now have insight into types of Judaism and religious ideas within the Jewish tradition that would otherwise have remained lost.”

That understanding, in turn, sheds light on the cultural and religious setting the early Christians faced.

But is there value to you?

You don’t need to read any of the books of the pseudepigrapha to benefit from this historical and cultural background. Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias and commentaries often touch on the culture and history of the Bible. Much of what we now know about the New Testament world comes to us through the lens of nonbiblical literature, including historical and secular works as well as books like the pseudepigrapha.

If you do choose to read any of these books, however, you should approach the content with the understanding it was not inspired by God and is not part of Scripture. You should also understand that some of the books of the pseudepigrapha contain ideas contrary to the teaching of the Bible.

The pseudepigrapha may contain some interesting historical and cultural insights into the first-century world, but reading and understanding the Bible should be your first priority.

Everything we need for salvation can be found in the inspired books of the Holy Bible (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:2-4).

Study more about how we know we have the complete Bible in our article “The Canonization of the Bible.”