The Modern Invention of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

This article explores the pre-history of our present notion of the Old Testament pseudepigrapha through a focus on Johann Albert Fabriciuss Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti (1713). It considers Fabriciuss work from four perspectives: as a compendium of knowledge recovered during and after the Renaissance, as a reflection of debates about Scripture in the wake of the Reformation, as a literary artefact of anxieties about authorship in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and as the foundation for nineteenth- and twentiety-century research on the materials collected therein. By revisiting the origins of the concept and category of pseudepigrapha, the article attempts to bring a broader historical perspective to bear on current debates about the heurism of the label.