Towards a New Map of Second Temple Literature: Revelation, Rewriting, and Genre Before the Bible

Recent scholarship has thoroughly demonstrated that canonically-inflected labels like “Bible,” “Rewritten Bible,” and “parabiblical” distort our picture of the textual landscape of Second Temple Judaism. We are only beginning, however, to develop new frameworks that better suit the data. This essay sketches one way that endeavor might be approached, rooted in the recognition that individual texts can be classified and grouped according to multiple variables simultaneously. A text will show connections to one group of texts when viewed from the perspective of one variable, but may relate to an entirely different group in light of a different variable. I illustrate what might be gained through such an approach by examining the textual relationships that emerge when two texts usually classified as “Rewritten Bible” – the Temple Scroll and the Genesis Apocryphon – are viewed through the lens of five potential variables: literary form, language, self-presentation, relationship to earlier texts, and social setting.