New Maps of Early Jewish Literature Across the Boundaries of the Real: A Response to Molly M. Zahn

Zahn’s “new cartography” re-maps early Jewish literature without anachronistic canonical boundaries, proposing other criteria for categorization and comparison. This response suggests that we also map texts across the boundary between extant and imaginary writings, considering referenced, imagined, or remembered texts a significant part of the literary landscape. Mapping the locations and availability of all texts, real and imagined, according to the theories of ancient scholars themselves, may reveal helpful interpretative contexts for the works that do survive, and give a fuller picture of how early Jewish writers conceived of their place in the larger literary world.