ReViews: Rediscovering “Lost” Literature

Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture

Edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2103), 3 vols., 3361 pp., $275 (hardcover)

By the strangest quirk of fate respecting literature that I know of, large numbers of writings by Jews were completely lost from the transmitted Jewish heritage. These documents stem roughly from 200 B.C. to A.D. 200. Not only the so-called Pseudepigrapha, but even such important and extensive writings as those by Philo and Josephus have not been part of the Jewish inheritance from its past; these were preserved and transmitted by Christians. It was rather only in the backwash of the Renaissance that Jews began to encounter Philo and Josephus. A 16th-century Italian rabbi, Azariah de Rossi, in a book called Me-or Enayim (“Light for the Eyes”), inaugurated this rediscovery of the “lost” literature.¹

These words were published in 1983 by my friend Samuel Sandmel of Hebrew Union College. Long ago we worked together for many years to help Christian leaders appreciate Judaism.