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The note presents the discovery of a spurious Apuleian work entitled De fato from MS n° 1040 at the Bibliothèque patrimoniale Villon in Rouen. This work is, in fact, a series of excerpts from Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis Book 1.

Abstract This essay is concerned with the meaning of torah and its relationship with wisdom in late Second Temple Judaism. It has been previously argued that, as the Mosaic torah had gained dominance, the wisdom school absorbed and accommodated the Mosaic torah tradition, and yet maintained all the essential elements of the sapiential tradition. Through a study of two Jewish apocalypses, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, the essay discovers not only the sapientialization of the Mosaic torah, but also the total submission of the wisdom tradition under the authority of the Mosaic torah tradition to gain legitimacy. It argues that this is done through a submission of sapiential revelations to the Mosaic revelation received at Sinai, and a portrayal of wisdom recipients and apocalyptic visionaries as types of Moses. This process reflects religious innovation under the disguise of compliance with established, older traditions.

2 Enoch 58–59 provides an esoteric and somewhat eccentric delineation of attitudes toward the mistreatment of animals within some sect of Egyptian Judaism, in all probability. Three attitudes, having to do with the mistreatment of animals in failing to feed them properly, the wrongful binding of animals for sacrifice, and possible secret sexual exploitation of animals, are delineated along with warnings regarding the effects of such treatment on the human soul at the great judgment. This linking of how humans treat animals with how humans will be judged in “the great age” is unique in the literature of this period and demonstrates a deep concern for animal welfare that has been largely dormant in many facets of religion until more recent times.

The Parthica found in the manuscripts of Appian’s Roman History has received little attention since the work was shown to be a forgery by Schweighäuser in the late 18th Century. Since then it has been assumed that the work is of Byzantine provenance, and it has been omitted from subsequent scholarly editions of Appian. This article presents a reconsideration of the Parthica, its date, and the possible intentions of its pseudonymous author. It is argued that the work, whether or not an example of deliberate literary imposture, may in fact be of far greater antiquity than what is generally thought.

Within Biblical scholarship, there have been a limited number of studies which examine ancient literacy and education in relation to the production of the Deutero-Pauline letters. When such topics are addressed together, the discussions rarely go beyond some generalities, and this article seeks to partly address that gap. Literacy rates in the Greco-Roman world, of which the earliest Christians were a part, are universally agreed to be significantly lower than modern literacy rates, with most estimates being between 5 and 15%. This fact, coupled with the limited number of Christians by the end of the first and the beginning of the second century CE, should be taken more seriously when considering how the Deutero-Pauline literature came to be produced and, eventually, circulate with other authentic Pauline letters. In short, this article will argue that when the realities of the educational landscape of the New Testament world are taken in conjunction with what we know about textual production, early Christian communities and leadership structures, there is a plausible argument to be made that those who were responsible for at least some of the Deutero-Pauline letters may be hiding in plain sight.

The question of whether Joseph and Aseneth is \"Jewish or Christian?\" is the central frame in which the provenance of this tale has traditionally been sought. Yet, such a formulation assumes that \"Judaism\" and \"Christianity\" were distinct entities without overlap, when it is now widely acknowledged that they were not easily separable in antiquity for quite some time. I suggest that the question of whether Joseph and Aseneth is Jewish or gentile is more profitable for contextualizing Aseneth's tale. This article offers fresh evidence for historicizing its origins in Judaism of Greco-Roman Egypt. Placing the narrative's concerns for boundary-regulation alongside the discursive projects of other ancient writers (both Jewish and gentile Christian) who engaged the story of Joseph suggests that the author of Joseph and Aseneth was likely a participant in a Hellenistic Jewish interpretive tradition in Egypt that used Joseph's tale as a platform for marking and maintaining boundaries.

Abstract There has been an explosion of interest in Second Temple Judaism over the last fifty years. In the first half of the period under review, the Pseudepigrapha were at the cutting edge. This period culminated in the publication of the new enlarged edition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Beginning in the 1980s, interest shifted to the Dead Sea Scrolls, culminating in the rapid publication of the corpus under the editorship of Emanuel Tov. At the same time, new discoveries shed light on the encounter of Judaism with Hellenism, both in Judea in the Maccabean period and in the Egyptian diaspora. Few scholars would now defend an idea of \"normative Judaism\" in this period, but that idea still casts a shadow on the ongoing debates.

The Parthica found in the manuscripts of Appian’s Roman History has received little attention since the work was shown to be a forgery by Schweighäuser in the late 18th Century. Since then it has been assumed that the work is of Byzantine provenance, and it has been omitted from subsequent scholarly editions of Appian. This article presents a reconsideration of the Parthica, its date, and the possible intentions of its pseudonymous author. It is argued that the work, whether or not an example of deliberate literary imposture, may in fact be of far greater antiquity than what is generally thought.