An die Seite des Corpus der Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) stellte Adolf von Harnack die Monographienreihe der Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (TU), die er bereits 1882 begründet hatte und die nunmehr als »Archiv für die ... Ausgabe der älteren christlichen Schriftsteller« diente. In ihr werden vor allem die alten Übersetzungen der im Corpus erscheinenden Schriften teils im Original, teils in deutscher oder einer anderen modernen Sprache gedruckt. Daneben steht die Reihe auch für Voruntersuchungen zu den Editionen und für begleitende Abhandlungen offen.

The Book of Revelation is a disorienting work, full of beasts, heavenly journeys, holy war, the End of the Age, and the New Jerusalem. It is difficult to follow the thread that ties the visions together and to makes sense of the work's message. In Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, Garrick Allen argues that one way to understand the strange history of Revelation and its challenging texts is to go back to its manuscripts. The texts of the Greek manuscripts of Revelation are the foundation for the words that we encounter when we read Revelation in a modern Bible. But the manuscripts also tell us what other ancient, medieval, and early modern people thought about the work they copied and read. The paratexts of Revelation—the many features of the manuscripts that help readers to interpret the text—are one important point of evidence. Incorporating such diverse features like the traditional apparatus that accompanies ancient commentaries to the random marginal notes that identify the true identity of the beast, paratexts are founts of information on how other mostly anonymous people interpreted Revelation's problem texts. Allen argues that manuscripts are not just important for textual critics or antiquarians, but that they are important for scholars and serious students because they are the essential substance of what the New Testament is. This book illustrates ways that the manuscripts illuminate surprising answers to important critical questions. We can learn to 'read' the manuscripts even if we don't know the language.

A history of research that changed scholarly perceptions of early Judaism This collection of essays by some of the most important scholars in the fields of early Judaism and Christianity celebrates fifty years of the study of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha at the Society of Biblical Literature and the pioneering scholars who introduced the Pseudepigrapha to the Society. Since its early days as a breakfast meeting in 1969, the Pseudepigrapha Section has provided a forum for a rigorous discussion of these understudied texts and their relevance for Judaism and Christianity. Contributors recount the history of the section's beginnings, critically examine the vivid debates that shaped the discipline, and challenge future generations to expand the field in new interdisciplinary directions. Features: Reflections from early members of the Pseudepigrapha Group Essays that examine a methodological shift from capturing and preserving traditions to exploring the intellectual and social world of Jewish antiquity Evaluations of past interactions with adjacent fields and the larger academic world

Throughout history, the study of sacred texts has focused almost exclusively on the content and meaning of these writings. Such a focus obscures the fact that sacred texts are always embodied in particular material forms—from ancient scrolls to contemporary electronic devices. Using the digital turn as a starting point, this volume highlights material dimensions of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The essays in this collection investigate how material aspects have shaped the production and use of these texts within and between the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from antiquity to the present day. Contributors also reflect on the implications of transitions between varied material forms and media cultures. Taken together, the essays suggests that materiality is significant for the academic study of sacred texts, as well as for reflection on developments within and between these religious traditions. This volume offers insightful analysis on key issues related to the materiality of sacred texts in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while also highlighting the significance of transitions between various material forms, including the current shift to digital culture.

"Before the Scrolls: A Material Approach to Israel's Prophetic Library traces the media history of the biblical prophetic corpus in order to propose a material approach to biblical literature. Though often ignored, the realia of a text's form, format, production, and material substance have profound influence on the meaning of the text. The literature of the Bible was not initially written as discrete books with determined beginnings, middles, and ends. Before the Scrolls argues instead that biblical compositions of length, such as the great prophetic books Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were initially written on loosely organized collections of multiple short papyrus scrolls. Only later in the Hellenistic era were these compositions edited, organized, and copied into the longer book-scrolls known from the Dead Sea. The shift from prophetic library to linear prophetic book-scroll represents a transformation in material medium that had significant effects on that literature. This material approach to the prophetic corpus suggests novel solutions to classic problems in the field such as the relationship between the MT and LXX of Jeremiah and the between First and Second Isaiah. The failure to account for the materiality of the prophetic corpus has led scholarship to occasionally ask the wrong questions of these compositions and has blinded it to the vital role that Hellenistic bookmakers played in the creation of the Bible as we know it"--

Traditionally, biblical studies has been an academic discipline with roots deeply embedded in historical inquiries about the genesis of texts. It should come as no surprise that a significant amount of scholarly attention has been on the formation of the "book" of Isaiah, especially since the compelling imagination of Isaiah comprises an anthology of prophetic voices, each with its own historical context. At the same time, it is well known that the chasteness of ancient texts discloses precious little specific information to aid with this reconstructive task. How Isaiah Became an Author tackles this historical irony head-on. David Davage begins by describing two contrasting ways authorship was conceived in antiquity: Mesopotamian and Greek. He next analyzes the processes through which Isaiah ben Amos came to be imagined as an author of the "book" of Isaiah. In doing so, Davage changes the question from "Who wrote the 'book' of Isaiah?" to "How, and in what ways, was the relation between the prophet called Isaiah and the book that came to bear his name conceived in the Second Temple period?" Davage shows how a prophetic anthology that originally circulated anonymously eventually became transmitted together with a name. Although that name originally did not convey any notion of penning, but rather portrays Isaiah ben Amos as a tradent of divine revelation transmitted by many agents over time, it came to be reimagined as a statement about the origins of the book. This transformation is, then, explained as the result of negotiations between the Mesopotamian and the Greek author concepts in the late Second Temple period, negotiations that have continued even to this day.

This book highlights the significance of a group of five texts excluded from the standard Christian Bible and preserved only in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia. These texts are crucial for modern scholars due to their significance for a wide range of early readers, as extant fragments of other early translations confirm in most cases. Yet they are also noted for their eventual marginalization and abandonment, as a more restrictive understanding of the biblical canon prevailed – everywhere except in Ethiopia, with its distinctive Christian tradition in which the concept of a “closed canon” is alien. In focusing upon 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistula Apostolorum, and the Apocalypse of Peter, the contributors to this volume group them together as representatives of a time in early Christian history when sacred texts were not limited by a sharply defined canonical boundary. In doing so, this book also highlights the unique and under-appreciated contribution of the Ethiopic Christian Tradition to the study of early Christianity.