British New Testament Society

The main thesis of this paper is that the Testament of Solomon in its extant long forms (e.g., mss H, N, and P) constitutes a specifically Christian attempt to undermine the reputation of Solomon and the ancient tradition of health care associated with his name. The paper begins by arguing that the Colbert manuscript (ms P in the eclectic edition by C.C. McCown) affords unrivalled insight both into the Testament’s sources and tradition history on the one hand, and into the full Testament’s final contexts of redaction on the other hand. More particularly, when due attention is paid to the structure and stylistic heterogeneity of ms P, a combination of source-critical and tradition-historical conjectures emerge with strong intratextual support: chapters 1-18, for instance, show several signs of having once circulated as a shorter (and pro-Solomonic) version of the Testament, while the composition and addition of chapters 19-26, which differ very significantly from their co-text in terms of genre and ideological perspective, belong to the long text’s final redaction. After establishing in this manner that the Testament realises a variety of conflicting perspectives on Solomon, the study goes on to contextualise the Testament’s final redaction in relation to two different levels of its social environment: (1) a broad context of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean culture in which Solomon was often honoured as an agent and purveyor of cosmic power against the demons of illness and misfortune, but was also sometimes criticised in connection with the quality of the ending of his life; and (2) a more specific type of rhetorical situation in which the Testament’s portrayal of the demon Ephippas as contributing to the king’s demise can be interpreted as a Christian subversion of the popular iconographic tradition of Solomon as horseman.

2 Enoch is commonly cited as Jewish background to the New Testament, particularly in Matthean scholarship. Those who make use of the Slavonic apocalypse in this way, however, usually make little mention of the methodological problems associated with the text, perhaps because they (wrongly) believe that these problems have been adequately addressed elsewhere. This paper will provide an overview of these problems, especially those associated with the text-base of the apocalypse and with its transmission history and origins. A critique will be offered of the usual arguments for Jewish authorship and some suggestions made concerning more reliable evidence for such an authorship. Despite these latter suggestions, however, it will be concluded that the origins of the work remain a matter of uncertainty.

Given this uncertainty, the paper will propose that the most responsible use of 2 Enoch is one of phenomenological comparison: examining ways in which underlying narrative concepts relate to specific phenomena of the text, these providing points of comparison with New Testament documents. It is hoped that this proposal will facilitate further discussion as to whether such an approach will prove beneficial to New Testament studies and, indeed, to further research on the apocalypse itself. In order that the proposal might be given flesh, the paper will include a brief summary of the main features of 2 Enoch, set within their narrative context.

1 En. 67 has often been thought to allude Herod the Great's ill-fated attempt at 'taking the waters' at Callirrhoe. This has, however, just as often--or perhaps more often-- been dismissed, since 1 En. 67 is imprecise and Herod the Great cannot have been the only royal personage in antiquity to frequent natural hot springs. This paper demonstrates that 1) chap. 67 is interpolated material and that, therefore, 2) the most satisfactory explanation of it is as an historical allusion to the death of Herod the Great. This results in a first century BC date for the Similitudes of Enoch.

The Testament of Abraham survives in two Greek recensions and a fifth-century, fragmentary Coptic manuscript. It is widely accepted that a Jewish Urtext lies behind the surviving manuscript tradition. This has been argued most recently by Dale Allison in his critical commentary on the Testament. This paper argues that, if we start from the social context of the earliest manuscript evidence and work backwards from there only as necessary, the most natural conclusion is that this work was composed by a gentile Christian sometime in late antiquity. If a Jewish Urtext existed, it has been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian tradents that it is beyond recovery with the data currently available