Charles: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Vol. 2: Pseudepigrapha

§ 2. Fewish apocalyptic has been always pseudonymous from the third century B.C. onwards. This pseudonymity due to the absolute supremacy of the Law, which left no room for prophecy. The prophetic spirit cannot openly declare itself in Fudaism save by a breach with Talmudic Fudaism.

Apocalyptic works written before the third century B.C. were not pseudonymons. Joel is perhaps the latest apocalyptist in the Old Testament whose work was not pseudonymous. But Zech. ix—xiv and Isaiah xxiv-xxvii—not to speak of other later additions to the earlier prophets— were in all probability pseudonymous. At all events, from the third century B.C. onwards apocalyptic has always been pseudonymous in Judaism. On the other hand in Christianity, for the first century at any rate, apocalyptic ceased to be pseudonymous, and the seer came forward in his own person. Of these strange and conflicting phenomena explanations have been advanced by various scholars, and the latest by Gunkel, but they are all partial or inadequate. The present writer is of opinion that he has arrived at an hypothesis which will satisfy all the conditions of the problem.

We have already adverted to the fact that in the third century B.c. the Law had come to be conceived as the final and supreme revelation of God. When once this idea of an inspired Law— adequate, infallible, and valid for all time—had become an accepted dogma of Judaism, as it became in the post-Exilic period, there was no longer room for independent representatives of God appearing before men, such as the pre-Exilic prophets. God had, according to the official teachers of the Church, spoken His last and final word through the Law, and when the hope was expressed that in the coming age a prophet will arise, he was only conceived as one whose task was to decide questions of ritual or priestly succession, or legal interpretation in accordance with the Law. Thus in 1 Mace. iv. 46 the stones of the defiled altar of burnt-offering were to be put aside till a prophet arose, and similarly in xiv. 41 (cf. ix. 27) the high-priesthood of Simon was to be provisionally acknowledged till a prophet arose, who could decide on the validity of his high-priesthood. Accordingly the first fact we are to recognize is, that from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah the Law has not only assumed the functions of the ancient pre-Exilic prophets, but it has also, so far as…