This volume brings together scholars of ancient religion, classics, and the Near East to explore how »falsely« attributing texts functioned to situate writers in larger literary and historical conversations, as well as to influence the interpretation and reception of a text.
The contributors to this volume explore the phenomena of authorship, attribution, and author function in literature produced in the ancient Mediterranean. Moving beyond traditional questions regarding forgery or authorial (in)authenticity, they analyze the roles that ascribed authorship plays in the production of textual networks, the construction of authoritative figures, and the history of literary culture and book culture. They include scholars whose work on authorship and attribution is mutually informative beyond disciplinary boundaries, particularly scholars of early Christianity, early Judaism, classics, and the ancient Near East.
Table of contents:
Julia D. Lindenlaub and Chance E. Bonar: Introduction to Authorial Fictions and Attributions in the Ancient Mediterranean -
Robyn Faith Walsh: The
Epistle to the Laodiceans and the Art of Tradition -
Claire Jackson: Authorial Fictions, Phoenician Paradigms, and the Reception of Achilles Tatius'
Leucippe and Clitophon in the
Lives of Galaction and Episteme -
Rebecca Wollenberg: Outside Bible Readers as an Author Character in Rabbinic Literature: Using Attribution to Preserve and Contain Subversive Positions -
Julia D. Lindenlaub: The Fictive Author and the Reading Community in the
Apocryphon of James (NHC I,2) -
Nicholas Baker-Brian: Writing Truth and Secrets: Authorship and the Legitimizing Role of Apocalyptic in Manichaeism -
Chance E. Bonar: Coauthorial Attribution and the
Teachings of Silvanus (NHC VII,4) -
Elena Dugan: Melito's Enoch: Anti-Judaism and the Transmission of the Pseudepigrapha -
Emily C. Mitchell: From Beyond the Grave: 'Ventriloquizing' the Enslaved and the Emancipated in Latin Verse Epitaphs -
Jeremiah Coogan: Gospel Authorship Between Collaboration and Monography -
Sophus Helle: Janus-Faced Authors: Production or Presentation?
