The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

JEWISH TRADITION, THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
AND THE CHRISTIAN WEST
Michael E. Stone
Over the years, I have come to concentrate quite a lot of research
work on the Pseudepigrapha and on their transmission, together with
other legends related to the Bible, in the Armenian tradition. In the
course of this research, I have repeatedly encountered the phenomenon
of the Western, and often, the Irish transmission of apocryphal
traditions. I would like to lay before you, with a sense of deference,
some of the things I have discovered over the years. They are, surely,
only a small part of what is known, and an even lesser part of what
still lies in manuscripts awaiting discovery. What I readily and
immediately lack, beyond an intimate knowledge of the Western
traditions themselves, is the necessary information to formulate
hypotheses to account for the phenomena that I will present to you. 1
Nonetheless, it seems to me, there are certain methodological principles
that emerge from the consideration of the histories of traditions
which I shall set before you. On the one hand, students of the
Pseudepigrapha must be fully conscious of the complexity of transmission.
Texts must, first and foremost, be examined in the context in
which they were transmitted. Only after that has been done can they
1. Various hypotheses have been formulated over the years to account for the
remarkable knowledge of apocryphal traditions in Ireland. Recent discussions of this
are to be found in D. Dumville, 'Biblical Apocrypha and the Early Irish: A
Preliminary Investigation', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 73C (1973),
pp. 299-338; B. Murdoch, 'An Early Irish Adam and Eve: Saltair na Rann and the
Traditions of the Fall', Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), pp. 146-77; and
D. Wasserstein, 'The Creation of Adam and the Apocrypha in Early Ireland',
Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy 88 C (1988), pp. 1-17. The text discussed by
Wasserstein in this last article may be an instance of a Jewish tradition transmitted,
perhaps orally, via Spain to Ireland.