Heresy, Forgery, Novelty argues for the interrelationships of these three concepts in early Judaism and Christianity. While heresiology, identified here with accusations of theological innovation, is considered a Christian phenomenon, Klawans argues that it is incipient in early Judaism. One key piece of evidence for this argument is the persistence of pseudepigraphy, equated with forgery, which indicates that writers needed to conceal innovation by claiming ancient origins for new texts. Early Christians, however, recoded innovation as positive, creating a supersessionist model of the relationship between Judaism (obsolete, old) and Christianity (vital, new). But this early Christian valorization of the new was limited: Christian heresiologists then redeployed the rhetoric of novelty as negative, accusing competing groups (“heretics”) of innovation.
The book's major contribution is, first, to show that claims to novelty and antiquity are key to Jewish and Christian identity, and that we must consider this shifting rhetoric to understand the “parting of the ways.” Such claims may not reflect actual novelty or antiquity; Klawans carefully emphasizes that he is interested in the ideological deployment of these concepts, recognizing that they have varying degrees of correspondence to actual innovation or traditionalism. A second contribution is methodological: Klawans invites scholars to use bolder frameworks, setting aside excessive fears of anachronism to name concepts and draw new comparisons. This is an important challenge, and the book succeeds in revealing surprising patterns in Jewish and Christian self-presentation. At times, however, the robust framework seems to drive the selection of data and detaches ideas from their cultural contexts, sometimes with direct implications for the argument.
Chapter 1 introduces the terms in the title, presenting the definitions on which the book's framework depends. It shows how Jewish writers rhetorically rejected innovation even as they produced new material, presenting new writings as ancient revelations. This work might be placed in conversation with John Barton's Oracles of God (1984), which shows that although claims to revelation continued in Second Temple Judaism, prophecy of a certain kind was considered a thing of the past. We might also ask if early Jewish claims to antiquity are continuous with the strategy Scholem identified in rabbinic ideology, which claimed that everything ostensibly new was already revealed on Sinai. The goal here, however, is to identify a rejection of innovation in two religious cultures/practices: early Judaism, with “forgeries” passed off as ancient revelation, and Christian heresiology, identified with a demonization of novelty.
This comparison corrects a still-common stereotype that ancient Judaism was a free-for-all, allowing and even valuing disagreement, while Christians imposed a single system with no room for deviation. Klawans suggests an alternative model in chapter 2, “Heresy without Orthodoxy: Josephus and the Rabbis on Dangerous Beliefs.” While no drive toward a codified “orthodoxy” existed, a loose “consensus” model allowed variety, but placed some groups clearly out of bounds. The major example is Josephus's account of the “Fourth Philosophy,” where Klawans finds “incipient heresiology” (39): constructing a particular group with a parvenu founder, and accusing them of having no roots in tradition. But while structural similarities exist, Josephus's political context matters. The “Fourth Philosophy” is associated with armed resistance to the empire: constructing them as a fringe faction, essentially outside the Jewish community, had political utility for a Jewish general in Rome. While Klawans mentions that Josephus wished to associate violence with a small group, not Jews in general, the political dimension is not central to the analysis, which emphasizes ideological opposition to innovation. Similarly, questions of social power might be invited into the analysis of rabbinic evidence. Klawans analyzes discourses about lineage and unbroken transmission to illustrate a “consensus” model and a basic conservatism in early rabbinic thought. Here, I read “consensus” as patriarchal and class interests in consolidating power. Expanding the analysis from a somewhat abstract demonization of novelty to considering how such discourse consolidates power networks could buttress Klawans's argument for the similarity between Jewish and Christian rhetoric of heresiology. Recent scholarship has shown how heresiology constructs networks of influence and legitimacy (see Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012]); accusations of novelty were one of the tactics in this strategy. Klawans's comparison, then, may reveal further patterns of similarity besides the rejection of novelty that is his explicit focus.
Chapter 3, “Secret Supersessionism? Intimations of Novelty Concealed at Qumran,” analyzes novelty as a positive value in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Klawans convincingly shows how scholars, hungry for proto-Christian elements, have overemphasized scattered references to newness (primarily the “new covenant” of Jeremiah 31). But novelty appears “faintly and fleetingly,” while values of restoration and renewal dominate sectarian literature. By contrast, chapter 4, “Innovation Asserted: The Novelties of Early Christianity,” argues that there is “an open, undisguised embrace of newness” (117) in early Christian texts. The New Testament presents the teachings of Jesus, a contemporary figure, as innovations, unlike earlier Jewish writers who cloaked their work in pseudepigraphic garb. The central example of a celebration of novelty is Hebrews, which explicitly rejects the “old covenant” in favor of the new.
We do find valorizations of novelty in early Christianity, but I wonder if the phenomenon is quite so central. Hebrews was a disputed text in the West, and supersessionist discourses insist that Christian propositions have ancient lineages. Gospel writers framed their claims as fulfillments of Hebrew Scripture. John places Jesus at the beginning of time, before creation itself. Galatians 4, a key supersessionist text, redefines the lineage of Sarah and Hagar to turn Christians into true heirs of the covenant. Jesus is David's descendant. The idea that Christians are the “true Israel” depends on deploying similar tactics to the rabbis, like constructing genealogies and asserting primordial preexistence for new claims. Perhaps the New Testament and Qumran texts are not in stark contrast with one another when it comes to their attitudes toward novelty; both corpora, in their own ways, toggle between a rhetoric of newness and claims to antiquity.
The book's appeal lies in its schematic presentation of surprising relationships between concepts—a provocative picture of how key ideas in Jewish and Christian texts shift over time. But this robust conceptual framework can flatten the unruly evidence, sometimes lifting concepts out of the cultures and relationships in which they were embedded. For example, tracing Christian heresiology back to Jewish denials of innovation risks overlooking the imperial context—particularly relevant given Roman mistrust of “new” religions. Roman policy classified Judaism and Christianity differently because one was coded as old and the other as new. Christian writers were certainly shaped by earlier Jewish discourses, but they, like Josephus, wrote in Rome's shadow.
Klawans is right to say that scholars are overly afraid of anachronism, abandoning conceptual questions when a concept is not explicitly named in ancient sources. But we must also acknowledge that analytically useful categories functioned differently in their own cultural matrix. Much of the model presented here depends on seeing pseudepigraphy as fundamentally forgery, driven by the need to cover up newness. Klawans writes that “separating pseudepigraphy from forgery is one categorical distinction [he] is no longer willing to make” (169). Such texts’ claims are demonstrably false, and scholars “must attend better to deceit.” Distancing pseudepigraphy from forgery makes scholars generally gullible (170): we are duped by both ancient and modern forgers, read texts like the Letter of Aristeas at face value, and assume pseudepigraphic texts are, if not antediluvian, still Jewish, even if only Christian versions survive.
But seeing pseudepigraphy as distinct from forgery is a theory of ancient literary practice, not a sign of credulity. Scholars who critique this equivalence see a mismatch between modern norms and ancient practices. Today, when the default is for authors to write under their own names and claim credit and responsibility, presenting one's writing as the work of another person is a deceitful transgression. But ancient writers lived in a world where pseudepigraphy was a dominant literary practice—a convention. As Morton Smith observed decades ago, much biblical literature is also pseudepigraphic; it was a major mode of voicing one's work and participating in literary culture. Pseudonymous texts do efface their own origins. (I have argued myself that, if we are using modern concepts, a text like Jubilees is closer to forgery than interpretation, because it claims superior authority for itself, not its sources.) But when pseudonymous attribution is a dominant practice, not a transgressive outlier, its implications are different; in fact, it is the emergence of individual authorship within a tradition of pseudepigraphy or anonymity that needs an explanation. Scholars who offer an account of pseudepigraphy in its own context are not letting ancient forgers off the hook, and are no more likely to be fooled by modern ones.
While my assessment of scholarship on pseudepigraphy differs, I am sympathetic to Klawans's broader challenge for scholars to ask less timid questions. The book's bold framework reveals continuities between Jewish and Christian attitudes about what makes traditions legitimate, and invites us to approach the sources in a spirit of productive risk-taking.
