Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in the Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literatures of Antiquity
A corpus-based list of generically defined literary features occurring in at least one text of the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, the near-complete large Dead Sea Scrolls, or Rabbinic Literature.
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Work in progress, version -355, 25 February 2011. Please cite information from this document as: A. Samely, P. Alexander, R. Bernasconi, R. Hayward, "Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in Ancient Jewish Literature (Version -355)" (Manchester: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/ancientjewishliterature, 2010), plus Inventory Point number.
This Inventory is part of the outcomes of the Project Typology of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literature of Antiquity (TAPJLA) Manchester-Durham 2007-2011, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).
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Introduction
This Inventory is a systematically organized list of all structurally important literary features we have identified as occurring in the corpus of anonymous and pseudepigraphic Jewish literature of antiquity. The corpus is largely co-extensive with the four groups of texts usually known as Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Apocrypha of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls (but only those that are nearly complete), and rabbinic literature up to the end of the Talmudic period.
The Inventory lists every literary feature that occurs at least once in the Project corpus. Each point is defined in its own terms, but stands in systematic relationship to neighbouring points (of the same level of generality or not). The Inventory is the basis for a "profiling" of the literary surface of hundreds of texts, to be published separately as an online Database. These Profiles select those points of the Inventory which apply to the specific text, while leaving out all the other points. Where texts have the same points, they share the same literary profile; where they have many overlapping points, this shows up clearly defined literary similarities. (Whether these can be explained on the basis of historical connections is a separate question not addressed by the Project.) Several hundred Profiles of this kind are in preparation and will be published as a Database during 2011, linked from this Project webpage. Selected sample entries from the complete Database are likely to become available in Spring 2011 or earlier.
The features collected in the Inventory are the result of a fresh, empirical reading of all the texts in the corpus. They are defined in terms of modern linguistics, text linguistics, philology, literary studies or hermeneutics, describing a text's different dimensions. Technical terminology from these disciplines is only adopted sparingly. Instead, terms are defined exhaustively within the Inventory points themselves, or by their logical relationships to other points in the Inventory.
Each text is assumed to have the following basic features or literary options: 1. the absence or presence of a reference of the text to itself; 2. the perspective of the voice that governs the text, and the horizon of knowledge projected as shared with the implied addressee; 3. any rhetorical or poetic format; 4. the option of the text being a narrative; 5. the option of the text being a thematic discourse or thematic description; 6. the option of the text being a sequential commentary on another text; 7. the option of having specific relationships with the texts later known as the Hebrew Bible, or with each other; 8. certain small literary forms that may occur; 9. certain small-scale relationships of adjacent text parts that may occur; 10. the option of the text being a larger-scale compilation of substantial, stand-alone part-texts; 11. certain basic types of dominant subject matter; 12. samples of genre terms used for the text in the scholarship.
These twelve points define the main groupings of Inventory points. All sub-points will be defined individually as belonging under these broad headings. Most sub-points will have further subordinate points. Their logical relationships are made visible by way of further digits separated by points, e.g., 5.2 has the subordinate points 5.2.1. and 5.2.2, etc.
Explanation of the structure of the Inventory
1. The right-hand column names some of the texts exhibiting the feature defined in the same row. The reader will find this feature mentioned in that text's online Database Profile (Database url to be published later), with more specific information or discussion as necessary. The illustrations are drawn from among those Project texts that happened to have completed Profiles in October 2010, and no representative cross- section is intended.
2. In most cases an Inventory point relates to its sub-points by logical subordination, so that, e.g., point 7.1.1 implies that point 7.1 also applies. A small number of exceptions to this rule thereby convey additional information. Thus point 1.1.5 may apply without automatically entailing 1.1; and the same goes for point 2.1.1.2 in relation to 2.1.1; point 2.2.4.3 in relation to 2.2 and 2.2.4; point 8.1.4.1 in relation to 8.1.4; and 8.2.3.1 in relation to 8.2.3. The Database Profiles will reflect this difference clearly.3. If there is no logical incompatibility, neighbouring Inventory points of the same level (i.e. number of digits) may apply concurrently to the same text, but some are defined as mutually exclusive (e.g. 4.1.1 versus 4.1.2). Most texts will only require use of one of the main sections 4, 5 or 6, with the clearly marked exceptions 4.7 and 5.1. Points 3.5, 3.6 and 10 can be combined freely with sections 4, 5 or 6.
4. Every document will have information under the headings 1, 2, 8, 11 and 12, plus at least one of 4, 5 or 6. Most will have something under 7 and 9, few under 3 or 10.
5. The sections of the Inventory which have the potential to exclude each other (if the text is unified in that way), thereby define the most basic text types found in the corpus. Here is an overview:
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