The Apocryphal Ezekiel.

• Author: Collins, John J.
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

The Apocryphal Ezekiel. Edited by MICHAEL E. STONE, BENJAMIN G. WRIGHT, and DAVID SATRAN. SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, vol. 18. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2000. Pp. xii + 167. $45.

This volume is an exercise in the retrieval of lost literature, Many of the Jewish writings of the Second Temple period are known to us only in translations preserved by the Christian churches. In the case of the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, we have only allusions and fragments, primarily in patristic authors, The evidence for this Apocryphon was recently studied by J. R. Mueller in his revised dissertation, The Five Fragments of tile Apocryphon of Ezekiel: A Critical Study (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). The new volume has a much wider scope. It collects not only the available evidence for the Apocryphon of Ezekiel but also the traditions about the prophet in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Hebrew, and especially Armenian. It is a collaborative effort. In addition to the three editors, Esther Chazon, J. E. Wright, T. A. Bergren, and Marc Bregman had responsibility for sections of the book, while L. Hogan, K. D. Wright, B. Hus, and T. Maarten van Lint also contributed to the project.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, by Stone and Benjamin Wright, with contributions by Chazon and Hogan, presents texts and translations of the fragments of the Apocryphon and the Testimonia thereto, it differs from previous treatments of the Apocryphon by including the Hebrew fragments of pseudo-Ezekiel texts from Qumran, Wright offers same general remarks on the relationship between the Greek and Hebrew fragments. All (with the exception of one Greek fragment) are prophetic in character and concern the themes of judgment, repentance, and resurrection. Nonetheless, there is no overlap between the Hebrew and Greek fragments, and secure conclusions are not possible as to whether there was more than one Ezekiel apocryphon or about the forms in which the material circulated. One of the Greek fragments, which uses a parable about a lame and a blind man to illustrate the union of soul and...