Before Authorship: Solomon and Prov. 1:1

Abstract

How should we understand the naming of legendary figures like Solomon in biblical titles? The ancient practice of attribution is often obscured by scholars committed to the modern construction of authorship. Texts such as 11QPsa XXVII (“David’s Compositions”) demonstrate an altogether different understanding of this ancient practice. Using Prov. 1:1 as a test case, this essay examines how biblical authors and editors assigned texts to legendary figures, and how this kind of attribution evokes a set of imagined associations in the broader literary tradition. The essay presents a description and categorization of biblical titles and textual frames, and compares these titles and frames to textual frames of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean collections of instruction and poetry. The essay argues that Prov. 1:1, like other textual frames, uses attribution to imaginatively stage the text in the broader literary tradition.

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

“…Work by Wilf (2008), Najman (2009), Reed (2011;, Mroczek (2008;, Newman (2018) and Vayntrub (2018) on biblical, Second Temple and rabbinic literature similarly asks us to reconsider the significance of texts and their temporal relationships to the past and to one another. The titles of many of these books and articles themselves capture the complicated temporality of the processes and phenomena they describe: for example, The Law before the Law (Wilf 2008), Seconding Sinai (Najman 2009), Before the Bible (Newman 2018), Beyond Orality (Vayntrub 2019), Gospels before the Book (Larsen 2018), 'Before Authorship' (Vayntrub 2018).…”

“…Work by Wilf (2008), Najman (2009), Reed (2011;, Mroczek (2008;, Newman (2018) and Vayntrub (2018) on biblical, Second Temple and rabbinic literature similarly asks us to reconsider the significance of texts and their temporal relationships to the past and to one another. The titles of many of these books and articles themselves capture the complicated temporality of the processes and phenomena they describe: for example, The Law before the Law (Wilf 2008), Seconding Sinai (Najman 2009), Before the Bible (Newman 2018), Beyond Orality (Vayntrub 2019), Gospels before the Book (Larsen 2018), 'Before Authorship' (Vayntrub 2018). In particular, they point to the playful temporality embedded within notions of authorship, especially but not exclusively in pseudepigraphic texts, which present contemporary ideas in the name of more ancient figures (e.g., in early texts such as the book of Enoch, the Qumranic Psalms Scrolls, Testament of Levi, Visions of Amram, 4 Ezra, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job, but that can also be applied to pseudepigraphic texts from the medieval period such as Sefer Zerubavel, the Alphabet of Ben Sira, and Sefer Yossipon), and in narratives that offer alternative versions of the same (yet older) stories or prophecies, as do the book of Jubilees and the Qumranic pesharim.…”