ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that scholarly discussions of composition, transmission, and canon formation in Late Antiquity have assumed a false and monolithic understanding of the correlation of authorship and authority. It moves from the dubious correlation of authorship and authority to the problematic connection that contemporary scholarship draws between attribution and authority. The book continues the work of reframing authorship and attribution. It provides to grapple with these questions by re-envisioning the role of narrative in legal codes and by analyzing the non-legal stories found in two Syriac legal sources separated by a millennium the Didascalia and the canonical writings of Abdisho bar Brikha. The book examines the phenomenon of unpromulgated civil law in the Babylonian Talmud. It also examines how historians might move beyond an authority-centered model of transmission by paying closer attention to both audience and gender as operative categories.
