Introduction

Until comparatively recently scholars working on Jewish and Christian scripture in antiquity, and the primary biblical languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, have often tended to work in isolation. Jewish Studies specialists concentrated on the Hebrew and Aramaic sources, frequently neglecting relevant Greek, Latin and Syriac data. Old Testament experts were rarely interested in what happened to the Hebrew text after the end of the ‘Old Testament period’ (second century BCE) and after it was translated into other languages. New Testament scholars often knew little or no Hebrew and Aramaic. A whole field of study, known by the bizarre and tendentious title ‘Intertestamental Studies’, had to be invented to deal with all the other parts of Jewish and Christian scripture traditionally (and no less tendentiously) known as ‘apocryphal’ or ‘pseudepigraphical’. This involved the specialist study of Ethiopic, Arabic, Armenian and other languages in which some of the texts survive, and yet another discrete compartment in the field was created.