ABSTRACT

This unusual writing survives in a Latin translation of what was almost certainly a Hebrew original. Falsely ascribed to Philo of Alexandria, its author is unknown, although there is general agreement that it was composed by a Jew living in the land of Israel. Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB), the Latin title by which it is commonly known, offers a ‘re-written’ version of the Bible beginning with the opening of Genesis and extending to the death of King Saul. Most students of the book concur in dating it to the first century AD; there is, however, no agreement whether it had reached its present form before or after the year 70 of that century. Some scholars detect an allusion to the end of the sacrificial Service and capture of Jerusalem by Titus in XIX. 7, which would indicate a final date of composition in the last quarter of the century. Be this as it may, the several exegetical and aggadic traditions which combine to make up the book appear in many instances to have originated before the destruction of the Temple; and it is not impossible that the unkown author witnessed the last years of the Temple, as well as its profanation and destruction by the Romans.1 Indeed, we shall see that LAB has a distinctive appreciation of the meaning of the Temple and its Service which closely compares with that of the other writings studied here.