ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to fill in this gap by exploring the cultic dimension of pseudepigraphy and its relationship with the divine presence and the divine theophanic knowledge. While scribal and sapiential contexts of pseudepigraphical production and authorial attribution have received proper attention in recent studies, the cultic context of pseudepigraphical traditions and, especially, the cultic profiles of pseudepigraphical exemplars in relation to the praxis of pseudepigraphical attribution have been largely ignored. The unique epistemological situation of the embodied divine knowledge elucidates the cultic dimension of pseudepigraphical attribution. The portrayals of the pseudepigraphical exemplars undergoing an initiation in the cultic image of the deity might also have a pedagogical function, one that is “oriented toward transformation which an ancient reader was expected to reenact.” Through these stories earthly adepts were able to enter the dramatic ordeal which transformed them from a creature of blood and flesh into an immortal manifestation of the divine presence and knowledge.
