PREFACE.

The present work consists chiefly of a reproduction of certain articles (with additions and corrections) contributed by me to various religious periodicals during the last few years. It treats of some curious Pseudepigraphal Jewish and Christian writings composed in the times immediately preceding or following the commencement of the Christian era, and aims at giving a succinct account of these productions for readers who are not familiar with the originals. The books comprised in our English Bibles under the name of “Apocrypha” are excluded, as they have been sufficiently examined of late years, and commentaries upon them are readily available. Some of the works treated in this volume are comparatively unknown to English readers, but those (like the Book of Enoch) which have obtained more currency among us could not be omitted from our survey, especially as they form an integral part of the literature of the period, and are often referred to and cited. The whole of the writings here examined have ivnot hitherto been collected into one volume. The original text or versions of some of them have been printed in Fabricius’ Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti; and in Fritzsche’s Libri Apocryphi Vet. Test.; the others have been published by various editors at various times, as noted in the following accounts.