{{Short description|Jewish poem about Orpheus}} {{about|Orpheus' speech to his son|the Pseudo-Orphaic hymns|Orphic Hymns}} '''Pseudo-Orpheus''' is the name given to a poetic text that presents the legendary Greek figure Orpheus giving a poetic speech to his son, Musaeus, identified as the biblical Moses, passing on to him hidden wisdom he learned in Egypt.<ref name="Feldman376" /> It presents a monotheistic view of God, whom, according to the poem, no one has seen, except for Abraham, who was able to see God due to his skill at astrology.<ref name="EvansJr.2010" />
Pseudo-Orpheus appears in multiple recensions (versions created over time). Although the poem is preserved only in quotations by various Christian writers,<ref name="Holladay192">{{cite book|author=Carl R. Holladay|chapter=Pseudo-Orpheus: Tracking a Tradition|editor1=Everett Ferguson|editor2=Abraham Johannes Malherbe|editor3=Frederick W. Norris|editor4=James W. Thompson|title=The Early Church in Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XVBjUopIwLQC&pg=PA192|year=1998|publisher=BRILL|isbn=90-04-10832-7|page=192}}</ref><ref name="EvansJr.2010" /> most scholars believe that the text is originally "of Jewish authorship."<ref name="Feldman376">{{cite book|author=Louis H. Feldman|title=Philo's Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DowFDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT376|date=17 January 2008|publisher=University of Notre Dame Press|isbn=978-0-268-15952-8|page=376}}</ref> Over time, a number of Christian and Jewish authors reworked Greek traditions about Orpheus and used them to support their monotheistic views and to assert the religious supremacy of Moses and monotheism over Greek polytheistic views.<ref name="III2013">{{cite book|author=Radcliffe G. Edmonds III|title=Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lDYUAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA22|date=7 November 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-51260-3|pages=22–25}}</ref> The rhetorical device of using legendary non-monotheistic figures to endorse Judaism is likewise found in the Sibylline Oracles.<ref name="Ferguson2003">{{cite book|author=Everett Ferguson|title=Backgrounds of Early Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3tuKkxU4-ncC&pg=PA440|year=2003|publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing|isbn=978-0-8028-2221-5|page=440}}</ref>
==Preserved versions== The following are the primary forms of Pseudo-Orpheus that have survived to the present.<ref name="Charlesworth2010" /> The exact dating of the various recensions is disputed.<ref name="EvansJr.2010" />
The first extant writer who quotes the work is Clement of Alexandria, who lived around 150 to 215 AD.<ref>On Clement as the first to quote it, see {{cite book|author=Carl R. Holladay|chapter=Pseudo-Orpheus: Tracking a Tradition|editor1=Everett Ferguson|editor2=Abraham Johannes Malherbe|editor3=Frederick W. Norris|editor4=James W. Thompson|title=The Early Church in Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XVBjUopIwLQC&pg=PA192|year=1998|publisher=BRILL|isbn=90-04-10832-7|page=192}}</ref><ref>On the birth and death dates for Clement, see {{cite book|author=Denise Kimber Buell|title=Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q850NV-C5fEC&pg=PA10|year=1999|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=0-691-05980-2|page=10}}</ref> Clement provides "numerous short quotations" from Pseudo-Orpheus, with one (abbreviated C<sub>2</sub>) matching the edition of Eusebius, and the rest (collectively known as C<sub>1</sub>) mostly–but not exclusively–in agreement with the version of the poem known as J (see below).<ref name="Charlesworth2010" />
The recension which appears in Eusebius (abbreviated E) seems to have been produced in the 2nd or 1st century BC.<ref name="Lierman2004">On the recension in general, {{cite book|author=John Lierman|title=The New Testament Moses: Christian Perceptions of Moses and Israel in the Setting of Jewish Religion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zdam8_8t5x8C&pg=PA233|year=2004|publisher=Mohr Siebeck|isbn=978-3-16-148202-1|page=233}}</ref><ref>On the name "E", {{cite book|author=M. Lafargue|volume=II|chapter=Orphica: A New Translation and Introduction|editor=James H. Charlesworth|title=The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RU77ekrD_vIC&pg=PA795|year=2011|orig-year=1983|publisher=Hendrickson Publishers|isbn=978-1-59856-490-7|page=795}}</ref> Eusebius claims to have taken the poem from the writings of Aristobulus of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in the 2nd century BC.<ref name="EvansJr.2010">{{cite book|author1=Craig A. Evans|author2=Stanley E. Porter Jr.|title=Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sgurDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT1294|date=11 June 2010|publisher=InterVarsity Press|isbn=978-0-8308-6734-9|page=1294}}</ref> This version is known as the Mosaic recension because of its focus on Moses.<ref name="Lierman2004" /> This version is variously counted at either forty-one<ref name="Holladay192" /> or forty-six<ref name="Feldman376" /> lines of hexameter verse.
A shorter recension appears in the works of an author referred to as Pseudo-Justin<ref name="Holladay192" /> (approximately<ref name="Holladay192" /> or at some unknown point before<ref name="FeldmanLevison1996">{{cite book|author1=Louis H. Feldman|author2=John R. Levison|title=Josephus' Contra Apionem|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MpZwfMmH0n8C&pg=PA379|year=1996|publisher=BRILL|isbn=90-04-10325-2|page=379}}</ref> 300 AD) who is so called because his original name is not known, although he was for a time confused with the 2nd-century writer Justin Martyr.<ref name="Petrey2015">{{cite book|author=Taylor Petrey|title=Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IQIXCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA19|date=3 July 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-44297-4|page=19}}</ref> This version contains 21 lines and is referred to as J.<ref name="Charlesworth2010">{{cite book|editor=James H. Charlesworth|author=M. Lafargue|chapter=Orphica: A New Translation and Introduction|volume=II|title=The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RU77ekrD_vIC&pg=PA795|year=2011|orig-year=1983|publisher=Hendrickson Publishers|isbn=978-1-59856-490-7|page=795}}</ref>
Another recension, known as T, or the "Theosophical" recension, contains all the lines found in the other versions of the poem, and mostly agrees with E.<ref name="Charlesworth2010" /> This version is found in the Tübingen Theosophy<ref name="Holladay192" /> or Theosophy of Tübingen, "an epitome of a late-fifth century collection of oracles".<ref name="Cline2011">{{cite book|author=Rangar Cline|title=Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-pZHD6JtR_sC&pg=PA21|date=5 March 2011|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-19453-3|page=21}}</ref>
==External links== The recension in Eusebius (E) can be found in [https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_pe_13_book13.htm Book XIII] of Eusebius' ''Praeparatio Evangelica'' (''Preparation for the Gospel''), as translated in 1903 by E. H. Gifford. Within the HTML file, Pseudo-Orpheus is found in chapter 12, and consists of the first indented section of the chapter, from the words "I speak to those who lawfully may hear" to the words "store this doctrine in thine heart."
The recension in Pseudo-Justin (J) can be found [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-sole.html chapter 2] of Pseudo-Justin's ''De Monarchia'' in the poetic section which begins with the words, "I'll speak to those who lawfully may hear" and ends with the words, "The depths, too, of the blue and hoary sea." The translation is by G. Reith, as found in volume I of ''The Anti-Nicene Fathers,'' edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson in 1885.
==References== {{Reflist}}
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Category:Christianity and Hellenistic religion Category:Hellenistic Judaism Category:Orpheus Category:Ancient Greek poems Category:2nd-century BC poems Category:1st-century BC poems