Lost Bibles, Fake Apocrypha: The Hidden History of Jewish Books
with Eva Mroczek
—
When
Fridays - 8 Weeks
1:00 - 2:30 pm ET/10:00 - 11:30 am PT
Starts March 21, 2025
—
According to tradition, Jewish texts are passed down through an unbroken chain of transmission: from Moses on Mount Sinai, through the prophets, and to many generations of rabbis. But ever since people started writing the earliest Hebrew literature, they also speculated about other texts that were not part of this official canon. Ancient and medieval literature is full of references to imaginary books, like Solomon’s suppressed magical handbooks, thousands of psalms of David, hymnbooks written by Job’s daughters, and dozens more volumes of lore, both strange and wonderful.
This phenomenon is broader than Judaism: writers from Borges to Eco to Atwood have all created books that exist only within their works of fiction. But in premodern Jewish literature, the fictional book is usually sacred, a work of divine inspiration. Why are there so many imaginary Jewish holy books? What does this tell us about concepts of scripture and authority? And what did these “shadow libraries” do for the communities that speculated about them? Encountering imaginary Jewish books can reveal a tradition’s capacity to boldly remake itself, subvert its own patriarchal structures – and make room for the new and the weird.
Each class session will discuss a different imaginary book that plays a part in ancient and medieval Jewish culture, and trace its history - including attempts to write it into existence - and its meaning for Jewish tradition.
—
This class will be recorded and available to enrolled students to watch later.
Cost
This course is available at a sliding scale cost of $359 (the true cost), $299 or $239. If you can afford the full price, we hope you will choose that option, which allows us to continue to offer lower rates and scholarships to those who otherwise would not be able to access this learning because of financial barriers.
If you need financial aid beyond the sliding scale, please fill out this simple form, and we will get right back to you.
with Eva Mroczek
—
When
Fridays - 8 Weeks
1:00 - 2:30 pm ET/10:00 - 11:30 am PT
Starts March 21, 2025
—
According to tradition, Jewish texts are passed down through an unbroken chain of transmission: from Moses on Mount Sinai, through the prophets, and to many generations of rabbis. But ever since people started writing the earliest Hebrew literature, they also speculated about other texts that were not part of this official canon. Ancient and medieval literature is full of references to imaginary books, like Solomon’s suppressed magical handbooks, thousands of psalms of David, hymnbooks written by Job’s daughters, and dozens more volumes of lore, both strange and wonderful.
This phenomenon is broader than Judaism: writers from Borges to Eco to Atwood have all created books that exist only within their works of fiction. But in premodern Jewish literature, the fictional book is usually sacred, a work of divine inspiration. Why are there so many imaginary Jewish holy books? What does this tell us about concepts of scripture and authority? And what did these “shadow libraries” do for the communities that speculated about them? Encountering imaginary Jewish books can reveal a tradition’s capacity to boldly remake itself, subvert its own patriarchal structures – and make room for the new and the weird.
Each class session will discuss a different imaginary book that plays a part in ancient and medieval Jewish culture, and trace its history - including attempts to write it into existence - and its meaning for Jewish tradition.
—
This class will be recorded and available to enrolled students to watch later.
Cost
This course is available at a sliding scale cost of $359 (the true cost), $299 or $239. If you can afford the full price, we hope you will choose that option, which allows us to continue to offer lower rates and scholarships to those who otherwise would not be able to access this learning because of financial barriers.
If you need financial aid beyond the sliding scale, please fill out this simple form, and we will get right back to you.
with Eva Mroczek
—
When
Fridays - 8 Weeks
1:00 - 2:30 pm ET/10:00 - 11:30 am PT
Starts March 21, 2025
—
According to tradition, Jewish texts are passed down through an unbroken chain of transmission: from Moses on Mount Sinai, through the prophets, and to many generations of rabbis. But ever since people started writing the earliest Hebrew literature, they also speculated about other texts that were not part of this official canon. Ancient and medieval literature is full of references to imaginary books, like Solomon’s suppressed magical handbooks, thousands of psalms of David, hymnbooks written by Job’s daughters, and dozens more volumes of lore, both strange and wonderful.
This phenomenon is broader than Judaism: writers from Borges to Eco to Atwood have all created books that exist only within their works of fiction. But in premodern Jewish literature, the fictional book is usually sacred, a work of divine inspiration. Why are there so many imaginary Jewish holy books? What does this tell us about concepts of scripture and authority? And what did these “shadow libraries” do for the communities that speculated about them? Encountering imaginary Jewish books can reveal a tradition’s capacity to boldly remake itself, subvert its own patriarchal structures – and make room for the new and the weird.
Each class session will discuss a different imaginary book that plays a part in ancient and medieval Jewish culture, and trace its history - including attempts to write it into existence - and its meaning for Jewish tradition.
—
This class will be recorded and available to enrolled students to watch later.
Cost
This course is available at a sliding scale cost of $359 (the true cost), $299 or $239. If you can afford the full price, we hope you will choose that option, which allows us to continue to offer lower rates and scholarships to those who otherwise would not be able to access this learning because of financial barriers.
If you need financial aid beyond the sliding scale, please fill out this simple form, and we will get right back to you.
Meet Eva
Eva Mroczek (she/her) is the Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She holds a PhD (Toronto 2012) in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, with a focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish literature. Her first book, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (2016), explored how ancient Jews conceptualized their own literary heritage before the biblical canon was set. The book won the SHARP Book History Book Prize and was a finalist for the Association of Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. Her second book, Tales from the Cave: Losing and Finding the Biblical Past, is about manuscript discovery stories, real and legendary, ancient and modern, and is forthcoming in 2026.
