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23 8 Review of Biblical Litera tureEelicidades a Dale Allison por este trabajo. C on esta nueva obra Allison pon ede manifiesto su gran capacidad de trabajo y su gran conocim iento sobre la tema-tica. Si ya no dudabamos de sus posibilidades. con esta obra queda garantizadade cara al futuro la seriedad y el rigor cientifico a la hora de trabajar con este tipode escritos paralelos a los biblicos. Allison, adem as de especialista en la literaturaapocrifa es profesor de Nuevo Testamento y de cristianismo antiguo y eso se notaen su trabajo. en la capacidad de comparar docu mento s. de interpretar textos y desaber valorar lo realmente importante en la obra.Eelicitamos. tambien. a la editorial, a la coleccion y a su consejo asesor.Stuckenbruck. van der Horst. Lichtenberger. Mendels y Mueller han sabido enco-

mendar bien la obra. Ademas de dirigir una buena coleccion de comentarios.tienen a su lado a los mejores especialistas y conocedores de las obras que se vana presentar. A todos ellos mi enhorab uena y todos los animos para seguir traba-jando por esta direccion.

Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse ofAbraham, by Alexander Kulik. SBLTCS 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.2004. Pp. X -H105. Paper. $24.95. ISBN 1589830873.Andrei Qrlov. Marquette University. Milwaukee. Wisconsin

Alexander Kulik's Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Originaof the Apocalypse of Abraham is a textual analysis of the Apocalypse of Abraham(hereafter ApAb), an early Jewish pseudepigraphon that survived solely in itsSlavonic translation. Scholars have long recognized that ApAb is a crucial textfor understanding the early roots and development of Jewish mysticism. In thebeginn ing of the book Kulik suggests that ApAb may represent one of the earli-est examples of Jewish mystical thought and thus may provide important cluesfor understanding the transition between early apocalyptic and m edieval hekha-lot traditions. One of the earliest molds of merkabah mysticism. ApAb containsrich esoteric imagery imperceptible to uninitiated eyes. According to a Jewishmystical text. Sefer ha-Bahir, everyone who approaches mystical writings "mustinevitably fail""It is therefore written. 'Let this heap of ruins be under yourhand.' This refers to things that a person can not understand, unless he fails inthem." ApAb is not immune to this warning; its imagery confounds the mindsof many a reader. Failure of comprehension looms even larger for interpretersable to read only translations of merkabah docum ents. The intended meaning ofmystical imagery becomes covered with an additional veil of literalist renderings

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Ap ocrypha l/Deuterocano nical Writings 239Vorlage, and. sometimes, even of the Semitic original" (4). Although the authordefines the p rima ry goal of his work as an attempt "to improve our unde rstandingof the Apocalypse of Abraham, an extremely obscure text whose meaning can beexplained only on the level of its Greek Vorlage and even its distant original" (91).the value of the work extends far beyond the bound aries of a single Slavonic text.Another, perhaps even more important, goal of this book is the development of atextual m ethodolog y that includes the elaboration of general principles and toolsuseful to the retroversion of other important pseudepigraphical documents cir-culating in Slavic cultures . Kulik's attem pt at the retroversion of ApAb thus servesas a me thodological experim ent for the retroversion of other early Jewish mysti-cal texts that survived solely in their Slavonic translation, including 2 Enoch andth e Ladder of Jacob.

The practical, pragmatic thrust of Kulik's research is strong and very engag-ing. He believes that the development of the methodological principles ofretroversion of Slavonic texts must go han d in hand with the practical applicationof these princ iples to a wide range of texts and build on accum ulation of success-ful solutions. The author sees his book as the first stage in this methodologicaldevelopm ent that seeks to solve separate problems of interpretation through ret-roversion. The structure of the book corresponds to these tasks of retroversion.The study is organized around discussions of separate problematic segments ofthe text, classified according to the types of the retroverted phenomena. The ana-lytical part of the book is prefaced by the author's trans lation of the entire text ofApAb, which provides a helpful context for the new interpretations suggested byauthor. The translation also functions as a basis for cross-references. Althoughthe autho r occasionally supplies Slavonic readings in the foo tnotes to his Englishtranslation, the book does not include the entire Slavonic text of ApAb, whichmakes the task of a reader a little bit difficult since, in order to follow the autho r'sargum ents p ertainin g to the Slavonic text, the reader mu st have at han d the pre-viously published editions of the Slavonic text.

The analytical part of the book is organized into four chapters. The firstchapter deals with problem s of the retroversion of the G reek Vorlage. The authorprovides textual illustrations of five examples of the Greek retroversion: (1)graphic misinterpretations; (2) morphological caiques; (3) semantic caiques; (4)syntactic Hellenisms; and (5) phraseological Hellenisms. Kulik's illustrations havelasting methodological value not only for the text oiApAb but for other Slavonicmaterials translated from Greek. The second chapter deals with the reconstruc-tion of the Semitic original. Kulik argues for the Semitic origin of ApAb, notingthat "the existence of the Semitic original of the text m ay be considered proven

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24 0 Review of Biblical Literaturenames Marumaf. Varisat. and Nakhon. In this section of his analysis Kulik alsoaddresses the question of the possibility of retroverting the Sem itic original om it-ting the Greek stage. Usually scholars must first reconstruct the Greek Vorlageand then, where possible, its Semitic original. Kulik points to two kind of caseswhere Semitic retroversion may be more reliable than Greek. These include situ-ations where the Slavonic version faithfully reproduces obvious Semitisms thatwere not found in any extant Greek texts and where Slavonic texts contain cita-tions or parallels to the sources preserved only in Hebrew or Aram aic. The authorfurther provides four textual illustrations of Semitic retroversion: (1) Hebrew-Greek trans literations refiected in the S lavonic text but no t attested in Greek; (2)semantic and (3) syntactic caiques integrated into biblical citations/allusions inApAb that conform to the readings of the Hebrew Bible or Aramaic Targumsrather than to the preserved Greek versions; and (4) phraseological caiques ofrabbinic Hebrew.

The third chapter examines cases where retroversion is interlaced with text-critical problems. Finally, the fourth chapter deals with intertextual verification,which Kulik recognizes as one of the m ost im portant tools of retroversion. It isapparent that retroversion of mystical texts cannot be accomplished solely onthe linguistic level and presupposes knowledge of esoteric traditions that standbehind the text. Recognizing the importance of intertextual verification, theauthor provides in this section of his study a wide range of intertextual allusionsdrawn from the Second Temple and rabbinic materials. The chapter demonstratesKulik's broad knowledge of Jewish texts and traditions and offers a number ofilluminating insights.

Qn the whole. Kulik's study can be seen as a remarkable collection of inter-pretive solutions that have lasting methodological value not only for the study ofApAb but also for research on other early Jewish texts that either survived solelyin their Slavonic translation, such as 2 Enoch and the Ladder ofJacob, or representSlavonic versions of com positions preserved also in Greek, such as 3 Baruch, Tes-taments of the Twelve Patriarchs, th e Testament of Abraham, and the Life of Adamand Eve. The methodological significance of the book lies in the experimentaland heu ristic nature of its approach, which is not confined to a single theoreticalsolution but rather incorporates a variety of interpretive practices and m ethods.

S E P T U A G I N TThe Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon

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