SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The study of the Old Slavonic pseudepigrapha has assumed wider significance in wider areas of Jewish and Christian religious history after recent research has indicated their importance for the investigation of early Jewish and Christian apocalypticism, Gnosticism and the Jewish Merkabah tradition. The article intends to present the state of evidence and research of the influx of early Jewish and Christian parabiblical narratives and notions in western medieval heretical milieux (via the transmission of Slavonic apocryphal traditions through Eastern dualist channels). The parabiblical narratives or elements of earlier pseudepigraphic texts in the sources for Catharism have been largely downplayed or ignored in the current debates on medieval Western heresy. However, they should be reintegrated in the central ground of these debates, as they provide vital clues to medieval dualist stances on Scripture and the exegetical and compilatory techniques in recasting biblical and parabiblical material in medieval theological and literary environments