Determining Authority

The two texts that we have examined in this class thus far have been concerned with the authority of texts.  They have each looked at the role of scribes and scribal changes in the development of texts, and how the alteration and invention of texts effects the authority of both those texts and the texts adjacent to them. In Sidnie Crawford’s Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times, Crawford names Jubilees an authoritative book for the Jews at Qumran, though it is not usually seen as an authoritative text today. She names it thus for a number of reasons, but, significantly, it is authoritative because it is referred to in two other Qumran texts. 

  This method of determining authority seems to me to be an accurate one, combined with the other reasons that Crawford gives; if a text is important enough to be noted in other texts, it clearly has high standing in that group of people.  However, this aspect of determining authority makes me wonder how accurate it is; there does not seem to be any of determining how authoritative the texts that refer to Jubilees are.  These texts could easily be on the fringes of writing, and may not be indicative of the majority or the respected writers or thinkers of the day. 

  If this specific aspect of determining authority was used today, there would be many a text granted much more authority than its due, what with millions of texts written by millions of people.  While modern society is full of writing and opinion, far removed from the specialized world of ancient scribes and rewriting, the possibility of miss-assigning authority to any number of texts seems like a real issue.