The two volumes of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Doubleday, 1983, 1985) are an invaluable resource for scholars of parabiblical texts, including a large number of translations difficult to come by otherwise. The translations, introductions, and notes are all valuable for the interested reader. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of the volumes is in providing scholars not only clear translations but also an agreed-upon system of references to the various texts included.
However, in such a large project as this was, involving a large number of translators/annotators working on the texts, it is perhaps not surprising that coordination between them as to references and versification was lacking. The end result is that various of the translators refer to texts included in translation in the volumes, yet use older editions, critical or not, in their references. This, needless to say, leads to some confusion.
In addition, in such a large-scale work of this, and with the marginal printing of references to parallel texts, errors were inevitable.
I spent some time over the course of a couple of years checking every reference in the two volumes, in the introductions, the marginal references, and the notes. In addition to correcting all errors, I also adapted references to works included in the volumes themselves to use the reference systems employed by the translators. The corrections should clear up quite a bit of confusion in that regard.
In addition (as I’ve described here ), I have provided a mockup of a page that has somehow managed to be lost from the second volume from the second printing onwards (since sometime in the 1980s or 1990s). The reader can print the page and cut it out to insert it in their copy if it is missing.
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