ancient world, and in the Hellenistic age in particular, pseudonymity was a common practice used for a variety of reasons—some unethical, some unobjectionable—for poetry, letters, testaments, philosophy, and oracles, and by no means confined to apocalypses (Metzger, JBL 91 [1972] 3–24; Collins, Vision, 67–74; Meade, Pseudonymity [considering the particular place of pseudonymity within the Bible]; against Baldwin, Them 4 [1978–79] 6–12). That pseudonymity is a rarer literary device in our culture,