Imitating Abraham: Ritual and Exemplarity in Jewish and Christian Contexts 9004722610, 9789004722613

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Imitating Abraham

Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series Editorial Board Tamar Kadari (Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies) Leo Mock z”l (Tilburg School of Catholic Theology) Eric Ottenheijm (Utrecht University) Eyal Regev (Bar-Ilan University) Lieve M. Teugels (Protestant Theological University) Archibald van Wieringen (Tilburg School of Catholic Theology) Advisory Board Yehoyada Amir – Shaye Cohen – Judith Frishman David Golinkin – Martin Goodman – Alberdina Houtman Clemens Leonhard – Marcel Poorthuis – Gerard Rouwhorst Joshua Schwartz – Vered Tohar – Israel Yuval

volume 42

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/jcp

Imitating Abraham Ritual and Exemplarity in Jewish and Christian Contexts

Edited by

Claudia D. Bergmann Thomas R. Blanton IV

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bergmann, Claudia D., editor. | Blanton IV, Thomas R., 1968–, editor. Title: Imitating Abraham : ritual and exemplarity in Jewish and Christian contexts / edited by Claudia D. Bergmann, Thomas R. Blanton IV. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2025 | Series: Jewish and Christian perspectives series, 1388–2074 ; volume 42 | Includes index. | Summary: “Imitating Abraham provides exciting glimpses into the reception history of the character Abraham in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, illuminating the manifold ways in which interpreters draw upon his legacy to authorize practices like sacrifice, circumcision, hospitality, feasting, prayer, and personal and corporate piety. Abraham holds surprises: his name is used in magical amulets - some published here for the first time - to ward off demons, protect cattle from illness, and even to round up runaway slaves. Researchers, students, and all interested in Biblical, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Studies, as well as ritual and exemplarity will want to read this book”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2024057383 (print) | LCCN 2024057384 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004722613 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004722620 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Abraham (Biblical patriarch) | Abraham (Biblical patriarch)—In rabbinical literature. | Abraham (Biblical patriarch)—In the New Testament | Abraham (Biblical patriarch)--In the Qurʼan. Classification: LCC BS580.A3 I55 2025 (print) | LCC BS580.A3 (ebook) | DDC 222/.11092—dc23/eng/20250107 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024057383 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024057384 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1388-2074 isbn 978-90-04-72261-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-72262-0 (e-book) DOI 10.1163/9789004722620 Copyright 2025 by Claudia D. Bergmann and Thomas R. Blanton IV. Published by Koninklijke Brill BV, Plantijnstraat 2, 2321 JC Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill BV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill BV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill BV via brill.com or copyright.com. For more information: [email protected]. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

In memoriam: Leon Mock (1968–2023)

∵

Contents Acknowledgments xi List of Figures and Tables xiii Abbreviations xiv Notes on Contributors xxvii

Introduction: Abraham, Ritual, and Exemplification 1 Thomas R. Blanton IV and Claudia D. Bergmann

Part 1 Writings from the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods (ca. 600s BCE–100s CE) 1

“Look to Abraham and Sarah”: the Motifs of Infertility and Childbirth in Genesis and Second Isaiah 35 Claudia D. Bergmann and May May Latt

2

Abraham as a Model and Mediator of Worship Practices in the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees 59 Mika S. Pajunen

3

“Look toward the Heavens and Count the Stars”: Abraham the Astronomer in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism 78 Stephen O. Smoot

4

Right Knowledge of God and the Rejection of False Religion: Abraham in Romans 1 106 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr

5

Abraham as Exemplum in Fourth Maccabees 128 Jan Willem van Henten

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Contents

Part 2 Writings from the Early Byzantine / Sassanid Period (ca. 300s–700s CE) 6

“Halakic” Abraham in the Encounter with the Three Visitors 155 Marcel Poorthuis

7

Abraham as Ritual Model in Rabbinic Tradition: Circumcision, Prayer, and Priesthood 172 Günter Stemberger

8

Christianizing Abraham: Exemplarity in Ambrosiaster and Ambrose of Milan 192 Clayton J. Killion

9

“Arise My Beloved, and Come Away”: the Eros of Genesis 12 in a Late Antique Liturgical Poem 218 Laura S. Lieber

10

Abraham as Model in Christian Ritual: Evidence from Late Ancient and Medieval Greek and Syriac Magic 246 Michael Zellmann-Rohrer

11

Abraham as Model for Muhammad: a Survey of Some Early Christian Arabic Views 277 Clare E. Wilde

Part 3 Writings from the Medieval and Modern Periods (ca. 800s–1800s CE) 12

Abraham as a Model of Hospitality in the Palaea and Cognate Literature 307 Alexey Somov

13

“For I Know Him, That He Will Command His Children and His Household after Him” (Gen 18:19): Some Ideas on Abraham as a Model in Rabbinic Prayer and Ritual 334 Leon Mock

Contents

ix

14

Contradictory Readings of Genesis 22: Abraham in Wisdom of Solomon and in Voltaire 356 Christoph Bultmann

15

Abraham as Ritual Model in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling 372 George Pattison Index of Ancient Sources and Manuscripts 395 Index of Places 410 Index of Names 412

Acknowledgments Most of the contributors to this volume participated in one of two workshops that took place at the Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien of the Universität Erfurt, Germany, held on 17 December 2018 and 22 October 2019. They were organized as part of the activities at the Research Centre “Dynamik ritueller Praktiken im Judentum in pluralistischen Kontexten von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart,” which was funded from 2015 to 2020 by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany, and the Universität Erfurt. The editors are extremely grateful for the financial support that has been given to the project “Imitating Abraham” by the BMBF and the Universität Erfurt, and for the personal support and encouragement by the leaders of the Research Centre, Professors Benedikt Kranemann and Jörg Rüpke, as well as by the Board of Advisors of the Research Centre: Tessa Rajak, Judith Frishman, Günter Stemberger, and Gerard Rouwhorst. Both editors also wish to thank the City of Erfurt, who provided the space for the second workshop at Kleine Synagoge, as well as Maria Stürzebecher, Erfurt’s commissary for the application to become a UNESCO World Heritage site, who is always willing to support any effort to study biblical concepts and Jewish history. Additional support was provided by Paderborn University (Germany) and the student assistants Anna Hundertmark, Naomi Grützbach, and Lena Marken, who helped create the index. Our thanks also go to Lieve Teugels, Marcel Poorthuis, Eyal Regev, Ari Ackerman, and Eric Ottenheijm, who accepted this volume for publication in the Jewish and Christian Perspectives series, and to our editors at Brill, Katerina Sofianou and Dirk Bakker. Tom Blanton would like to thank the board of the Max-Weber-Kolleg, Hartmut Rosa, Bettina Hollstein, Benedikt Kranemann, and Jörg Rüpke, for graciously hosting hosting me as a Research Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg. I thank my coeditor, Claudia D. Bergmann, for her exemplary collegiality while she was the coordinator of the Research Centre, with which I was affiliated during my time in Erfurt, from July to December, 2018, and again from June to November, 2019. Thanks, too, to the board for naming me as an Associated Fellow from August 2020 until August 2022. My time in Erfurt was immensely rewarding, helping me (1) to refine and further develop my interest in interdisciplinary methodologies in the characteristic mode of the MaxWeber-Kolleg, with its deep roots in social-scientific approaches to the study of religion, past and present (https://www.uni-erfurt.de/en/max-weber-kolleg /forschung/webersches-forschungsprogramm/the-research-programme-of

xii

Acknowledgments

-the-max-weber-kolleg-erfurt); (2) to significantly broaden my international scholarly networks and collaborations; and (3) by facilitating a most productive period in terms of scholarly publications written and accepted. For all of this—not to mention the Freundschaft that proved to be the constant corollary of all these activities—I remain most grateful. Claudia D. Bergmann and Thomas R. Blanton IV Paderborn and University Heights, Ohio, September 2023

Figures and Tables 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5



Figures Beth Alpha mosaic 180 Sepphoris synagogue mosaic: lower section 182 Sepphoris synagogue mosaic: upper section 183 Sepphoris synagogue mosaic: Akedah panel 184 Sepphoris synagogue mosaic: shoes detail 186

Tables

12.1 Abraham’s settling in Mamre 319 12.2 Coming of the three strangers 320 12.3 Abraham receives the three guests in his house 323 12.4 The promise of Isaac 324

Abbreviations Abbreviations for technical terms, primary sources, journals, series, reference works, and collections generally follow the SBL Handbook of Style (2nd ed.) and the updates on the SBL Handbook of Style: Explanations, Clarifications, and Expansions website (https://sblhs2.com/).



Technical Abbreviations

c. century ca. circa ch(s). chapter(s) cod. codex corr. correction epit. epitome fig(s). figure(s) fol(s). folio(s) frag(s). fragment(s) gr. Greek l(l). line(s) ms(s). manuscript(s) n.p. no publisher, no place n.s. new series pap. papyrus par(s). paragraph(s) p(p). page(s) praef. praefatio, preface pt(s). part(s) r recto s.v. sub verbo, under the word syr. Syriac v verso vac. vacat, intentional empty space



Biblical Versions and Editions

A Codex Alexandrinus BHS Elliger, Karl, and Wilhelm Rudolph, eds. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983.

Abbreviations English Standard Version ESV KJV King James Version LXX Septuagint MT Masoretic Text NIV New International Version NJPS Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures; The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. NRSV New Revised Standard Version R Codex Veronensis S Codex Sinaiticus



Biblical Texts

1–2 Chr 1–2 Chronicles 1–2 Kgs 1–2 Kings 1–4 Macc 1–4 Maccabees 1–2 Pet 1–2 Peter 1–2 Sam 1–2 Samuel Acts Acts Amos Amos Cant. Canticum canticorum (Song of Songs) Dan Daniel Deut Deuteronomy Exod Exodus Ezek Ezekiel Ezra Ezra Gal Galatians Gen Genesis Heb Hebrews Hos Hosea Isa Isaiah Jas James Jdt Judith Jer Jeremiah Job Job John John Josh Joshua Judg Judges Lev Leviticus Luke Luke Mark Mark

xv

xvi

Abbreviations

Matt Matthew Mic Micah Neh Nehemiah Num Numbers Phil Philippians Prov Proverbs Ps(s) Psalm(s) Qoh Qoheleth Rev Revelation Rom Romans Ruth Ruth Sir Sirach (Ben Sira) Song Song of Songs Wis Wisdom of Solomon Zech Zechariah



Classical Texts

C.Th. Codex Theodosianus Hist. Herodotus, Histories; Livy, History of Rome; Polybius, Histories Inv. Cicero, De inventione rhetorica Leoc. Lycurgus, Against Leocrates Mem. Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia Rabir. Post. Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postumo Rhet. Aristotle, Rhetoric; Apsines, Art of Rhetoric Rhet. Her. Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium Tim. Plato, Timaeus Tusc. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations



Dead Sea Scrolls

1Q17–18 1QJubileesa–b 1QapGen Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen ar) 2Q19–20 2QJubileesa–b 3Q5 3QJubilees (olim apProph) 4Q176a 4QJubilees? 4Q186 4QHoroscope 4Q216–224 4QJubileesa–h

Abbreviations 4Q318 4QZodiology and Brontology ar 4Q388a 4QPseudo-Mosesc 4Q389 4QPseudo-Mosesd 4Q393 4QCommunal Confession 4Q505 4QWords of the Luminariesb? 4Q561 4QPhysiognomy/Horoscope ar 11Q12 11QJubilees 11Q13 11QMelchizedek ALD Aramaic Levi Document



Pseudepigrapha, Philo, and Josephus

Abr. Philo, On Abraham; Ambrose, On Abraham Ant. Josephus, Jewish Antiquites Apoc. Ab. Apocalypse of Abraham Conf. Philo, De confusione linguarum Fug. Philo, De fuga et inventione Her. Philo, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit Jos. Asen. Joseph and Aseneth Jub. Jubilees J.W. Josephus, Jewish War LAB Pseudo-Philo, Liber antiquitatum biblicarum Leg. Philo, Legum allegoriae Mut. Philo, On the Change of Names Opif. Philo, De opificio mundi Post. Philo, De posteritate Caini Ps.-Eup. Pseudo-Eupolemus Ps.-Orph. Pseudo-Orpheus Ps.-Phoc. Pseudo-Phocylides Pss. Sol. Psalms of Solomon QG Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis Sib. Or. Sibylline Oracles Somn. Philo, On Dreams T. Ab. Testament of Abraham T. Benj. Testament of Benjamin T. Judah Testament of Judah T. Levi Testament of Levi Virt. Philo, De virtutibus

xvii

xviii

Abbreviations

Early Christian Texts

1–2 Clem. 1–2 Clement Adv. Jud. Tertullian, Against the Jews Barn. Letter of Barnabas Bk. Bart. Book of Bartholomew Dial. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho Did. Apost. Didascalia Apostolorum Ep. Jerome, Epistulae Exp. ev. Luc. Ambrose, Exposition on the Gospel of Luke Hist. eccl. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Hom. Gen. Origen, Homilies on Genesis; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis Pan. Epiphanius, Panarion Praep. ev. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel Strom. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis Trin. Augustine, The Trinity Vit. Const. Eusebius, Life of Constantine



Mishnah, Talmud, and Other Rabbinic Texts

Avot Avot Avot R. Nat. Avot of Rabbi Natan b. Babylonian Talmud B. Bat. Bava Batra Ber. Berakhot B. Metz. Bava Metziʿa Gen. Rab. Genesis Rabbah Hag. Hagigah Hul. Hullin Ketub. Ketubbot m. Mishnah Meg. Megillah Mek. Mekilta Midr. Midrash Ned. Nedarim Nez. Neziqin Pesah. Pesahim Pesiq. Rab. Pesiqta Rabbati Pesiq. Rab Kah. Pesiqta of Rab Kahana Pirqe R. El. Pirqe Rabbi Eleazar

Abbreviations Qidd. Qiddushin Rab. Rabbah Rosh Hash. Rosh Hashanah Sanh. Sanhedrin Shabb. Shabbat Shira Shira Sifre Sifre Sotah Sotah t. Tosefta Taʿan. Taʿanit Tamid Tamid Tanh. Tanhuma Tg. Neof. Targum Neofiti Tg. Ps.-J. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan y. Jerusalem Talmud Y. Rabbi Yishmael Yal. Yalqut Yevam. Yevamot Yoma Yoma Zevah. Zevahim Zohar Zohar



Qurʾan

Q Qurʾan Surah Surah



Medieval and Early Modern European Texts

Dec. Boccaccio, The Decameron Fan. Voltaire, Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète NL Voltaire, “On the Natural Law”



Journals, Reference Volumes, Monograph Series, and Library Collections

AA AAE

Archäologischer Anzeiger Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy

xix

xx

Abbreviations

Anchor Bible AB ABD Freedman, David Noel, ed. Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. AcBib Academica Biblica AES Archives européennes de sociologie AGM Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin AIL Ancient Israel and Its Literature AKDV Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit Al-Qantara Al-Qantara AnBib Analecta Biblica ANF The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. 10 vols. 1885–1887. Repr., New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1916. Annales Annales ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Part 2, Principat. Edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972–. ARelG Archiv für Religionsgeschichte Articles on Slavic Studies ArtSlavSt ASE Annali di storia dell’esegesi AYBRL Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library Barb. Collection of Francesco Barbaro BAV Biblioteca apostolica vaticana BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge BFPL Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège BG Biblische Gestalten BHG Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca Bib Biblica BibInt Biblical Interpretation BL British Library, London BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France BSB Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich BSGRE Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy BSGRT Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BThZ Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift BU Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna

Abbreviations

xxi

Brigham Young University Studies Brigham Young University Studies Quarterly Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Chronique d’Égypte Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature Church History Codices latini monacenses Collectanea Christiana Orientalia Classical Philology Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology Cultural Anthropology Dumbarton Oaks Papers The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. Edited by Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997–1998. EA Empire and After EBE Ethnikē Bibliothēkē tēs Hellados, Athens EBR Klauck, Hans-Josef, et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009–. EC Early Christianity EHS Einleitung in die Heilige Schrift EJL Early Judaism and Its Literature EKK Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament ELCRP Education, Literary Culture, and Religious Practice in the Ancient World EncJud Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. EntRel Entangled Religions EPPC Ethnographical Problems of Peoples’s Culture EQ The Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan. 5 vols. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Leiden: Brill, 2001–. ESJG Erfurter Schriften zur jüdischen Geschichte Fabula Fabula FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FC Fathers of the Church FChr Fontes Christiani BYUS BYUSQ BZAW CBQ CdE CEJL CH Clm ColChrOr CP CSCO CSEL CSSA CultAnth DOP DSSSE

xxii

Abbreviations

Forum Ritualdynamik Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments GAP Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha GMA Gender in the Middle Ages GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies HALOT Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E.J. Richardson. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2001. HAR Hebrew Annual Review Harp, The The Harp HBS Herders biblische Studien Hebraica Hebraica HermE Hermes Einzelschriften HR History of Religions HRel Historia Religionum HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology HThKAT Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament HTR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual Hug Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies IE Improvement Era Intelligensblade Intelligensblade Islam, Der Der Islam JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum JAJ Journal of Ancient Judaism JAJSup Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCP Jewish and Christian Perspectives JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JJTP Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy JLSZ Journal of the Linnean Society London: Zoology JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JPSTC JPS Torah Commentary JQR Jewish Quarterly Review

FoRit FRLANT

Abbreviations

xxiii

Journal of Qurʾanic Studies JQS JR Journal of Religion JRS Journal of Roman Studies JS Journal des savants JSA Journal of Social Affairs JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam JSHRZ Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period JSJSup Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha JSS Journal of Semitic Studies Judaism Judaism KE Kulturthema Essen KEK Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament (Meyer-Kommentar) Laografia Laografia LCL Loeb Classical Library LIMINA LIMINA: Grazer theologische Perspektiven LSTS The Library of Second Temple Studies Man Man MByz Monde byzantin MEFR Mélanges de l’école française de Rome Millennium Millennium MO Mundus Orientis MOnl Muqarnas Online MRLLA Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity Neot Neotestamentica NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament NLR National Library of Russia, Saint-Petersburg NovT Novum Testamentum NStr Norm und Struktur NTMon New Testament Monographs NTOA Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus OAJ Open Arts Journal OB Orientalische Bibliothek OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis

xxiv

Abbreviations

OPOe Orientalia—Patristica—Oecumenica ORA Orientalische Religionen in der Antike Oriens Oriens OT Open Theology OTL Old Testament Library OTP Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985. PASN Propylaeum ad Acta Sanctorum Novembris PFES Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society PGM Preisendanz, Karl, and Albert Henrichs, eds. Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973–1974. PHSC Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and Its Contexts PMLTS The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology Series PO Patrologia Orientalis PR Philosophy and Rhetoric Proof Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History PRSt Perspectives in Religious Studies Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies PSAS P.Vind. G. Papyrus Vindobonensis Greek QD Quaestiones disputatae RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Edited by Theodor Klausner et al. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–. RC Religion Compass Religion Religion Religions Religions Representations Representations RevScRel Review des Sciences Religieuses RevQ Revue de Qumran RGUHS Routledge Guides to Using Historical Sources RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions RISHRA Readings in the Imperial Society of History and Russian Antiquities RMI La Rassegna Mensile di Israel RRE Religion in the Roman Empire SARA Syriac Annals of the Romanian Academy SB Stadtbibliothek, Trier SBLAB SBL Academica Biblica ScrHier Scripta Hierosolymitana

Abbreviations

xxv

Scrinium: Journal of Patrology and Critical Hagiography Scrinium Scripta & E-Scripta Scripta & E-Scripta SCSer Septuagint Commentary Series SDSSRL Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature SEG Hondius, Jacob E., et al., eds. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden: Brill, 1923–. SFAC South Florida Academic Commentary Series SGTK Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und Kirchengeschichte SHG Subsidia hagiographica SIs Studia Islamica SJ Studia Judaica SPB Studia Post-Biblica SPhiloA Studia Philonica Annual STAC Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum StArch Studia Archaeologica StCR Studies in Comparative Religion STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah StPatr Studia Patristica StPer Studien und Perspektiven. Series B of Spätantike, frühes Christentum, Byzanz. SUNYNES SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies SVTP Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigraphica Tarbiz Tarbiz TBN Themes in Biblical Narratives TDLL Testi e documenti di letteratura e di lingua TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Translated by John T. Willis et al. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006. TDSAP Testi e documenti per lo studio dell’antichità, Serie Papirologica ThHK Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung Traverse Traverse Trivium Trivium TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum TSeas Times and Seasons UB Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wrocław UTB Uni-Taschenbücher VC Vigiliae Christianae VT Vetus Testamentum

xxvi VTSup WMANT WTJ WUNT WUP ZAW ZPE ZTK

Abbreviations Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Westminster Theological Journal Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Warsaw University Proceedings Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Notes on Contributors Claudia D. Bergmann is Professor for Biblical Studies at Universität Paderborn, Germany. Her most recent book is Festmahl ohne Ende: Apokalyptische Vorstellungen vom Speisen in der Kommenden Welt im antiken Judentum und ihre biblischen Wur­ zeln (Kohlhammer, 2019); her most recent coedited book (with Tessa Rajak, Benedikt Kranemann, and Rebecca Ullrich) is entitled The Power of Psalms in Post-Biblical Judaism: Liturgy, Ritual and Community (Brill, 2023). She currently studies the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Thomas R. Blanton IV is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at John Carroll University. He is the author of A Spiritual Economy: Gift Exchange in the Letters of Paul of Tarsus (Yale University Press, 2017), and coeditor (with Agnes Choi and Jinyu Liu) of Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt (Routledge, 2022). He is currently writing a monograph entitled The Circumcision of Abraham: Modeling Ritual from Genesis to the Letters of Paul for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. Christoph Bultmann is Professor for Biblical Studies at the Martin-Luther-Institute in the Faculty of Education at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He is the author of a study of David Hume and Johann Gottfried Herder on religion (Mohr Siebeck, 1999) and has contributed a chapter on “Historical-Critical Inquiry” to the volume The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion, edited by John Barton (Princeton University Press, 2016). His current interests focus on interreligious dialogue and especially the Sufism-oriented teaching of Islam by Fethullah Gülen. Jan Willem van Henten is Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Amsterdam and Extraordinary Professor of Biblical Studies at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). His research concerns Jewish and Christian martyrdom, the Maccabean Books, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and the reception of the Bible in popular culture. His latest publication is Jewish Martyrdom in Antiquity: From the Books of Maccabees to the Babylonian Talmud (Leiden: Brill, 2023; with Friedrich Avemarie and Yair Furstenberg).

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Notes on Contributors

Clayton J. Killion is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. He is the coauthor (with Atria A. Larson, Saint Louis University) of “The Exegetical World That Paved the Way for the Glossa Ordinaria: A Study of Manuscripts, Glosses, and Commentaries on Matthew in the Twelfth Century” (Traditio, 2023). He is currently researching metaphorical meanings of hair in late ancient and early medieval biblical exegesis. May May Latt holds her PhD in Hebrew Bible from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and is a Metadata Analyst for Biblical Studies, Archaeology, and Religions at Atla, and ordained Pastor of Milwaukee Myanmar Christian Church. She teaches at Central Seminary in Kansas as an Adjunct Professor of Hebrew Bible and Contextual Learning: Cross Cultural Studies. She is a curriculum writer for adult Christian education at Judson Press. Her current research focuses on Hagar in Genesis by reading with the eyes of minoritized women in Burma. Laura S. Lieber is the Smart Professor of Jewish Studies at Duke University (USA); as of July 2024, she will be Professor of Transregional Comparative Religious History of Late Antiquity at the University of Regensburg (Germany). She is the author of Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry (Oxford, 2023) as well as Classical Samaritan Poetry (Penn State University Press, 2022) and Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity (Brill, 2018). Her current research focuses on the performance history of the book of Esther in Late Antiquity and the early medieval period, as well as on the folklorist Chronicle of Ahimaatz from early Byzantine Italy. Leon Mock worked as an Associate Professor of Judaica at the Tilburg School of Theology of Tilburg University. He was interested in intersections between religion, science, and magic and rabbinic responsa literature. Besides his academic publications, he wrote several popular publications on Judaism and was involved in Interfaith Dialogue. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr is Senior Professor of New Testament Studies in the Faculty of Theology at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. He is the author of Paulus

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im Judentum seiner Zeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021) and Tora und Weisheit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022). His main areas of research include Hellenistic-Jewish literature and the apostle Paul. He is currently writing a commentary on the Epistle of James for the Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar series. Mika S. Pajunen is a Senior Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki. He is the author of The Land to the Elect and Justice for All: Reading Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Light of 4Q381 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), and coeditor (with Jeremy Penner) of Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period (de Gruyter, 2017). He is currently working on a research project, “Textual Plurality in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Moving beyond ‘Non-Aligned,’” and editing Textual History of the Bible 3C: Theory and Practice of Textual Criticism. George Pattison is a retired priest and scholar, who has held full-time posts in Cambridge, Aarhus, Oxford, and Glasgow universities. He has published extensively on Kierkegaard, including Kierkegaard and the Quest for Unambiguous Life (Oxford University Press, 2013) and is coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (Oxford University Press, 2013). He has more recently written a three-part Philosophy of Christian Life (Oxford University Press, 2018, 2019, and 2021). His current research focuses on Russian religious thought, with particular emphasis on Dostoevsky. Marcel Poorthuis is a Professor Emeritus in Interreligious Dialogue at Tilburg University. His dissertation dealt with the French-Jewish philosopher Immanuel Levinas. He has published on Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, and philosophy. He is coeditor of the international series Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Leiden: Brill). A recent publication: Rituals in Interreligious Dialogue: Bridge or Barrier? (Cambridge Scholars, 2020). A recent project deals with a multidisciplinary approach to parables in Judaism and in the New Testament. Stephen O. Smoot is a doctoral candidate in Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and is an adjunct instructor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is

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the author of a forthcoming piece in the journal Catholic Biblical Quarterly on the monotheism of Second Isaiah in light of ancient Egyptian monotheism and was a guest editor for a special issue of the journal BYU Studies Quarterly titled A Guide to the Book of Abraham (vol. 61, no. 4; 2022). Stephen continues to research the presence of Egypt and Egyptian influence in the Hebrew Bible, which he intends to make the focus of his dissertation, and the reception of the patriarch Abraham in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Alexey B. Somov is a junior research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies “Beyond Canon: Heterotopias of Religious Authority in Late Antique Christianity” (FOR 2770/1) at Universität Regensburg, Germany. He is also an Associate Professor in the faculty of Holy Scripture at St. Philaret Institute, Moscow, Russia. He is the author of Representations of the Afterlife in Luke-Acts (London: Bloombury T&T Clark, 2017) and “‘Abraham’s Bosom’ (Luke 16:22–23) as a Key Metaphor in the Overall Composition of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (2017): 615–633 (with Vitaly Voinov). He is currently working on a monograph, The Martyrdom of Daniel and the Three Youths: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, for the series Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha (Leuven: Peeters). Günter Stemberger is Professor Emeritus for Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Among his publications are Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Min­ neapolis: Fortress Press, 1992; 9th German edition: Munich: C.H. Beck, 2011), and Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). He is currently writing a Commentary on the Mishnah Tractate Avot for de Gruyter, Berlin. Clare E. Wilde is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on the Qurʾan, its milieu, and the first Christians to write in Arabic. Her publications include “Christians and Christianity in Islamic Exegesis” in the Oxford Bibliographies Online and “‘Prophets’ and Their Wrongful Killing: Homily or Hymn? Hearing a Qurʾānic Term and Refrain in the Light of Syriac Tradition,” in SARA 3 (2023): 33–67. She is currently working with Steve Mason on a popular book on formative Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

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Michael Zellmann-Rohrer is a researcher in the Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is the author of Greek Magic: Selected Texts from the Byzantine and Later Tradition (forthcoming with Dumbarton Oaks [Harvard University Press]) and an editor of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden: Brill). His current research project focuses on transmission and innovation in astrological doctrines as reflected in Greek papyri and medieval codices.

Introduction: Abraham, Ritual, and Exemplification Thomas R. Blanton IV and Claudia D. Bergmann The patriarch Abraham has, for at least two and a half millennia, served as a touchstone of ethnic and religious identities, grounded social and ritual practices, and stimulated the literary imagination, as stories about him were told and retold, amplified and adapted. At least three religious traditions claim him, in different ways, as a forebear: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The tale of Abraham’s reception over the millennia, however, is anything but straightforward, as the patriarch’s name has been invoked to authorize diverse and even contradictory positions, sometimes by groups who attempted to validate their own socioreligious practices and boundaries at the expense of others. Contrariwise, the same figure has been construed as the fountainhead of the irenic, interreligious category “Abrahamic religions.” This book does not attempt to unravel all the knotty histories of the patriarch’s reception, but it does aim to provide some illuminating glimpses into this complex and ongoing process. In terms of the history of the project from which the present volume arose, most of the contributors participated in one of two workshops that took place at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt, Germany, held on 17 December 2018 and 22 October 2019, organized as part of the activities at the Research Centre “Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present.” Additional contributors later added new chapters to extend the discussion beyond the scope of what had taken place at the Research Centre. What follows in this introduction to the volume lays out why the editors and contributors are convinced that the topic of imitating Abraham is such an important one in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts. It lays the groundwork for the contributions within the volume by very briefly surveying recent research on each of the key terms associated with the project, “Abraham,” “ritual,” and “model,” and indicates how bringing the three together enriches our understanding of Abraham, a figure that has long held pride of place as the most important biblical patriarch in rituals, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic, past and present.

© Thomas R. Blanton IV and Claudia D. Bergmann, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004722620_002

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Abraham

In biblical narratives, Abraham is portrayed as born in the Babylonian city of Ur and taken during childhood to live in Haran, near the Balikh River in Upper Mesopotamia (in present-day Syria). The god YHWH (Yahu or Yahweh), the narratives report, summons Abraham to leave Haran to travel to and settle in the Negev. He later journeys to Egypt, where he is portrayed as a trickster, passing off his wife as his sister to avoid being killed. As Abraham had anticipated, his wife is seized as a concubine by the regnant pharaoh, only to be returned after the ruler’s household is afflicted with a plague. As a result of the deception, Abraham is enriched with livestock and slaves, offered as compensation or a bride price. Abraham later sires offspring, Ishmael by a woman enslaved in his household, Hagar; and Isaac by his wife, Sarah. The biblical accounts connect Isaac, through his son Jacob, to Israel, while Ishmael is connected to the Arabian Peninsula. In these narratives within the early parts of the book of Genesis, Abraham is portrayed as something of a ritual expert, building altars, offering sacrifices, invoking the name of Yahweh, and circumcising himself, his children, and his domestic slaves. After residing in Hebron and Beersheba, he reportedly dies at the “good old age” of 175 years.1 The name “Abraham” itself may be theophoric, “The [or: “my”] Father is Exalted,” the “father” referring to Abraham’s patron deity, first identified in the Priestly layer of the Pentateuch as El-Shaddai (Gen 17:1) and later as YHWH (Exod 3:14). Alternatively, it may indicate either (1) Abraham’s claim to distinguished paternal lineage or (2) the claim that Abraham himself is to be identified as the “exalted ancestor” of Jacob-Israel (Gen 32:28; cp. Isa 41:8).2 In the latter case, the name serves well the literary interests of the Pentateuchal writers, who wished to construct a genealogy and origins story to ground the corporate identity of a group referring to itself as “Israel.”3 This is consistent with the fact that no other individual is given the name “Abram” or “Abraham” in the Hebrew Bible, although the doublet form Abiram is used (e.g., Num 16:1, 12, 24, 27; 1 Kgs 16:34; Ps 106:17). Although the two forms given in Gen 17:5, “Abram” and “Abraham,” are dialectal variants, the slight change is significant in the narrative. Name changes 1 See, e.g., the overviews of A.R. Millard, “Abraham,” ABD 1:35–41; Thomas Heike, “Abraham,” WiBiLex: Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Jan. 2005, https://bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/12288/. 2 Heike, “Abraham,” mentions the first two but not the last possibility indicated here. 3 On the ways in which the “relationships between groups and peoples can be [re]described as family relationships,” see Claudia D. Bergmann, “Mothers of a Nation: How Motherhood and Religion Intermingle in the Hebrew Bible,” OT 6 (2020): 132 (citation slightly modified).

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often indicate a transition to a new social status, in this case signaling entry into a “covenantal” relationship with a patron god (Gen 15:7).4 The explanation given for the name change in Gen 17:5, “for I have established you as the father of a multitude of nations” is based on a folk etymology.5 Although the patriarch is a figure of legend, the “historical quest” for whom “is a basically fruitless occupation,” the patriarchal and matriarchal narratives of Genesis and their literary formation have been subjected to intense scrutiny.6 Anke Mühling notes that in comparison to earlier compositions in the Hebrew Bible, there was a marked “uptick” of interest in Abraham during the Persian and Second Temple periods, when narratives about the patriarch were constructed and reconstructed in ongoing processes of identity formation.7 A number of studies have documented this ongoing literary interest in the patriarch and have traced the ways in which earlier, biblical images of Abraham are utilized and indeed “rewritten” in subsequent narratives.8 Reflecting on the variety of ways in which Abraham narratives are (re)interpreted in the Hebrew Bible and related corpora, Sean Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle note, Perhaps unsurprisingly, the interpretation of Abraham is characterized by diversity. The theological or ideological perspective of the author substantially influences and often determines how they engage with 4 See, e.g., the name changes in Gen 17:15; 32:28; 2 Kgs 23:34; 24:17; Isa 62:2; Dan 4:6; 5:12; Rev 2:17; and Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with New JPS Translation, JPSTC (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 124. 5 Heike, “Abraham.” 6 Quotation: Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002); for a literary history of the pertinent Pentateuchal texts: John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); detailed exposition of the texts: Matthias Köckert, Abraham: Ahnvater—Vorbild—Kultstifter, BG 31 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017); Köckert, Von Jakob zu Abraham: Studien zum Buch Genesis, FAT 147 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021). 7 Anke Mühling, “Blickt auf Abraham, euren Vater”: Abraham als Identifikationsfigur des Judentums in der Zeit des Exils and des Zweiten Tempels, FRLANT 236 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2011). 8 For a sampling, see Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, eds., Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, LSTS 93 (London: T&T Clark, 2019); Pernille Carstens and Niels Peter Lemche, eds., The Reception and Remembrance of Abraham, PHSC 13 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011); Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Abraham: Une patriarche dans l’histoire (Paris: Ellipses, 2009); Theresia Heithner and Christiana Reemts, Biblische Gestalten bei den Kirchenvätern: Abraham (Münster: Aschendorff, 2005); James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 243–74.

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Abraham and handle his narrative. In general, ancient authors, when evoking Abraham, highlighted one or more of his character traits (e.g., faith, hospitality, fatherhood, etc.) or read his story through a specific interpretive lens (e.g., allegory). When rewriting his narrative, authors regularly filled gaps, reordered events, expanded reported speech, and even made claims about Abraham’s current state in the afterlife.9 Let a few examples suffice here to indicate the diversity to which Adams and Domoney-Lyttle refer. Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE) presents Abraham both as a flesh-and-blood character who emigrated from Mesopotamia to the “land of Canaan” and as a metaphor for the soul in search of metaphysical truth in the mode of Middle Platonic philosophy: just as Abraham emigrated from the land of his father, so too he gradually came to the realization that the sensible universe was but an imperfect reflection of the ideal blueprint that was provided by a Platonic theory of forms.10 In the second-century CE Apocalypse of Abraham, the patriarch attempts in vain to demonstrate to his father Terah how the images of the gods he carved for a living had no power to keep themselves from breaking when handled or from burning when placed near a fire.11 According to the second-century CE Testament of Abraham, when God decreed that Abraham should die after a long life, the archangel Michael, sent to earth to collect the patriarch’s soul, is moved by his exemplary hospitality and consequently demurs from delivering the news of his impending death. Finally the elder patriarch’s soul is extracted from his recalcitrant body by a ruse.12 The Apocalypse of Abraham constitutes a prequel to the narrative in Gen 11–25, and the Testament of Abraham a sequel. Treated in a less positive manner, in the late second to early third century CE work known as the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, one of the Coptic 9 Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, “Introduction: Abraham in Jewish and Christian Authors,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 4. 10 On Abraham in Philo, see Samuel Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism: A Study of Conceptions of Abraham in Jewish Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: Ktav, 1971); Alan Mendelson, Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press; New York: Ktav, 1982), 62–65; Annette Yoshiko Reed, “The Construction and Subversion of Patriarchal Perfection: Abraham and Exemplarity in Philo, Josephus, and the Testament of Abraham,” JSJ 40 (2009): 185–212; Sean A. Adams, “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 75–92. 11 On Abraham in the Apocalypse of Abraham, see Jared W. Ludlow, “Abraham in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Friend of God and Father of Fathers,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 41–58. 12 See further chapter 6 in this volume.

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Nag Hammadi codices (NHC 7.2), Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are derided as “counterfeit fathers” named by the god Yaldabaoth, a lesser god connected to the realm of materiality and ignorance, as opposed to that of immateriality and knowledge where the ineffable “Father” is supreme. The latter realm is represented in the text by Jesus, who is interpreted in the dualistic mode characteristic the “Gnostic” Christianity of Roman Egypt in interaction with aspects of Middle and Neoplatonism.13 In contrast, in the Qurʾan (2.124–136), Abraham as presented as one who submits (ʾaslamtu) to Allah, providing an exemplary model for subsequent generations of Muslims (muslimūn) to follow, playing on the verbal root slm, “to submit”: Abraham is a paradigm of submission to God. Many more elaborations on and retellings of the biblical stories exist, often narrated in striking and unexpected fashion; some salient examples are discussed in the pages of this volume. Another line of research has sought to identify what are viewed as the “common roots” of the so-called Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As Thomas Heike notes, “as forefather of all believers, Abraham can become an ‘ecumenical’ common denominator of all three monotheistic religions, and acts as an anchor point in the three-way discussion between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”14 On the other hand, the encompassing category “Abrahamic religions” has received significant criticism.15 The polysemic figure of Abraham can be drawn upon not only to construct theories of unity among those three traditions based on notions of shared roots or ancestry, but also to highlight differences and distinctions both between and within those traditions. Jon Levenson, for example, illustrates the ways in which “the various Abrahamic religions” are sometimes classified “together in a way

13 On the Platonic aspects of Nag Hammadi texts, see Birger A. Pearson, “Gnosticism as Platonism: With Special Reference to Marsanes (NHC 10,1),” HTR 77, no. 1 (1984): 55–72; Jon D. Turner, “The Gnostic Sethians and Middle Platonism: Interpretations of the ‘Timaeus’ and ‘Parmenides,’” VC 60, no. 1 (2006): 9–64. 14 Heike, “Abraham.”. 15 Reinhard G. Kratz and Tilman Nagel, eds., “Abraham, unser Vater”: Die gemeinsamen Wurzeln von Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003). The complexity of the historical relationships between the three traditions has been emphasized by Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eißler, eds., Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2009). For criticisms and discussion of the category, see Reuven Firestone, “Abraham and Authenticity,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, ed. Adam J. Silverstein and Guy G. Stroumsa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3–21; Rémi Brague, “The Concept of the Abrahamic Religions, Problems and Pitfalls,” in Silverstein and Stroumsa, Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, 88–105.

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that does not adequately respect the distinctive claims of any of them.”16 And as Reuven Firestone observes, “not only does Abraham serve as a symbol of common aspirations, he is also a source of disagreement and interreligious polemic, and a fulcrum for leveraging spiritual difference and claims to religious superiority.”17 Carol Bakhos identifies conspicuous differences: “To Jews, Avraham (the Hebrew name) is the father of the Jewish people; to Christians, Abraham is the father of the Christian family of faith; and to Muslims, Ibrahim (Arabic) is the father of prophets in Islam. Thus he is at once a unifying and divisive figure with respect to how we conceive of these religions.”18 The diversity of ways in which the figure of Abraham has been utilized both within and across religious traditions suggests that we are not faced with a set of rules by which the patriarch must be interpreted, but rather that each redeployment of his legacy is strategic, in the sense that authors encode their own goals and agendas within the texts they produce, often attributing to Abraham the same cultural expectations and norms that they themselves wish to promote.19 Scholars, too, operate within fields of sociopolitical interest, and those interests may color the ways in which they portray Abraham and his significance, as the use of the patriarch in contexts of interreligious dialogue and polemic clearly attest.20 The present volume contributes to these several ongoing discussions by highlighting the pluripotentiality of the figure of Abraham as a means to pattern behavior and ritual action, as writers across millennia have utilized the patriarch as a “ritual model.” In the following sections, we outline what this ritual modeling entails.

16 Jon D. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 202. 17 Firestone, “Abraham and Authenticity,” 3. 18 Carol Bakhos, The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 1. 19 On the distinction between rules and strategies, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pierre Lamaison and Pierre Bourdieu, “From Rules to Strategies: An Interview with Pierre Bourdieu,” CultAnth 1, no. 1 (1986): 110–20. On religious discourse as a form of social construction, see Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Lincoln, “How to Read a Religious Text: Reflections on Some Passages of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad,” HR 46, no. 2 (2006): 127–39. 20 For the ways in which scholarly investments shape academic discourse, see in general Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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Ritual21

Finding definitions for something as elusive as rituals has been a continuing task among scholars.22 In 1992, Catherine Bell suggested that the concept of ritual is an artificial category invented by academics and superimposed on various practices of human action, without the category “ritual” as such really existing as a discrete aspect of social practice.23 This criticism of the category “ritual” continued well into the current decades. One example is Phillipe Buc, who questioned in 2008 whether the concept of ritual should and can be used at all for premodern societies.24 And the German scholars Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas simply remarked in 2004: “Rituale sind Konstrukte der Forschung.”25 As a category constructed on the basis of and to facilitate theoretical reflection, if the term “ritual” is to be usefully deployed, it must, like equally contested categories such as “religion,” “economy,” and “class,” be defined, even if only provisionally, for the purposes of a given investigation.26

21 Section 2 of the introduction incorporates material from and builds on previous work by Claudia D. Bergmann, Festmahl ohne Ende: Apokalyptische Vorstellungen vom Speisen in der Kommenden Welt im antiken Judentum und ihre biblischen Wurzeln (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2019). 22 The term “ritual” is based on the Latin noun ritus, which in ancient times denoted a custom or habit often pertaining to the cultic veneration of a deity or deities, and on the Latin adjective ritualis, “pertaining to religious custom.” Another etymology of the term that has been suggested in Ritual Studies scholarship is the Sanskrit word ŗta, “order, truth,” or the Indo-European verbal root ri, “to flow”; see Axel Michaels, “Zur Dynamik von Ritualkomplexen,” FoRit 3 (2003): 1–12 (esp. 2). 23 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 24 Philippe Buc, “Politisches Ritual und politisch Imaginäres im Früh- und Hochmittelalter,” Trivium 2 (2008): 1–37. 25 Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas, “Performative Welten: Einführung in die historischen, systematischen und methodischen Dimensionen des Rituals,” in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole, ed. Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas (Munich: Fink, 2004), 17. 26 See, e.g., on “religion”: Jonathan Z. Smith, “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,” in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 19–35; Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 179–96; on “economy”: Thomas R. Blanton IV, “The Economic Functions of Gift Exchange in Pauline Assemblies,” in Paul and Economics: A Handbook, ed. Thomas R. Blanton IV and Raymond Pickett (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 279–306 (esp. 280–86); Pierre Bourdieu, The Social Structures of the Economy, trans. Chris Turner (Malden, MA: Polity, 2005); on “class”: G. Anthony Keddie, Michael Flexsenhar III, and Steven J. Friesen, eds., The Struggle over Class: Socioeconomic Analysis of Ancient Christian Texts (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021).

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Definitions vary, however, and new ones continually come to the fore. Roy Rappaport, for example, defined ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers.”27 Ronald Grimes, one of the most productive scholars in Ritual Studies, distinguished between “rites,” defined as actions that people perform, and “rituals,” defined as formal categories of thought and definitions that attempt to describe these actions. He suggests yet another human activity that he names “ritualizing,” defined as “the activity of deliberately cultivating rites” or as “activity that is not culturally framed as ritual but which someone, often an observer, interprets as if it were potentially ritual.”28 Even though the category “ritual” often defies attempts to find one single definition, some scholars nevertheless generalize the category broadly, such that rituals are understood as omnipresent in human (and, as some suggest, even animal) life.29 Conversely, as we have seen, Buc denies that the term has any applicability prior to the modern period. Many scholarly works on the subject contain lists of characteristics of ritual activity. The individual items on these lists vary, however, from scholar to scholar; those elements that are the most important for purposes of the present discussion appear below (§2.4). In the early periods of Religious Studies, the terms “myth,” in the sense of “a story in which deities and supernatural beings play roles,” and “rite,” in the sense of “a cultic act connected to the veneration of a deity or deities,” often competed with each other, especially when it came to the question of which came first in the practice of “religion.” The representatives of the Cambridge School of Classicists, for example, claimed that myth derives from ritual. Others, such as Mircea Eliade, conversely assumed that ritual emerged from myth.30 At the end of the nineteenth century, however, William Robertson Smith argued, convincingly for many at that time, that ritual was the origin of religious cult, and that religion could be explained by ritual practices that stabilized the social bonds among those who performed and practiced them: “The myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth; for the

27 Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, CSSA 110 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 24. 28 Ronald Grimes, Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory, StCR (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 10. 29 See Grimes, Ritual Criticism, 2. On animals: see, for example, Julian S. Huxley, “Courtship Activities in the Red-Throated Diver (Colymbus stellatus Pontopp.); Together with a Discussion of the Evolution of Courtship in Birds,” JLSZ 35 (1923): 253–92. 30 For more on this debate, see Christoph Jamme, “Gott an hat ein Gewand”: Grenzen und Perspektiven philosophischer Mythos-Theorien der Gegenwart (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991).

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ritual was fixed and the myth was variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in the myth was at the discretion of the worshipper.”31 James George Frazer extended Smith’s understanding of ritual to all forms of culture. He and other representatives of the Cambridge School, one example being Jane Ellen Harrison, thus saw myths as mere remnants of ritual practices that had perhaps even lost their connection to ritual. Then the fields of sociology, ethnology, and anthropology emerged, all of which dealt with the concept of ritual right at the beginning of their academic history. Rituals as social phenomena that regulate and stabilize life worlds or accompany the individual on his or her way through life were now the object of numerous studies such as the works by Émile Durkheim, Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and Roy Rappaport. In the subsequent decades, the term “ritual” was used in a broader, almost inflationary sense. Now, the concept of ritual was examined independently of the field of Religious Studies, independently of the debate about the priority of myth or ritual, and away from all theological questions. Currently, all kinds of human activities have been studied and defined as rituals, such as all religious masses and worship services, rites de passage in the lives of individuals and groups, the repetitive human behavior in everyday situations, such as in table manners, greeting formulas, or even within phenomena such as watching television, doing housework, cultural performances, and political events.32 The field of theology and the churches took some time to reflect on the positive and wide-reaching new definitions of ritual that had emerged. Beginning with the Reformation, an antiritualist attitude associated with Calvinism had spread in Protestant circles, while the Catholic Church opened up to ritual studies early on because of its interest in the liturgy. 31 William R. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions, 3rd ed. (New York: Ktav, 1969). 32 See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu, Was heißt sprechen? Die Ökonomie des sprachlichen Tausches, trans. Hella Beister; ed. Georg Kremnitz (Vienna: New Academic Press, 1990); Gregor T. Goethals, The TV Ritual: Worship at the Video Altar (Boston: Beacon, 1981); Kathryn A. Rabuzzi, The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework (New York: Seabury, 1982); Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Performance, Inszenierung, Ritual: Zur Klärung kulturwissenschaftlicher Schlüsselbegriffe,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und “Performative Turn”: Ritual, Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Jürgen Martschukat and Steffen Patzold, NStr 19 (Köln: Böhlau, 2003), 33–54; Christoph Wulf, “Ritual, Macht und Performanz: Die Inauguration des amerikanischen Präsidenten,” in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole, ed. Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas (Paderborn: Fink, 2004), 49–61; Claudia D. Bergmann, “Choices in Ritual Imagination: The Role of the Messianic Figure in Early Jewish and Christian Texts about the Meal in the World to Come,” HRel 10 (2018): 91–103.

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2.1 Ritual(s) Define(s) Human Identity Human identity is something that has to be achieved and fought for by the individual, it is not something that is intrinsic to a human being when it is born.33 One way to maintain, assure oneself of, or strengthen an identity is to participate in a ritual. Those who perform a ritual thereby assign themselves to a group of people who perform the same ritual and distinguish themselves from those who have not adopted it. Through the ritual itself, things that affect the identity of the individual or the community are then made public or put into law. This is possibly the reason why new rituals often emerge in marginalized groups first, as they struggle to gain an identity distinct from that of the majority culture, as Michaels points out.34 Ritual can also have a transformative effect on an individual and the community, namely by enabling those who perform the ritual to transition from one state of identity to another.35 In that sense, rituals are catalysts that influence the changing status of those individuals or groups that participate in them. If the ritual is a religious one, this transformation or even this performance of identity can equally create a connection to the divine and define the individual in this way. 2.2 Ritual(s) Define(s) Structures In the performance of rituals, questions of structures and structuring are often important, which can relate to the correct performance of the ritual itself, but also to the structure of the ritual place, the time of the ritual performance or the group of ritual performers. When an individual takes part in a ritual, he or she learns about the structures that the ritual creates or mediates. He or she also more or less accepts those structures as his/her own and, ideally (from the perspective of agents promoting the ritual), continues to live within them, thus again becoming part of the larger group that also takes those structures

33 See Ferdinand Fellmann, “Kulturelle und personale Identität,” in Essen und kulturelle Identität: Europäische Perspektiven, ed. Alois Wierlacher et al., KE 2 (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), 30: “Identität ist keine Eigenschaft, die dem Menschen von Natur aus gegeben ist, sondern ein praktisches Grundverständnis, das er sich erringen muß.” 34 Michaels, “Zur Dynamik,” 7. 35 Here, see the works of Arnold van Gennep, such as Les Rites de Passage: Étude Systématique des Rites de la Porte et du Seuil  … (Paris: Picard, 1909); Victor W. Turner, such as Das Ritual: Struktur und Anti-Struktur (Frankfurt: Campus, 2005); and Axel Michaels, such as in “‘Le Rituel pour le Rituel’ oder wie sinnlos sind Rituale?,” in Rituale heute: Theorien, Kontroversen, Entwürfe, ed. Corina Caduff and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (Berlin: Reimer, 1999), 23–48.

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as a given.36 “Ritualized bodies,” however, are not merely passive instruments embodying ready-made structures; rather they may exhibit greater or lesser degrees of resistance to or acceptance or modification of ritual structures, even when participating in rituals: “ritualization is the strategic manipulation of ‘context’ in the very act of reproducing it.”37 Further, rituals structure the groups of ritual performers themselves. On the one hand, hierarchies are formed within the group of ritual participants due to different personal identities and ritual roles, and on the other hand, a society orders itself along questions of identity, so that the group performing the ritual sees itself as “inside,” but declares the others as “outside.” If the place of performance of a ritual is of particular importance, it often involves questions of the repetition of the ritual in the same location, questions of the furnishings or the type of ritual space in general, or the way in which a ritual place is used in its components. A ritual can also address the opposition of there here-and-now and the cosmic sphere, or possibly the infusion of the known world by the divine realm. In fact, many rituals appear to attempt just that. When it comes to ordering time, the time frame of the ritual performance (e.g., season, time of day, length of the ritual) or the time rhythm of the repetition of the ritual performance are important. However, the ordering of time also has an effect on the lives of those who perform rituals. While some rituals order the personal time of life, others are also understood as actions that influence the order in society or the cosmos. While some rituals are performed regularly, on the basis of weekly, monthly, or yearly cycles, for example; others occur at irregular intervals tied to the human life cycle: birth, infancy, childhood, marriage, and death. 2.3 Ritual(s) Define(s) the Relationship to a Deity Among scholars seeking a definition of ritual, there is the group of those who see ritual at work in all areas of life, and the group of those who believe that real ritual exists only within religions. The latter are based on Victor Turner’s influential definition of ritual, which includes the realm of the transcendent. According to Turner, rituals are “prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not

36 See Dominik Fugger, “Symbol, Handlung, Erfahrung: Perspektiven auf das Ritual als Gegenstand soziologischer Theoriebildung,” AES 52, no. 3 (2012): 397. 37 On “ritualized bodies,” see Bell, Ritual Theory, 98–101, 107–8, 182–223; citation: 100.

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given over to technological routine [and] have references to beliefs in mystical beings or powers.”38 If we define “religion” for present purposes as “the temporary and situational enlargement of the environment—judged as relevant by one or several of the actors—beyond the unquestionably plausible social environment inhabited by co-existing humans who are in communication (and hence observable),”39 then participants in “religious” rituals, by definition, engage in acts understood to establish a bridge to transcendent, or “not unquestionably plausible,” beings: gods, daimonia, spirits, angels, ancestors, and so on. Such acts, it is claimed, impart or repeat knowledge about the deity, or in some other way have the goal of establishing or representing a connection to the deity or deities. Rituals of this type, which aim to communicate with or influence posited transcendent beings, often convey knowledge about their origin, (mis)understood as a divine act of creation. Although in fact, rituals are generated by the groups who perform them, they are authorized by redescribing their own origins as divine and transcendent.40 Occasionally, such rituals refer to ancestors and ancestresses such as Abraham and Sarah within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, figures who, according to the imagined ritual timeline, lived closer to the transcendent deity, both in regard to time as well as location. By reconstructing a real or imagined connection to a venerable figure of the past, the person who performs a ritual centuries later, and possibly at another place on the global map, may perceive themselves to be brought closer to the divine by proxy. The repetition of such rituals creates the illusion of continuity. Recalling times of origin, former connections to a deity, or a relationship with an ancestor or an ancestress creates a grand continuous arc that gives the ritual performers a sense of order and security within the world, chaotic as it might be, which is now seen as being created and still mysteriously guided by the deity.

38 Victor W. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 19. 39 Jörg Rüpke, “Religious Agency, Identity, and Communication: Reflections on History and Theory of Religion,” Religion 45 (2015): 348. 40 On this recurrent authorizing trope, see Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies in Myth, Ritual, and Classification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Lincoln, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Lincoln, Apples and Oranges: Explorations in, on, and with Comparison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

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2.4 What Ritual Needs: Body, Voice, Text, and Object, Too? The human body, the human voice, and the written text—often seen as divinely inspired—are the main components that make the performance of a ritual possible.41 It is the spoken word that comes from the mouth of a ritual agent and perhaps transmits something that is believed to be divine that makes the ritual efficacious. As the ritual agent speaks and someone else listens to or participates in the ritual, the ritual unfolds its power, often within the body of the person for whose benefit the ritual is ostensibly performed. It is thus best if the ritual agents are physically present.42 Occasionally, especially in cases of crisis, it may be necessary that the people who perform the ritual and listen to or watch it being performed are not in physical proximity to each other. In those cases, it has been debated whether the ritual is still valid and able to do what it is intended to do.43 The written form allows for consistency and dependency so that historical, religious, and ritual information can be transmitted via extended distances and over a long period of time.44 In a way, it also prolongs the period that rituals take to change and adapt to new circumstances. Once something is codified in written form, it takes effort and time to alter it. Whether or not ritual performance relies on ritual objects, and whether they initiate, underline, support, and/or symbolically represent an aspect of what has been said during the ritual performance, is still a matter of discussion among theorists.45 The so-called material turn in historical studies led historians and archaeologists to pay more attention to discovered objects and their historical contexts. The material culture has now come to the forefront of

41

On embodied religious practice, see, e.g., Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices (New York: New York University Press, 2021), 75–97. 42 See Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Rituale (Frankfurt: Campus, 2013), 226. 43 An example that concerns actual and virtual (in the broadest sense of the word) meal rituals can be found in Claudia D. Bergmann, “Allein am Tisch? Antike und moderne jüdische Antworten auf den drohenden Wegfall eines Gemeinschaftsrituals in Krisensituationen,” LIMINA 4, no. 2 (2021): 86–114. 44 Stollberg-Rilinger, Rituale, 226: “Im Unterschied zu mündlicher Kommunikation ermöglicht die Schrift, sprachliche Informationen zu speichern und nahezu unbegrenzt über zeitliche und räumliche Distanzen hinweg zu vermitteln. … Keineswegs erübrigt und verdrängt daher zunehmende Schriftlichkeit die rituelle Performanz, aber es verändert sie.” 45 See Claudia D. Bergmann, “Multifaceted Relationships: Ritual Objects and Ritual Agents in the Hebrew Bible and in Cognate Literature,” in Ritual Objects in Ritual Contexts, ESJG 6, ed. Maria Stürzebecher and Claudia D. Bergmann (Jena: Bussert & Stadeler, 2020), 174–98.

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attention, a viewpoint that investigates objects, both natural and built, as they are shaped by and themselves shape human experiences.46 For the purposes of the present volume, “ritual” may be defined, tentatively and for heuristic purposes, as social behavior incorporating actions exhibiting several or all of the following characteristics: 1. An action is repeated across time. 2. The manner in which the action is performed is more or less standardized. 3. The action is performed at a time understood to be “special,” or marked as different from other times (linguistic markers such as “holy” or “sacred” time may be deployed).47 4. The action is interpreted by narratives that endow it with significance for a particular social group (e.g., religious group, political party, nation, etc.). 5. Although the action may be performed by a lone individual, the narratives that interpret it connect the individual to other, real or imagined, entities, potentially including living peers, ancestors, supernatural beings, and so on. The rituals surveyed in this volume typically although not uniformly involve all of these elements, although variation in element 3, time, is notably present in some cases: whereas liturgical formulas invoking the name of Abraham occur at regular, predictable intervals, rituals such as circumcision and the inscription of the name on amulets occur on an irregular basis, after a birth or whenever households or livestock are threatened (see further §4 below).

46

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Karen Harvey, ed., History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, 2nd ed., RGUHS (London: Routledge, 2018), 4: “Unlike ‘object’ or ‘artefact,’ ‘material culture’ encapsulates not just the physical attributes of an object, but the myriad and shifting contexts through which it acquires meaning. Material culture is not simply objects that people make, use and throw away; it is an integral part of—and indeed shapes—human experience.” See further Ammerman, Studying Lived Religion, 98–121; Emma-Jayne Graham, Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy (London: Routledge, 2021); Jessica Hughes, “Material Religion and Pompeii: Introduction,” OAJ 10 (2021): 4–12; Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). On the subject of ritual objects, also see Sandra Blakely, ed., Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice (Atlanta: Lockwood, 2017); Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ria Berg, Antonella Coralini, Anu Kaisa Koponen, and Reima Välimäki, eds., Tangible Religion: Materiality of Domestic Cult Practices from Antiquity to [the] Early Modern Era (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2021). For a redescription of the categories of “holiness” or “sacrality” in terms of “specialness,” see Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and other Special Things (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

Introduction

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15

Model and Example

Since at least the late Neo-Babylonian (626–539 BCE) or Persian (ca. 550– 330 BCE) period, narratives have cast Abraham as a figure whose actions could be viewed as exemplary displays of various types of virtue; for example, fidelity and obedience to Yahweh, the god of Israel, facility in cultic matters (sacrifice and the building of altars), or the practice of hospitality.48 Recent and forthcoming studies probe the issue of exemplarity in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Elisa Uusimäki, for example, has shown how figures including Solomon and Moses could be portrayed as sages whose behavior should be emulated.49 Various studies have examined the discourses of exemplarity and imitation in letters of Paul of Tarsus; and Candida Moss and James Petifils have examined themes of imitatio Christi in the martyrological literature of the second and third centuries CE.50 Peter Brown has discussed the theme in 48

On the dating of the Pentateuchal narratives on Abraham, see, e.g., Van Seters, Abraham; for recent debates on delineating literary strata in the Pentateuch and problems with dating them, see, e.g., Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006); Friedhelm Hartenstein and Konrad Schmid, eds., Farewell to the Priestly Writing? The Current State of the Debate, AIL 38 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2022); Konrad Schmid, “The Neo-Documentarian Manifesto: A Critical Reading,” JBL 140, no. 3 (2021): 461–79; alternatively, from the perspective of the Documentary Hypothesis: John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 47–65, 107; Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). 49 Elisa Uusimäki, Lived Wisdom in Jewish Antiquity: Studies in Exercise and Exemplarity, ELCRP (London: T&T Clark, 2021); Carson Bay, Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023); David R. Edwards, In the Court of the Gentiles: Narrative, Exemplarity, and Scriptural Adaptation in the Court Tales of Flavius Josephus, JSJSup 209 (Leiden: Brill, 2023). 50 On Paul: Elizabeth A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991); Kathy Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement (New York and London: T&T Clark, 2007); Joseph A. Marchal, Hierarchy, Unity, and Imitation: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Power Dynamics in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, AcBib 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Marchal, “Mimicry and Colonial Differences: Gender, Ethnicity, and Empire in the Interpretation of Pauline Imitation,” in Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies, ed. Laura Nasrallah and Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 101–28; Benjamin Fiore, rev. Thomas R. Blanton IV, “Paul, Exemplification, and Imitation,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, 2nd ed., ed. J. Paul Sampley, 2 vols. (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 1:169–95. On the martyrological literature: Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); James Petifils, Mos

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relation to saints in the Christian literature of late antiquity.51 To the best of the editors’ knowledge, however, this volume is the first extensive—though hardly comprehensive—examination of the use of Abraham as an exemplary model, specifically, in this case, of ritual activity, although Annette Yoshiko Reed and Samuel Sandmel have already made important contributions to the topic.52 The bulk of the literature on exemplification, unsurprisingly, comes from the field of classical studies.53 This is unsurprising since the classical authors themselves devote considerable attention to the use of exempla, in this case referring to actions performed by past or recent actors that are deemed virtuous and therefore worthy of emulation, to “serve as a guide to conduct.”54 Matthew Roller has developed what he calls a “general model of Roman exemplarity” in which he identifies four key steps in its functioning:55 1. “Someone performs an action in the public eye—that is, an action witnessed by representatives of the larger community. This community

51 52

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54 55

Christianorum, STAC 99 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016) (also with discussions of Philo, Josephus, and 1 Clement). Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Representations (1983): 1–25. Annette Yoshiko Reed, “The Construction and Subversion of Patriarchal Perfection: Abraham and Exemplarity in Philo, Josephus, and the Testament of Abraham,” JSJ 40 (2009): 185–212; Samuel Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism: A Study of Conceptions of Abraham in Jewish Literature, rev. ed. (New York: Ktav, 1971), 103. For a sampling of studies, see Mathew B. Roller, “Exemplarity in Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia,” CP 99, no. 1 (2004):1–56; Roller, “The Exemplary Past in Roman Historiography and Culture,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, ed. Andrew Feldherr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 214–30; Jane D. Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Sinclair Bell, “Role Models in the Roman World,” in Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation, ed. Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 1–39; Bennet J. Price, “Paradeigma and Exemplum in Ancient Rhetorical Theory” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1975); Arne Holmberg, Studien zur Terminologie und Technik der rhetorischen Beweisfahrung bei lateinischen Schriftstellern (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1913); Peter Assion, “Das Exempel als agitatorische Gattung: Zu Form u. Funktion der kurzen Beispielgeschichte,” Fabula 98 (1985): 72–92; G. Maslakov, “Valerius Maximus and Roman Historiography: A Study of the Exempla Tradition,” ANRW 2.32.1, 437–96; Hildegard Kornhardt, Exemplum: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Studie (Göttingen: Noske, 1936); Irene E. Harvey, Labyrinths of Exemplarity: At the Limits of Deconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Juliette Vuille, Holy Harlots in Medieval English Religious Literature: Authority, Exemplarity, and Femininity, GMA 17 (Cambridge, UK: Brewer, 2021). See further the bibliography in chapter 5 in this volume. Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History, 3; cited in Bell, “Role Models in the Roman World,” 4. Matthew B. Roller, Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 4–8; building on Roller, “Exemplarity in Roman Culture.”

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consists of people who share with one another, and with the actor, a structured set of values, orientations, and beliefs.” 2. “These eyewitnesses, which I call the ‘primary’ audience, evaluate the action’s significance for the community, judging it good or bad in terms of one or more of their shared values and thereby assign to it one or more moral categories. … These judges thereby imbue the selected action with social significance, converting it into a ‘deed’ (res gestae) with implied or explicit normative force.” 3. “The deed—that is, the action, its performer, and the evaluation(s) it received—is commemorated via one or more monuments. A monument is any sign capable of summoning the deed to recollection or creating awareness of it” (e.g., texts, speeches, statues, paintings, mosaics) among “secondary” audiences. 4. “Audiences, both primary and secondary, are enjoined to accept the deed—now inscribed via monuments into the moral framework of the mos maiorum [“ancestral custom”]—as normative, i.e., having a morally prescriptive or obligatory character. That is, the deed is taken to set or confirm a moral standard by which audience members should judge other actions they observe in their own time and place, or to provide a model that they themselves should imitate or avoid.” This cycle of actions, evaluation, norm-setting, and imitation tends to result in a “loop of social reproduction,” enshrining and preserving a set of social attitudes and actions.56 Social conservatism, however, is not the only possible outcome: at each of the four steps, contestation and innovation may be introduced, as new actions are performed, evaluations are revised, new monuments are produced or older ones modified, and so on. As Staf Hellemans has shown, social (re)construction is in fact an ongoing and open-ended process, such that “with every new activity, the Pandora’s Box of multiplicity  … is being opened anew.”57 One can never follow a putative model precisely; historical change and the

56 For the phrase, see Roller, “Exemplarity in Roman Culture,” 6. 57 Staf Hellemans, “Turning ‘Society’ into Religion: A Processing Approach,” in The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. Staf Hellemans and Gerard Rouwhorst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 23–58; Hellemans and Rouwhorst, “Introduction: On the Processing of Society and Religion by Religious Agents,” in Hellemans and Rouwhorst, Making of Christianities, 7–22. For the use of this approach in relation to the practice of circumcision in antiquity, see Thomas R. Blanton IV, “A Relational Account of Structure and Agency via ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ and the ‘Processing Approach,’ with a Case Study of Circumcision in Ancient Judaism,” RRE 8, no. 3 (2022): 270–300.

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myriad situational contingencies on which all action is based preclude that.58 Based as it is in the force of ostensibly past models, the rhetoric of exemplarity by design conceals innovation by cloaking it in the guise of tradition: the Pentateuchal Priestly writers’ portrayal of Abraham as the originary practitioner of eighth-day circumcision (Gen 17:12) and Paul of Tarsus’s portrayal among non-Judeans of Abraham as a role model for credence in Paul’s proclamation of Jesus’s death, exaltation, and future return from heaven (Romans 4) are only two cases in point.59 It is this capacity to authorize contemporary practices by connecting them to sanctified tradition that lends discourses of exemplarity both their persuasiveness and their efficacy as modes of sociopolitical structuration.60 4

The Present Volume: an Overview

The present volume contributes to these ongoing discussions in classics and biblical, Jewish, and early Christian studies, and touches on Islamic traditions as well. The editors of this volume decided to not group the essays thematically even though they occasionally discuss similar themes and motifs, but instead chose to organize the chapters based on the approximate chronological order of the material discussed in each one. Although the ordering of the chapters by chronology was rendered more difficult by ongoing debates about the dates of composition of some books (e.g., the non-Priestly sections of the Pentateuch, Fourth Maccabees) and the fact that several of the chapters survey material spanning many centuries, our hope is that by arranging the chapters chronologically, readers might be able more easily to track both continuity and change over time regarding the use of Abraham as an exemplary model who can be called upon to authorize a wide variety of ritual practices. The editors have made no attempt to impose on the volume’s chapters any particular view or theory of exemplification or ritual; rather each author was free to pursue the relevant issues as she or he saw fit. The editors hope that the plurality of approaches on display enhances the collective examination of 58 On historical contingency, see Shiela Greeve Davaney, Historicism: The Once and Future Challenge for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). 59 I expect to discuss both instances more fully in The Circumcision of Abraham: Modeling Ritual from Genesis to the Letters of Paul, now in progress (TRB). 60 For the distrust of innovation and rhetoric of appeals to tradition in Second Temple Judaism, see Jonathan Klawans, Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). On the related question of “structure and agency” during the same period, see Blanton, “Relational Account.”

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“Abraham as a ritual model” in the pages in this volume, both by shedding light on the virtually limitless human ingenuity on display throughout the reception history of traditions about Abraham and by suggesting avenues for further research. The volume falls into three roughly equal parts, part 1 covering material from the Neo-Babylonian to the Roman period (ca. 500s BCE–100s CE), part 2 discussing writings from the early Byzantine and Sassanid periods (ca. 300s–700s CE), and part 3 assessing literature of the Medieval and Modern periods (ca. 800s–1800s CE). The opening chapter of part 1, by Claudia D. Bergmann and May May Latt, places not Abraham but his wife, Sarah, who makes occasional appearances in subsequent chapters (chaps. 6, 12), at the center of attention. The focus on Sarah in the opening chapter serves as a reminder of the female characters that, largely by bearing children, carry the plotline forward in Pentateuchal narratives, and but also adumbrates a subsequent volume planned by the editors, one to focus specifically on two women depicted in the Abraham narrative, Sarah and Hagar. The male-centered, patriarchal narratives featuring Abraham raise numerous questions about sex, gender, the agency of women and men, gendered division of labor, slavery, and intersectionality that will be addressed more fully in the follow-up volume. The first part of Bergmann and Latt’s contribution shows how the birth stories in the Pentateuch are narrated, not to detail the actual lived experiences of women, but to shape a story in which the people of Israel became “many” against all odds. The second part of the chapter shows how, in Second Isaiah, the experience of Sarah—transformed with God’s blessing from a state of infertility and childlessness to fertility and motherhood—is adduced to strengthen the resolve of Judean deportees resident in Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. Just as Sarah’s fortunes were transformed by divine blessing, they are assured, so too will they repopulate the desolate city of Jerusalem, if they will only recall her story and take heart from it. Exemplarity functions in an atypical manner in Second Isaiah: hearers are invited not to emulate any particular deed performed by Sarah, but instead to imagine themselves in a position analogous to hers as recipients of divine blessing. The blessing that they are supposed to receive is patterned on Sarah’s, involving the production of progeny and the subsequent repopulation of Jerusalem and its environs; Sarah is the matriarch of “many.” Gendered constructions are prominent in Second Isaiah: Yahweh, coded as male, is portrayed as the active party (he blesses); while the people, under the figure of Mother Zion or Jerusalem and analogized to Sarah, play a passive, feminized role (they wait and hope). The hearers are invited not to perform any particular action, but rather to receive the blessing of Yahweh that will result in

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a nearly miraculous change in their present situation, Sarah-like. If any ritual at all is involved, it is only the presupposition that a story of national origins in which Sarah plays a role is known to the text’s audience, although the conditions under which such a narrative was transmitted can only be imagined. Chapter 2, by Mika Pajunen, surveys the ways in which Abraham is utilized in the third- and second-century BCE texts the Genesis Apocryphon, Aramaic Levi Document, and Jubilees. In their retellings of biblical narratives, the various texts tend to add details concerning the animals and birds used as sacrifices by the ancestral figures, retroject details of the cultic calendar such as the observance of the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) and Booths (Sukkoth) onto the distant past, and innovatively connect the ancestors with Hellenistic-period ritual practices, including apotropaic prayers, the use of herbs against disease and evil spirits, and the laying on of hands to remove disease-causing demons, indicating the flexibility with which older models and narratives are approached by subsequent writers. In chapter 3, “Modeling Rituals for the Acquisition of Wisdom,” Stephen Smoot surveys the rich traditions concerning Abraham as astronomer. Genesis 15:6, “Look toward the heavens and count the stars,” became a site of intensive reflection during the Second Temple Period, when the patriarch was depicted as a paradigmatic seeker after knowledge, the knowledge of celestial bodies and their motion being one important branch of antique “wisdom.” Abraham was paradigmatic in Jewish texts, however, in that he was able to infer the existence of a deity who was not subject to but who controlled fate, while lesser astronomers might wrongly infer from the regularity of nature both that the heavenly bodies themselves were gods and that the gods were subject to Fate as an ordering principle. Some texts go a step further by presenting Abraham as journeying so far into the heavens that he is able to look down on the starry sphere. By adapting the exemplary status of Abraham in ways not envisioned in earlier texts, Jewish writers of the Second Temple period were able to demonstrate both their facility with the “science” of astronomy and their allegiance to “monotheism,” or (should one wish to avoid that term) to the idea that the God of Israel was superior to all other gods.61 In chapter 4, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr reads Paul’s letter to the Romans, particularly Romans 1 and 2, in light of reflection on Abraham from the Second Temple period, finding that the virtues of Abraham form an implicit background for 61

For a cogent analysis of the relation to Israel’s god to other divine beings in the Second Temple period, see Emma Wasserman, “Class, Classification, and Political Conflict in the Study of Apocalypticism: The Case of 1 Corinthians 1–2,” in The Struggle over Class: Socioeconomic Analysis of Ancient Christian Texts, ed. G. Anthony Keddie, Michael Flexsenhar III, and Steven J. Friesen (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021), 313–46.

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the chapters; one’s condemnation or acquittal at the apocalyptic judgment implicitly depends on the extent to which she or he lived up to the patterns set by the patriarch: based on observation and contemplation, Abraham rejected the idolatry of his father, and inferred from the natural world and its order both a transcendent creator and his commandments. As one who is able to infer elements of Jewish tradition without having been taught them, Abraham can serve as a model for non-Jews as well as persons of Jewish descent, all of whom enact rituals pertaining to cultic reverence and either enact or avoid circumcision. The final chapter of part 1, by Jan Willem van Henten, interacts extensively with the work of classicists to show how 4 Maccabees both adopts and adapts “typical” Roman discourses of exemplification. The characteristic of eusebeia, or adopting the “proper attitude toward God,” is portrayed as the cardinal virtue, while the typically Roman concern of service to the state is modified to point to the more “Jewish” concerns of service to Israel’s God and upholding Judaic laws. Abraham and Isaac appear clustered with Daniel and the three young men thrown into the fiery furnace (Daniel 3 and 6); all are portrayed as models who suffer willingly in the service of God. A direct parallel is drawn, too, between the mother of sons who were tortured and slain by King Antiochus and Abraham, who made use of devout reason to overcome his natural parental affection in the Akedah. Van Henten’s study shows how discourses of exemplarity can both include familiar Roman motifs and at the same time exhibit religious, ethnic, and political distinctiveness in a provincial setting during the early imperial period. Part 2, surveying material written roughly from the 300s to the 700s CE, opens with a chapter by Marcel Poorthuis, who shows how Genesis 18 is utilized as a source of exempla in rabbinic literature. Rather than providing stable role models, however, the biblical narratives proved to be sites in which later generations discussed and contested contemporary social mores: When entertaining guests, is it right to sit, or to stand and serve them; and should the relative social ranking of host and guests be considered? Didn’t Abraham’s hospitable repast of meat, curds, and milk (Gen 18:8) violate the prohibition against consuming meat and milk together, per rabbinic halakah? Sarah’s presence in the narrative also evoked debate: Was her laughter at a visitor’s prediction of her future pregnancy impolite? Was it immodest of one of the angelic visitors to ask for her whereabouts? The exempla here largely function to raise pertinent practical questions, without themselves providing the answers; they are not prescriptive, but generative. The subsequent chapter, by Günter Stemberger, shows how rabbinic literature draws on the figure of Abraham as an exemplary model for the ritual practices of circumcision, daily prayer, and sacrifice. Abraham emerges as a

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complex paradigm with respect to circumcision: his apparent self-circumcision in Genesis 17 is not taken as paradigmatic, although his circumcision of his son on the eighth day after birth is so taken; and his circumcision in later life (at age 99) is likewise taken as paradigmatic, albeit for non-Jewish adult male converts to Judaism. By creative reinterpretation of words in the Genesis, rabbinic literature made Abraham into the originator of a prayer recited thrice daily, the Eighteen Benedictions (which more likely has roots in the early Roman period); while the patriarch’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac is understood to authorize later priestly sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple. In terms of the logic of exemplarity, some aspects of the model are not taken to be normative (self-circumcision), and practices originating much later than the time of the putative model are retrojected, using creative exegetical techniques, onto the ancient exemplar, providing legitimization for innovative practices by fictively “anchoring” them in ancient precedent. In chapter 8, Clayton Killion examines discourses of exemplarity in the fourth-century CE writers Ambrose of Milan and Ambrosiaster (PseudoAmbrose). Ambrosiaster constrains Abraham’s exemplary potential, his most praiseworthy trait being his fidei firmitas (“firmness of faith”), his belief that God could do the impossible; that is, grant him a child despite his advanced age. This, in turn, stands as a model to contemporaries, who, in Ambrosiaster’s view, should strive analogically to achieve a firm Trinitarian faith. Ambrose, in contrast, proliferates Abraham’s exemplary potential: he models the virtues of bravery, righteousness, piety, alacrity in obeying divine commands, and faithfulness to God, even in the face of difficult tests. Chapter 9, by Laura Lieber, offers a close reading of a text written by sixth-century CE liturgical poet Yannai, in which the story of God’s relationship with Abraham is renarrated, using language borrowed, inter alia, from the Song of Songs, as a love story: God, the lover, woos and attracts Abraham, the beloved, who reciprocates by leaving his parental home to dwell metaphorically in the spousal house of God. As Abraham “rose” to leave Haran, so the congregants rise in prayer; and in so doing they follow in the footsteps of Abraham, God’s paradigmatic lover. Unlike many Roman discourses of exemplarity, the exemplar inculcates not the formation of the citizen mindful of her duty to the state nor even obligation to parents or the gods (pietas), but rather encourages ritualized bodies liturgically to reenact a poetics of seduction, courtship, and matrimony with their deity. Ritual formation was of greater concern to the late antique liturgical poet than was state formation, with which Abraham had been connected in older, Pentateuchal narratives. In the following chapter, Michael Zellmann-Rohrer adduces some seventeen incantations and amuletic prayers, several of whose Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts are published here for the first time, in which Abraham is named in attempts to safeguard individuals and households against disease or demons,

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to ensure marital harmony, and to protect livestock against disease or the baneful effects of the evil eye. Both chapters indicate, in different ways, how the patriarch Abraham could be endowed by tradition with modes of efficacy not imagined nor inscribed per se in the older textual monuments through which his legacy was transmitted to posterity. Abraham does not appear as a model whose behavior is to be emulated in the amulets that Zellman-Rohrer surveys, but rather as a figure whose associations both with general prosperity and with the God of Israel were understood to grant him—or the invocation of his name—unusual efficacy against disease, demonic influence, and the baneful effects of the evil eye, which could materialize envy as a potent, destructive force. In chapter 11, Clare Wilde shows that in the Qurʾan, Abraham is portrayed as neither a Jew nor a Christian, but a muslim (one who submits to God) and a ḥanīf (pre-Islamic monotheist), who rejected the idols of his father. Abraham and Ishmael build and purify the Ka‌ʿba, preparing it for ritual circumambulation during the Hajj. The texts adduced show (1) how figures such as Abraham could be claimed by multiple religious groups, with the contestation that may consequently result from the competing claims; (2) the ways in which the “basic facts” associated with the exemplum can be creatively reworked (it is arguably Ishmael/Ismael, not Isaac, who is nearly sacrificed in qurʾanic tradition); and (3) the degree to which innovative ritual practices can be grounded in putatively ancient precedent. Part 3, covering texts of the Medieval and Modern periods, opens with Alexey Somov’s chapter on Abraham’s hospitality as portrayed in the Palaea literature and a medieval south Slavonic apocryphal Abraham cycle, texts of the ninth to fourteenth centuries CE and later that “rewrite” and expand on older traditions pertaining to Israel’s history. Somov focuses on portions of the texts the renarrate Gen 18:1–16, where, in the biblical text, Abraham offers hospitality to three travelers, feeding them and washing their feet, and accompanying them as they begin their onward journey. In the retelling of the Palaea, the devil had blocked the roads near Abraham’s dwelling to prevent travelers from reaching him, both preventing him from virtuously practicing hospitality and even from eating, as he was too virtuous to dine alone, in the absence of strangers. The three visitors, moreover, are understood as the three persons of the Christian Trinity, and a calf slaughtered specifically for the meal is miraculously restored; flesh returns to its skin and bones, and the body is reanimated. Abraham emerges as a paradigm of the Mediterranean virtue of hospitably receiving strangers, of reverence toward the Trinity, and of fasting, itself a virtuous ritual practice in medieval Christianity. In chapter 13, Leon Mock shows how rabbinic prayers treat Isaac as a prototypical martyr, willing to die to “sanctify the name” of God—even though he did not actually die in the biblical narrative. Abraham is made to represent

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an ancient period of Judaic origins that could be juxtaposed to an awaited “messianic age” in which Israel’s enemies would be neutralized, as one who instituted the practice of morning prayer as a replacement for sacrifice in the post-Second Temple period, or as an exemplary patriarch who fulfilled the obligations of the Torah even before they were reveled at Sinai, and who displayed admirable alacrity in doing so. The editors note that as the present work was in preparation, Leon passed away unexpectedly on 31 August 2023. His memorial will appear in another volume to be published in the Jewish and Christian Perspectives series; the present work is dedicated in his memory. Christoph Bultmann shows in chapter 14 how Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac can be depicted as a virtuous act in Genesis 22 and the Wisdom of Solomon, while in the Qurʾan, Ishmael (rather than Isaac) accrues merit by willingly allowing himself to be sacrificed, even verbally granting his father permission to slay him. In Voltaire’s reading, however, Abraham’s behavior stands as an antimodel: running counter to nature, conscience, and all moral sense, it exemplifies the antivirtue of religious fanaticism. Bultmann’s chapter indicates the fragility of the mos maiorum: an erstwhile virtue can, with the passage of time, be reclassified as vice. Rounding out part 3 and the volume, George Pattison expounds Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling to present an image of Abraham that effectively renders discourses of exemplarity moot: Abraham is a figure the meaning of whose actions is opaque; he is characterized by silence rather than speech, introspection rather than public ritual (he went to Moriah to escape the public); and his actions are unrepeatable, falling into the categories of miracle and paradox rather than regularized, corporate action. If Abraham cannot in this sense be understood as a “model” for anything, his Kierkegaardian reflex would seem nonetheless to parallel the Danish philosopher’s own predisposition toward a (perhaps illusory) interior, reflective, and unmediated experience of the divine. That said, establishing putatively ancient parallels and precedents are, as we have seen, among the most salient functions of discourses of exemplarity; Kierkegaard’s Abraham in that sense stands as an antiritual model, exemplifying a privatized religiosity. Considered collectively, the contributions in this volume enhance the study of the patriarch Abraham—and the matriarch Sarah, the female with whom he is most closely associated—by showing how he could be used as an exemplary model to ground a multiplicity of practices with both ritual and nonritual aspects. In activities as diverse as offering hospitality to inscribing an amulet to protect cattle against disease, and from legitimizing the use of particular kinds of wood to fire cultic offerings to deligitimizing all forms of cultic and

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ritual activity, the name and authority of Abraham could be invoked to offer a sense of hallowed tradition, unbroken, ancient practice, and continuity with ancient precedent. In such cases, innovation and discontinuity are suppressed, while real or fictive lines are drawn to connect contemporary practices to those imagined to have taken place in hoary antiquity. Bibliography Adams, Sean A. “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria.” Pages 75–92 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne DomoneyLyttle. LSTS 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Adams, Sean A., and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, eds. Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. LSTS 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Adams, Sean A., and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle. “Introduction: Abraham in Jewish and Christian Authors.” Pages 1–8 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle. LSTS 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices. New York: New York University Press, 2021. Assion, Peter. “Das Exempel als agitatorische Gattung: Zu Form u. Funktion der kurzen Beispielgeschichte.” Fabula 98 (1985): 72–92. Bakhos, Carol. The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. Bay, Carson. Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Bell, Sinclair. “Role Models in the Roman World.” Pages 1–39 in Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation. Edited by Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Berg, Ria, Antonella Coralini, Anu Kaisa Koponen, and Reima Välimäki, eds. Tangible Religion: Materiality of Domestic Cult Practices from Antiquity to [the] Early Modern Era. Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2021. Bergmann, Claudia D. “Allein am Tisch? Antike und moderne jüdische Antworten auf den drohenden Wegfall eines Gemeinschaftsrituals in Krisensituationen.” LIMINA 4, no. 2 (2021): 86–114.

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Bergmann, Claudia D. “Choices in Ritual Imagination: The Role of the Messianic Figure in Early Jewish and Christian Texts about the Meal in the World to Come.” HRel 10 (2018): 91–103. Bergmann, Claudia D. Festmahl ohne Ende: Apokalyptische Vorstellungen vom Speisen in der Kommenden Welt im antiken Judentum und ihre biblischen Wurzeln. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2019. Bergmann, Claudia D. “Mothers of a Nation: How Motherhood and Religion Intermingle in the Hebrew Bible.” OT 6 (2020): 132–44. Bergmann, Claudia D. “Multifaceted Relationships: Ritual Objects and Ritual Agents in the Hebrew Bible and in Cognate Literature.” Pages 174–98 in Ritual Objects in Ritual Contexts. ESJG 6. Edited by Maria Stürzebecher and Claudia D. Bergmann. Jena: Bussert & Stadeler, 2020. Blakely, Sandra, ed. Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice. Atlanta: Lockwood, 2017. Blanton, Thomas R., IV. “The Economic Functions of Gift Exchange in Pauline Assemblies.” Pages 279–306 in Paul and Economics: A Handbook. Edited by Thomas R. Blanton IV and Raymond Pickett. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. Blanton, Thomas R., IV. “A Relational Account of Structure and Agency via ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ and the ‘Processing Approach,’ with a Case Study of Circumcision in Ancient Judaism.” RRE 8, no. 3 (2022): 270–300. Böttrich, Christfried, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eißler, eds. Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2009. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Social Structures of the Economy. Trans. by Chris Turner. Malden, MA: Polity, 2005. Bourdieu, Pierre. Was heißt sprechen? Die Ökonomie des sprachlichen Tausches. Translated by Hella Beister. Edited by Georg Kremnitz. Vienna: New Academic Press, 1990. Brague, Rémi. “The Concept of the Abrahamic Religions, Problems and Pitfalls.” Pages 88–105 in The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions. Edited by Adam J. Silverstein and Guy G. Stroumsa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Brown, Peter. “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity.” Representations (1983): 1–25. Buc, Philippe. “Politisches Ritual und politisch Imaginäres im Früh- und Hochmittelalter.” Trivium 2 (2008): 1–37. Carstens, Pernille, and Niels Peter Lemche, eds. The Reception and Remembrance of Abraham. PHSC 13. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011. Castelli, Elizabeth A. Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991. Chaplin, Jane D. Livy’s Exemplary History. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. Davaney, Shiela Greeve. Historicism: The Once and Future Challenge for Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Dozeman, Thomas B., and Konrad Schmid. A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. Edwards, David R. In the Court of the Gentiles: Narrative, Exemplarity, and Scriptural Adaptation in the Court Tales of Flavius Josephus. JSJSup 209. Leiden: Brill, 2023. Ehrensperger, Kathy. Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement. New York and London: T&T Clark, 2007. Fellmann, Ferdinand. “Kulturelle und personale Identität.” Pages 27–36 in Essen und kulturelle Identität: Europäische Perspektiven. Edited by Alois Wierlacher, Eva Barlösius, Gerhard Neumann, and Hans Jürgen Teuteberg. KE 2. Berlin: Akademie, 1997. Fiore, Benjamin. Revised by Thomas R. Blanton IV. “Paul, Exemplification, and Imitation.” Pages 169–95 in vol. 1 of Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook. 2nd ed. Edited by J. Paul Sampley. 2 vols. London: T&T Clark, 2016. Firestone, Reuven. “Abraham and Authenticity.” Pages 3–21 in The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions. Edited by Adam J. Silverstein and Guy G. Stroumsa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. “Performance, Inszenierung, Ritual: Zur Klärung kulturwissenschaftlicher Schlüsselbegriffe.” Pages 33–54 in Geschichtswissenschaft und “Performative Turn”: Ritual, Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit. Edited by Jürgen Martschukat and Steffen Patzold. NStr 19. Köln: Böhlau, 2003. Fugger, Dominik. “Symbol, Handlung, Erfahrung: Perspektiven auf das Ritual als Gegenstand soziologischer Theoriebildung.” AES 52, no. 3 (2012): 393–421. Gennep, Arnold van. Les Rites de Passage: Étude Systématique des Rites de la Porte et du Seuil. … Paris: Picard, 1909. Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Goethals, Gregor T. The TV Ritual: Worship at the Video Altar. Boston: Beacon, 1981. Graham, Emma-Jayne. Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy. London: Routledge, 2021. Grimes, Ronald. Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory. StCR. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. Hartenstein, Friedhelm, and Konrad Schmid, eds. Farewell to the Priestly Writing? The Current State of the Debate. AIL 38. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2022. Harvey, Irene E. Labyrinths of Exemplarity: At the Limits of Deconstruction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Harvey, Karen, ed. History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources. 2nd ed. RGUHS. London: Routledge, 2018.

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Hayoun, Maurice-Ruben. Abraham: Une patriarche dans l’histoire. Paris: Ellipses, 2009. Heike, Thomas. “Abraham.” WiBiLex: Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Jan. 2005. https://bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort /12288/. Heithner, Theresia, and Christiana Reemts. Biblische Gestalten bei den Kirchenvätern: Abraham. Münster: Aschendorff, 2005. Hellemans, Staf. “Turning ‘Society’ into Religion: A Processing Approach.” Pages 23–58 in The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach. Edited by Staf Hellemans and Gerard Rouwhorst. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Hellemans, Staf, and Gerard Rouwhorst. “Introduction: On the Processing of Society and Religion by Religious Agents.” Pages 7–22 in The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach. Edited by Staf Hellemans and Gerard Rouwhorst. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Hicks, Dan, and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Holmberg, Arne. Studien zur Terminologie und Technik der rhetorischen Beweisfahrung bei lateinischen Schriftstellern. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1913. Hughes, Jessica. “Material Religion and Pompeii: Introduction.” OAJ 10 (2021): 4–12. Huxley, Julian S. “Courtship Activities in the Red-Throated Diver (Colymbus stellatus Pontopp.); Together with a Discussion of the Evolution of Courtship in Birds.” JLSZ 35 (1923): 253–92. Jamme, Christoph. “Gott an hat ein Gewand”: Grenzen und Perspektiven philosophischer Mythos-Theorien der Gegenwart. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991. Keddie, G. Anthony, Michael Flexsenhar III, and Steven J. Friesen, eds. The Struggle over Class: Socioeconomic Analysis of Ancient Christian Texts. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021. Klawans, Jonathan. Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Köckert, Matthias. Abraham: Ahnvater—Vorbild—Kultstifter. BG 31. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017. Köckert, Matthias. Von Jakob zu Abraham: Studien zum Buch Genesis. FAT 147. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. Kornhardt, Hildegard. Exemplum: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Studie. Göttingen: Noske, 1936. Kratz, Reinhard G., and Tilman Nagel, eds. “Abraham, unser Vater”: Die gemeinsamen Wurzeln von Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003. Lamaison, Pierre, and Pierre Bourdieu. “From Rules to Strategies: An Interview with Pierre Bourdieu.” CultAnth 1, no. 1 (1986): 110–20. Levenson, Jon D. Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

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Lincoln, Bruce. Apples and Oranges: Explorations in, on, and with Comparison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Lincoln, Bruce. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies in Myth, Ritual, and Classification. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Lincoln, Bruce. Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Lincoln, Bruce. “How to Read a Religious Text: Reflections on Some Passages of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.” HR 46, no. 2 (2006): 127–39. Lincoln, Bruce. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Ludlow, Jared W. “Abraham in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Friend of God and Father of Fathers.” Pages 41–58 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle. LSTS 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Marchal, Joseph A. Hierarchy, Unity, and Imitation: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Power Dynamics in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. AcBib 24. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Marchal, Joseph A. “Mimicry and Colonial Differences: Gender, Ethnicity, and Empire in the Interpretation of Pauline Imitation.” Pages 101–28 in Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies. Edited by Laura Nasrallah and Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. Maslakov, G. “Valerius Maximus and Roman Historiography: A Study of the Exempla Tradition.” ANRW 2.32.1, 437–96. Mendelson, Alan. Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press; New York: Ktav, 1982. Michaels, Axel. “‘Le Rituel pour le Rituel’ oder wie sinnlos sind Rituale?” Pages 23–48 in Rituale heute: Theorien, Kontroversen, Entwürfe. Edited by Corina Caduff and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka. Berlin: Reimer, 1999. Michaels, Axel. “Zur Dynamik von Ritualkomplexen.” FoRit 3 (2003): 1–12. Millard, A.R. “Abraham.” ABD 1:35–41. Moss, Candida R. The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Mühling, Anke. “Blickt auf Abraham, euren Vater”: Abraham als Identifikationsfigur des Judentums in der Zeit des Exils and des Zweiten Tempels. FRLANT 236. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2011. Nicholson, Ernest. The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Pearson, Birger A. “Gnosticism as Platonism: With Special Reference to Marsanes (NHC 10,1).” HTR 77, no. 1 (1984): 55–72. Petifils, James. Mos Christianorum. STAC 99. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

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Price, Bennet J. “Paradeigma and Exemplum in Ancient Rhetorical Theory.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1975. Rabuzzi, Kathryn A. The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework. New York: Seabury, 1982. Rappaport, Roy A. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. CSSA 110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “The Construction and Subversion of Patriarchal Perfection: Abraham and Exemplarity in Philo, Josephus, and the Testament of Abraham.” JSJ 40 (2009): 185–212. Roller, Mathew B. “Exemplarity in Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia.” CP 99, no. 1 (2004):1–56. Roller, Mathew B. “The Exemplary Past in Roman Historiography and Culture.” Pages 214–30 in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Edited by Andrew Feldherr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roller, Mathew B. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Rüpke, Jörg. “Religious Agency, Identity, and Communication: Reflections on History and Theory of Religion.” Religion 45 (2015): 344–66. Sandmel, Samuel. Philo’s Place in Judaism: A Study of Conceptions of Abraham in Jewish Literature. Rev. ed. New York: Ktav, 1971. Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with New JPS Translation. JPSTC. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989. Schmid, Konrad. “The Neo-Documentarian Manifesto: A Critical Reading.” JBL 140, no. 3 (2021): 461–79. Smith, Jonathan Z. “In Comparison a Magic Dwells.” Pages 19–35 in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Smith, Jonathan Z. “Religion, Religions, Religious.” Pages 179–96 in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Smith, William R. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions. 3rd ed. New York: Ktav, 1969. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. Rituale. Frankfurt: Campus, 2013. Taves, Ann. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and other Special Things. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Thompson, Thomas L. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002. Turner, Jon D. “The Gnostic Sethians and Middle Platonism: Interpretations of the ‘Timaeus’ and ‘Parmenides.’” VC 60, no. 1 (2006): 9–64. Turner, Victor W. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Turner, Victor W. Das Ritual: Struktur und Anti-Struktur. Frankfurt: Campus, 2005.

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Uusimäki, Elisa. Lived Wisdom in Jewish Antiquity: Studies in Exercise and Exemplarity. ELCRP. London: T&T Clark, 2021. Van Seters, John. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Vuille, Juliette. Holy Harlots in Medieval English Religious Literature: Authority, Exemplarity, and Femininity. GMA 17. Cambridge, UK: Brewer, 2021. Wasserman, Emma. “Class, Classification, and Political Conflict in the Study of Apocalypticism: The Case of 1 Corinthians 1–2.” Pages 313–46 in The Struggle over Class: Socioeconomic Analysis of Ancient Christian Texts. Edited by G. Anthony Keddie, Michael Flexsenhar III, and Steven J. Friesen. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021. Wulf, Christoph. “Ritual, Macht und Performanz: Die Inauguration des amerikanischen Präsidenten.” Pages 49–61 in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole. Edited by Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas. Paderborn: Fink, 2004. Wulf, Christoph, and Jörg Zirfas. “Performative Welten: Einführung in die historischen, systematischen und methodischen Dimensionen des Rituals.” Pages 7–48 in Die Kultur des Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole. Edited by Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfras. Munich: Fink, 2004.

Part 1 Writings from the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods (ca. 600s BCE–100s CE)

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Chapter 1

“Look to Abraham and Sarah”: the Motifs of Infertility and Childbirth in Genesis and Second Isaiah Claudia D. Bergmann and May May Latt

Introduction

Infertility and childbirth are crucial experiences in the lives of individuals, couples, children, and larger families. Because of their ubiquity, these experiences are regularly utilized in metaphorical or symbolic and religious language, or in narratives that tell of the origins of peoples, or of the relationships between humanity and the gods. The readers of these authoritative texts might find information about ancient ideas of infertility and/or childbirth in the subtexts of these narratives, but mainly gain insight into the authors’ metaphorical thinking and their theological views. As describing the experiences of human mothers and fathers is not the intention of these authoritative texts and their authors, they give very little information concerning the emotions connected to childlessness after a failed attempt to become pregnant, concerning the feelings experienced during pregnancy, or concerning the pain and joy of childbirth and of raising children. The perspectives of actual human parents are almost lost in the Hebrew Bible. Perhaps the ancient authors assumed that everyone simply knew what parenthood in those times was like, what mothers and fathers felt and thought. As we do not share those assumptions with them, modern readers depend on ancient texts and rely on the authors’ opinions, intentions, and religious convictions that shaped both the biblical parents into literary figures and events in human life into metaphorical concepts.1 Oftentimes, images of fathers and mothers, of parenthood and motherhood, are a subtext and not the main focus, a note on the side.2 In recent years, 1 For more on this, see Claudia D. Bergmann, “Mothers of a Nation: How Motherhood and Religion Intermingle in the Hebrew Bible,” in Motherhood(s) in Religions: The Religionification of Motherhood and Mother’s Appropriation of Religion, ed. Giulia Pedrucci, special issue of OT 6 (2020): 132–44. 2 Within the realm of Gender Studies, O’Reilly called motherhood the “unfinished business of feminism”; see Andrea O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter, 2016), 2. The layering of gendered imagery in Isaiah is, however,

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however, investigations of mothers and motherhood have come more to the forefront in both Religious and Biblical Studies. This paper hopes to add to these recent developments and to discuss the motifs of Sarah’s infertility and childbirth in the biblical books of Genesis and Isaiah, asking what literary purposes they fulfill, and how they contribute to the shaping of Abraham as a model for the nations and as an exemplar for Israel. It will investigate and highlight Sarah’s work of becoming and being pregnant, giving birth, and raising Isaac, activities that significantly contributed to the continuation of the line of Abraham and Sarah into the future. Unearthing this background, making Sarah more visible in this context, and investigating how Abraham and Sarah are viewed together as parents and models both in Genesis and Isaiah is the purpose of this paper.3 1

Infertility and Childbirth in Genesis

1.1 It All Starts with Sarah (and Abraham) The Hebrew Bible’s images for infertility and conception often parallel older ancient Near Eastern ideas known from childbirth incantations and other ancient texts, and are modeled on the typical life of women or families within complex: Yahweh can be said to act “like a mother” in some cases (e.g., Isa 42:24; 66:13); see further Lena Sophia Tiemeyer, For the Comfort of Zion: The Geographical and Theological Location of Isaiah 40–55 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); May May Latt, “Zion/Jerusalem, the Physical Location in Judah in the Final Form of Isaiah 40–66; Utilizing Synchronic-Rhetorical Criticism,” PhD diss., Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 2012; Latt, “Childbirth and Child Rearing in Isaiah 66:6–16,” paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 19 Nov. 2022. For issues of sex and gender in the Levant and western Asia more broadly, see now Stephanie Lynn Budin, Gender in the Ancient Near East (London: Routledge, 2023). 3 Being a collaborative work by two authors, this paper has two main parts. The first part, mainly written by Claudia D. Bergmann, takes a closer look at the events surrounding questions of infertility and childbirth in the book of Genesis. It will discuss how literary texts from the Hebrew Bible go about intermingling parenthood and religion for the purpose of describing the origins of a nation and shaping both Abraham and Sarah into models for other narratives on infertility and childbirth. The second part, whose main author is May May Latt, investigates how Isaiah and Genesis rely on similar tradition by indicating the importance of Sarah as she moves from infertility to being able to give birth in the Hebrew Bible and what role she plays in making Abraham an exemplar in biblical literature. Both authors wish to thank the participants of the workshop “Abraham as Ritual Model II” that took place on October 22, 2019, at the Research Centre “Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present.” Their insightful comments contributed to the improvement of the initial presentation at the workshop so that it could be turned into an article for the present volume. The authors would like to thank Laura Lieber for reading and commenting on this article; any remaining faults are our own responsibility.

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their communities and within a largely agricultural context. Infertility and conception, for example, can be pictured by the image of the open or locked door, a literary motif regularly used in the ancient Near East.4 In Ps 139:13–15, conception is compared to the sowing of seeds. In Ps 139:13 and Job 10:11, the fetus is likened to a piece of fabric woven by a divine knitter;5 and in Job 10:9, to a piece of clay shaped by a potter; alternatively, it can be described as solidifying or separating from fluid (Job 10:10). Thus, as conception occurs, the fetus grows in utero and is finally born as a human child, the ancient authors imagine, divine activity opens doors, turns fluids into solids, and changes items from the natural world into cultural products. In imagining conception and childbirth as well as infertility, the Hebrew Bible firmly stands within the context of ancient Near Eastern literature. In narratives about the early mothers of Israel, all of which are connected to Abraham and his line, the images reoccur and, as will be shown, take on a crucial significance: Sarah becomes pregnant extraordinarily late in life, as Gen 18:11–13 reports; her daughter-in-law Rebekah is, according to Gen 25:21, initially infertile. One of the wives of Sarah’s grandson Jacob, Rachel, only bears children after a long period of infertility (Genesis 35). In several other narratives such as in the story of Tamar (Genesis 38), yet one generation down the family tree of Abraham and Sarah, conception is delayed, and successful childbirth is in question. In each case, it is God who changes the dire situation of (temporary) infertility, makes conception possible, and causes healthy babies to be born that survive into adulthood.6 The deity’s role in the reversal of infertility and conception can be portrayed as being so all-encompassing that the human fathers of Israel’s ancestors

4 See, for example, Gen 16:2; 20:18; 1 Sam 1:5–6. In the ancient Near East, see, for example Ligabue 51–53, VAT 8869, YOS 11 19, and possibly YBC 4603. For more detail, see Bergmann, “Mothers of a Nation,” 132–44. 5 On weaving and knitting as metaphors for the endeavor of pregnancy, also in American folklore, see Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Motherprayer (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), 29–31. 6 For a summary on images of conception, pregnancy, labor and childbirth in the Hebrew Bible, see Claudia D. Bergmann, Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis: Evidence from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and 1QH XI, 1–18 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), esp. 60–67; Bergmann, “Turning Birth into Theology: Traces of Ancient Obstetric Knowledge within Narratives of Difficult Childbirth in the Hebrew Bible,” in Children in the Bible and the Ancient World: Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children, ed. Shawn W. Flynn (London: Routledge, 2019), 17–34. Also see Andreas Kunz, “Die Vorstellung von Zeugung und Schwangerschaft im antiken Israel,” ZAW 111 (1999): 561–82; Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible (Groningen: Styx, 2000). On infertility in biblical texts, also see Kristine Hendricksen Garroway, Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018), 27–33.

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occasionally play a rather minimized role in the process, as is the case with Sarah and Abraham, the parents of Isaac (Gen 21:1–2): The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.7 Both verses focus almost entirely on Sarah and the deity: It is she who is the recipient of the divine deed promised previously. Sarah is named three times in two verses; Abraham’s name appears only once. In fact, Abraham comes across almost as an addendum to the narrative, which might be compared to Gen 4:1, where Eve rejoices after the birth of Cain, whom she attributes to the help of God alone. In the quote attributed to her, the father, Adam, is not mentioned at all. Abraham gains in importance, however, once conception, pregnancy, and birth are completed and the typical ritual activities of fathers are narrated (Gen 21:3–5): Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Abraham’s activities are secondary as far as the birth of a child is concerned. He names and circumcises Isaac, which is certainly important from a ritual perspective, but this does not happen until after God had reversed Sarah’s infertility and made her the bearer of the divine promise. Sarah gets to act first; Abraham acts second, but both do what God intends, as the Gen 21:1a, 2b, 4a, and 6a repeat over and over again. This pattern of Sarah acting first and Abraham acting second is repeated once again in the narrative (Gen 21:6–8): Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me [‫ ;]לי‬everyone who hears will laugh with me [‫]לי‬.” And she said, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him [‫ ]ילדתי‬a son in his old age.” The child grew and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.

7 The translations in section 1 by Claudia D. Bergmann are those of the NRSV unless noted otherwise. However, those in section 2 are by May May Latt unless indicated otherwise.

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Sarah’s words are certainly one of relief and joy, but they also widen the view to what Isaac’s birth means for the rest of the people: the laughter brought to Sarah will resound among “everyone who hears.” This points not only to all of the other matriarchs who, within the course of the story, will experience difficulties in conceiving and bearing children, but to all of Israel as well. It is the people who will “laugh in the end,” laugh with God because infertility will be turned into successful childbirth, growth of the people, and utter joy in God’s promises that come true even in the direst of times. While Sarah’s and Abraham’s names both appear twice in this short passage, Sarah is again the more active one of the two. She is given the literary privilege of direct speech; she acknowledges in the first person singular that the deity acted upon her: God has brought laughter to her (“for me”); the people will laugh with her (“with me”); she gave birth to a son (“I have borne”). Moving the attention away from Sarah a little bit and switching to the third person singular, it is said that it was Sarah who nursed a child; and it is also implied that she weaned her son, an important rite de passage for both child and mother. All that is left for Abraham to do is to organize a “great feast” on the occasion of Isaac’s weaning, an indication for the community that a personal rite de passage has taken place. Abraham does not speak in this passage, no first person verb is used for him, and he does not even “laugh” with Sarah and the people, but is relegated to the function of being the organizer of a celebration marking a ritual.8 Most often in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, however, conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are abbreviated to the rather formulaic “she conceived and bore (a son),” with the alternative “he was born to” when the father is the only parent mentioned. All in all, the information about these events occurring regularly in the lives of humans is scant in the Hebrew Bible, and the vocabulary of conception and childbirth is rather limited.9 The language of divine promise and fulfillment found in Genesis 21, where Sarah’s infertility is turned into successful childbirth, appears to be an exception in the Hebrew Bible. Her active role in this passage, which is underlined by her direct speech in the first person singular and the repeated mentioning of her name, is mirrored by passages in the prophetic book of Isaiah that also recognize the 8 Gudrun Holtz has shown convincingly that Abraham becomes even less active when other early Jewish texts describe the involvement of the deity in this conception of Isaac; see Gudrun Holtz, Jungfrauengeburt und Greisinnengeburt: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte von Gen 21,1f im antiken Judentum und im frühen Christentum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). For more on this passage, see Claudia D. Bergmann, “Infant Israel Growing Up: The Theme of Breastfeeding in the Hebrew Bible,” Bib 102, no. 2 (2021): 161–81. 9 For details, see Bergmann, Childbirth, 66.

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importance of Sarah as the mother who carries and bears the promise of God to Israel. The actions of the deity that overcome infertility and lead to conception allow the line of Abraham to continue so that all his (ritual) actions can be more than a mere memory but are continued throughout the generations by Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants. 1.2 Infertility Overcome in the Family Line of Sarah and Abraham As mentioned above, the Hebrew Bible does not dwell on descriptions of pregnancy and childbirth but often speaks a rather formulaic language. Details about the mother’s physical health and emotional state are rare,10 as the goal of the texts is not to describe actual pregnancies or occasions of childbirth but the early development of a people, for which the increasing number of young ancestors is a symbol. Again, the involvement of the deity in the birth of the ancestors of the people is a very active one. The birth of the two pairs of twins in the book of Genesis, both of which are in the family line of Sarah and Abraham and are further cases of (temporarily) infertile mothers becoming pregnant, shall serve as examples here. Isaac and his wife Rebekah achieve pregnancy only after a case of divine intervention. Then, Rebekah’s pregnancy is one marked by difficulties (Gen 25:21–26): And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was infertile. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me [‫ ”?]אנכי‬So, she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.” When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob. (ESV) The conflict between Jacob and Esau narrated in Genesis 25–27 finds its earliest expression before the twins were even born. During the birth event, the 10 For a narrative example, see Sarah’s relationship with Hagar in Genesis 16. In Gen 30:1, Rachel shows envy because she does not become pregnant. Later, in when she is about to give birth to her second son, her labor is called “hard” twice, the only times when the difficulties of childbirth are mentioned.

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competition between the two of them for gaining the status of firstborn or most important becomes apparent already, which is set into the larger context of the history of Israel by Gen 25:23, a piece of divine oracular poetry. The conflict in the womb and during the birth event, the biblical text tells the reader, foreshadows the conflict between two peoples. It also foreshadows Jacob’s struggle with the angel that leads to the naming of the ancestor and the nation as “Israel.”11 Thus, the birth of Esau and Jacob is not narrated for the purpose of describing their early beginnings but for the purpose of describing the birth of a nation. Again, the mother, Rebekah, takes center stage. While the text does not portray her as active and involved as Genesis 21 portrayed Sarah, Rebekah still is the only person whose words addressed to God are narrated and who receives a direct answer from the deity. Although difficult to translate, her divine address in Gen 25:22 includes a reference to herself in the first person singular;12 and again, the text makes abundantly clear that it does not talk about one or, in this case, two sons but about the larger context. Rebekah’s active involvement in the destiny of her sons, and thus of the two peoples, takes up the rest of the chapter.13 Further down the family line of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob’s son Judah is involved in another case of delayed conception, pregnancy, and difficult labor in the Hebrew Bible. This series of events carries the difficult childbirth motif into yet another generation. As part of levirate marriages, Tamar overcomes her unwanted childlessness when achieving pregnancy through the unknowing actions of her father-in-law, Judah. She bears twins named Perez and Zerah, who will support her in her old age and who continue the line of Jacob and thus the line of Abraham and Sarah, further making sure that the people

11 See Ilana Pardes, “Imagining the Birth of Ancient Israel: National Metaphors in the Bible,” the first chapter in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 9–41 (24): “Not only the struggle with the other (Esau or Edom in this case) but also a struggle from within, a struggle with the Ultimate Precursor: God.” 12 NJPS translates “If so, why do I exist?” and notes in the margins that the meaning of the Hebrew is unclear. 13 The fact that Rebekah is portrayed almost as a second patriarch because of her strong genealogy, her migration story, and her ability to speak to God as opposed to the rather weak portrayal of the father of her children, Isaac, has come to the attention of several scholars. Compare, for example, Cynthia R. Chapman, House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories (New York: Schocken, 2002); Wolfgang W.M. Roth, “The Wooing of Rebecca: A Traditional-Critical Study of Genesis 24,” CBQ 34 (1972): 177–87.

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thrive and develop into a nation and a state, a development that is of utmost importance to the authors of the narrative (Gen 38:27–30): When the time of her delivery came, there were twins in her womb. While she was in labor, one put out a hand; and the midwife took and bound on his hand a crimson thread, saying, “This one came out first.” But just then he drew back his hand, and out came his brother; and she said, “What a breach you have made for yourself!” Therefore, he was named Perez. Afterward his brother came out with the crimson thread on his hand; and he was named Zerah. The direct speeches uttered by Sarah and Rebekah and addressed to the deity do not occur here, a few generations down the family line of Sarah and Abraham. Still, Tamar’s voice is also heard as she negotiates the price for the sexual encounter with Judah. Several times, Tamar refers to herself in the first person singular (Gen 38:16b and 25a): “She said, ‘What will you give me [‫]לי‬, that you may come in to me [‫ ’?]אלי‬As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, ‘It was the owner of these who made me pregnant.’” In this narrative, it is left open who named the twins. Judah does not seem to be involved in any ritual activity connected to the birth of his sons whatsoever. The difficult childbirth narratives that are located in the ancestral stories of the book of Genesis are clustered in the family history that starts with Abraham and Sarah. The difficulties surrounding the births of the (male) ancestors of Israel only increase as the history of early Israel unfolds. While Sarah “only” battles infertility and conceives extraordinarily late in life, the next generation, represented by Rebekah, experiences infertility, a difficult pregnancy, and a difficult birth. Yet one generation onwards, Jacob’s wives experience infertility, delayed and unusual conception, and even a case of difficult childbirth resulting in the death of Rachel, one of the women married to Jacob. One more generation down the family tree, Jacob’s son Judah impregnates his son’s widow, Tamar, which results in a difficult childbirth event involving a protrusion and retraction of a fetal limb (either spontaneous or through the actions of a midwife), and an extraordinarily large loss of blood caused by these events, which would have most likely lead to the death of the mother and/or her children. But because of the involvement of the deity, the text implies, this was not the case.14 14 While Tamar is mentioned elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible only in connection with her children’s birth (Ruth 4:12 and 1 Chr 2:4), the twins are said to become ancestors of Israel in Gen 46:12 and Num 26:20, which means that they, according to the traditions of the

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With this worsening of circumstances, the narrator in the book of Genesis intends to show that the people of Israel go through the early stages of their lives with great difficulty. As a result of this, the ancient author would like to convey, the deity’s involvement in overcoming these difficulties must have increased accordingly. As was the case with Sarah, the mothers-to-be Rebekah and Tamar take center stage in the narratives. They are given a name by the biblical texts, they get to speak in the first person singular, they are the active ones, while their men, Isaac and Judah, appear inactive and as mere bystanders. While Abraham at least named his son and organized a weaning feast, neither one of them is reported as doing any ritual activity connected to the birth of their sons. It even is left open by the biblical texts whether it is the fathers who name the children or whether the name giving is done by the community or the mothers and/or the midwife. In the end, the ancestral mothers and their children become exemplars for what Israel as a nation experiences later on. In the imagined timeline of the history of Israel, the biblical authors paint images of familial life, in all of its ups and downs, in its joys and losses, in order to provide a foil that, if enlarged, applies to all of Israel, who will grow up to be a nation with the help of the deity. There is also much evidence that the terminology used in childbirth narratives points the reader not to individual or historical births but to events in the history of Israel.15 Two examples shall suffice here. The most common term used in the narratives of difficult births is “he came out,” in Hebrew, ‫יצא‬. Isaac and Rebekah’s twins Jacob and Esau “come out” in Gen 25:25–26. Tamar and Judah’s twins are said to “come out” in Gen 38:28, 29, and 30. The verb ‫ יצא‬is also the Hebrew Bible’s technical term for the exodus event. It refers to the deity YHWH, who can “go out” in battle in order to liberate (Exod 11:4), to Moses and Aaron, who call for the “going out” of the people (Exod 12:31), or to the action of “having come/coming out of Egypt.”16 The message of this intertextual terminological connection is that as Israel “came out” of Egypt, the forefathers of Israel “came out” of their mothers after an initial situation of infertility was overcome, and pregnancy had been achieved.17

Hebrew Bible, survived into adulthood. For a summary of the details of this birth event from an obstetrical point of view, see Bergmann, Childbirth, 64; Bergmann, “Turning Birth,” 21. 15 For more details, see Bergmann, “Turning Birth,” 23–27. 16 See H.B. Preuss, “‫יצא‬,” TDOT 6:225–50. 17 This metaphor is treated extensively in Pardes, “Imagining the Birth,” 13; for example: “Representing the birth of a nation is not a simple task. The imagining of this dramatic

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The terms derived from the root, ‫“ קשר‬to bind (on),” are another case that underlines this terminological interconnectedness of what seems to be family stories of conception and childbirth, and the larger narrative of Israel being born and developing into a nation.18 The root ‫ קשר‬is used in connection to the noun ‫ שני‬in Josh 2:18–21, where Rahab ties a scarlet ribbon to her window in order to mark her house as a safe haven, as well as in Gen 38:28, where a birth attendant ties a scarlet ribbon around the arm of the firstborn among twins. Both of the instances are framed in stories of individual and historical events but actually deal with theological reflections on the expansion of Israel: the newborn twins continue the family of Abraham and Sarah into yet another generation and save it from extinction; and Rahab becomes, as Tikva Frymer-Kensky calls her, the “midwife to embryonic Israel” as the people attempt to enter the land promised to them by the deity. The scarlet ribbon tied around the hand of a newborn child within the family of Abraham and Sarah being delivered by Tamar, and the one around the window of Rahab who is a deliverer to Israel binds the stories of these two women together on both a terminological and a theological level.19 Infertility, conception, pregnancy, and childbirth on the one hand, and religion on the other hand are closely interwoven in the Hebrew Bible. In the narratives about the difficulties to conceive and bear children, it is not the individual destinies of mothers and families that are the main concerns of the authors. Instead, it is the narration of the divine support for the benefit of the early ancestry of Israel. The story of Abraham and Sarah as they hope for and receive their son Isaac is a case in point. The birth of Isaac is not narrated to tell of a happy event in the family history of one family in ancient Israel. It signifies the birth of a nation, of “embryonic Israel,” to quote Frymer-Kensky again, as it is protected by God in difficult times and carried through hopelessness and danger. “Israel has a life story,” writes Ilana Pardes, and it is mirrored in the narrative constructions of the human life stories of the ancestresses and ancestors of Israel.20 The infertility of Sarah thus models the hopelessness of all of Israel as it faces difficult circumstances. The successful childbirth of Isaac event in Exodus is facilitated by the interweaving of two biographies: the story of the birth of Moses, and that of the nation.” 18 See J. Conrad, “‫קשר‬,” TDOT 13:196–201. 19 It has long been noticed in scholarship that the book of Joshua contains many allusions to the exodus event, for an example, see Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992), 36. 20 Ilana Pardes, The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 2.

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by Sarah, then, proves that Israel will overcome difficulties with the help of the deity.21 This topic is mirrored at least twice in the family line of Abraham and Sarah, and appears as a much-expanded topic when the Hebrew Bible talks about Israel as a people overcoming difficulties and growing because of divine involvement. The book of Isaiah provides one memorable example shifting the attention from the birth of individual male ancestors (and their mothers) to infertile Sarah and Zion/Jerusalem, all of them female in natural and/or grammatical gender.22 2

Infertility and Childbirth in Isaiah

2.1 Infertile Sarah, the Model of Israel As in Genesis, Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) evokes images of labor, childbirth, and child rearing to refer to the development of the nation Israel. Isaiah 42:14 likens God to a woman in labor; and in Isa 44:2, 24, and Isa 46:3, it is obvious that God as a mother formed Jacob-Israel in the womb, ‫מבטן‬. Isaiah 45:10–11 adds that God is like a father or a mother about to have children. In Isa 49:1, a personified Israel is quoted as saying, “The Lord called me before I was born; when I was in my mother’s womb, [the Lord] named me.” Israel, whose old name was Jacob (Gen 32:28), is the son of Isaac and Rebekah, the infertile one, in Gen 25:21. The infertile woman’s giving birth to the nations is repeatedly mentioned in the book of Isaiah; for example, in Isa 51:1–3 and 54:1–3. Because these passages address the issue of Sarah’s infertility and link it to the fate of Israel, they indicate a significant thematic parallel between Genesis and Second Isaiah. Unlike Genesis, however, in Second Isaiah, images of childbirth and child rearing are also found in reference to the restoration of Israel and the guiding 21 It is interesting to note that rabbinic imagination in b. B. Metz. 87a supplies a midrash about the importance to all of Israel of Sarah’s nursing. In the rabbinic story, the weaning feast for Isaac becomes an occasion for Sarah to nurse the children of a large number of women who attend the celebration. Her breasts become fountains of breastmilk for all of Israel; see also Pesiq. Rabb. 43:4. For more on these references, see Bergmann, “Infant,” 166. 22 Pardes, Biography, 5–6, might argue that a shift in the nation’s sexual identity occurs here: “The biblical text reveals points of tension between different traditions regarding the nation’s history and character. Even the nation’s sexual identity is not stable. While the Pentateuch shapes a male character, referring to the people as ʿam (singular masculine noun), the Prophets, more often than not, represent Israel as female, using ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Zion’ (feminine nouns) as alternative national designations.”

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of people from exile into Judea. For example, in Isa 43:1, God created and formed Jacob-Israel; thus, in Isa 43:5–7, 15, God called Jacob-Israel “my sons and daughters,” whom God would restore to a period of prosperity by bringing them into the land of Judea. For the children of Jerusalem, Isa 44:26–28 indicates that the city would be inhabited after the population of the city had been reduced in a deportation of Jerusalemites to Babylonia.23 God will raise up the ruins of the city and the cities of Judah so that its children will return, and its population will grow, the text indicates. The motif of God’s care for the children continues in Isa 46:4: Even to your old age, I am [God], Even when you turn gray, I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. Isaiah vividly shows that God is taking care of Israel, portrayed as God’s own children, so that she will grow. All the images of raising children, restoring Israel, nursing, and birthing are clearly pictured in Isa 49:20–25. The nation, Israel, is restored in the deserted city, Zion/Jerusalem; moreover, these people are called the sons and daughters of Sarah in Isa 51:1–3. Second Isaiah, however, does more than to utilize images of childbirth and child rearing in relation to Israel. Like Genesis, it associates infertility with Sarah and relates the matriarch to the history and development of the nation Israel. Aside from Genesis, Sarah is mentioned only in Isa 51:1–3 throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. A parallel is established in Isa 51:1–3 and 54:1–3 since both passages mention the infertility of Sarah, and the transformed feminine city Zion is portrayed in relation to the matriarch; she was first infertile but later became the mother of many children. The promise of God to Abraham, that is, Abraham was one man when God called him, but God blessed him and made him many (i.e., God multiplied Abraham’s descendants over time) in Isa 51:2b, could not have been fulfilled without Sarah’s participation: it is she who bore the heir to God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants would be numerous. If Sarah had not been mentioned in this text, Second Isaiah’s use of the promise of God to Abraham for the metaphor of transforming Zion would be less intelligible. As we will see in the following section, the metaphorical use of Sarah in Second Isaiah should be viewed as a model for Israel not to lose hope, even 23

Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 245–47: Isa 44:24–28 is “addressed internally to a Judean audience,” and “Jerusalem will be repopulated.”

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while living in their ruined and deserted city of Zion, which would be transformed and rebuilt with her many children. 2.2 Overcoming Infertility, the “Jerusalem Depopulated” Motif The emptiness of Zion/Jerusalem is one of the major themes in Second Isaiah. Under King Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonians came to destroy Jerusalem three times, in 597, 587, and 583 BCE. Resulting from these sieges, Jehoiachin, the last king of the line of David, was arrested, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, and people in the land were deported. Although the numbers of deportees vary in different accounts in the Hebrew Bible, Second Isaiah reckoned that the majority were deported, and the land became empty. Hans Barstad argues that people in fact remained in the land, even though a large number were deported; thus, historically, Second Isaiah’s depiction that the land as empty is exaggerated.24 The exaggerated notion that the land was empty, however, facilitates the redeployment of Sarah, the infertile one who became the mother of many nations, as a metaphor for the empty land that will be repopulated. The metaphor is first deployed in Isa 51:1–3, which opens with the speech of the prophet Second Isaiah to the people of Israel, telling them, Look [‫ ]הביטו‬to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the open cistern from which you were dug, Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you. (NRSV [modified]) This text, addressed to Israel (indicated by the masculine plural imperative

‫ הביטו‬and Isa 40:27; 41:8, 14; 43:1, etc.), specifies that Israel and the deserted

city Zion are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. Second Isaiah reminds Israel in the land that God fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham by transforming Sarah’s status from that of infertile wife to mother of nations, implying by analogy that the addressees ought to believe in God’s promise for an upcoming transformation of their city, Zion. The mention of Sarah, who, as we have noted, appears in the Hebrew Bible only in Genesis and Second Isaiah, indicates that God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah in Second Isaiah might have relied on traditions similar to those in Genesis 15 and 17. 24

Hans Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land, A Study of the History and Archeology of Judah During the “Exilic” Period (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996), 68–76. Barstad argues that Babylonian conquerors might have wanted to leave some populations in Judah for economic reasons, such as the production of crops that Mesopotamia did not grow itself, especially olives and grapes.

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A closer look at the texts of Genesis and Second Isaiah offers reasons to believe that literary similarities are involved. In Genesis 15, for example, before Abram made a ritual covenant with YHWH, YHWH took him outside and said in Gen 15:5: Look [‫ ]הבט־נא‬to the heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them. Then [YHWH] said to him, “so shall your seeds be.” The same word, ‫“( נבט‬look”) in hiphil form, is used in both Genesis and Isaiah. In Genesis, Yahweh commanded Abram to look to the heavens. Second Isaiah used the same word in the same verb form to command Israel to look to Abraham and Sarah: “Look [‫ ]הביטו‬to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you” (Isa 51:2). Whereas Abraham looked to the stars, the addressees of Second Isaiah are enjoined to look to their ancestral exemplars, Abraham and Sarah. As Jonathan G. Kline indicates, the use of common vocabulary and verb forms may point to literary dependence, even when more extensive agreements that would indicate a citation of source material are not present.25 In light of the considerable uncertainty about the dating of Pentateuchal material, however, we leave open here the question of literary dependence in either direction. The differences between Genesis 15 and Isaiah 51 may also be pointed out: after YHWH gave a promise to Abram in Genesis 15, Abram conducted a covenant ritual as YHWH had commanded. The name “Sarai” (Abram’s wife) does not occur in Genesis 15, nor is the covenant ritual depicted in Genesis 15 anywhere alluded to in Isaiah 51. However, it is clear that both from the perspective of Genesis and Second Isaiah, the promise that Abraham would have numerous descendants would not have been fulfilled without Sarah, through whom Abraham’s descendants would be named (cp. Gen 15:18; 17:19, 21). Sarah’s genealogical significance is more explicit in Genesis 17, where it is not only Abraham, but also Sarah, who mediates the promise. As Abraham is the ancestor of a multitude of nations, Sarah is promised that God will bless her and that she will give rise to nations; kings of nations will come from her in Gen 17:16. In another similarity to Genesis, Second Isaiah not only 25 Jonathan G. Kline, Allusive Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible, AIL 28 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 1–6. For the phenomenon of inner-biblical exegesis more generally, see Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

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used the same word, ‫ נבט‬in the same hiphil form, but also the same pattern of the promise to Abram mediated by Sarah in Genesis 17. Second Isaiah said to Israel: [Look (‫ )הביטו‬to] the ‫( מקבת בור‬open water cistern)26 from which you were dug, [Look (‫ )הביטו‬to] Sarah, who bore you [‫;]תחוללכם‬ for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him [‫ ]ואברכהו‬and made him many [‫( ]וארבהו‬Isa 51:1–2 NRSV [modified]) The reference to Sarah’s “bearing” Israel is similar to Genesis’s comments that Sarah would “bear” Isaac (Gen 17:17, 19, 21; 18:13; 21:3), although Second Isaiah uses forms based on the verbal stem ‫“( חיל‬to be in labor, to bring forth [through labor pains]”) whereas Genesis uses forms of ‫“( ילד‬to give birth”).27 Moreover, Second Isaiah’s references to Abraham becoming “many” through his progeny and to his “blessing” by YHWH point to similar motifs in Genesis 15 and 17. According to Gen 15:5, Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and Gen 17:2 recalls God’s promise to Abraham: “I will make you exceedingly numerous” (NRSV). Whereas in Gen 17:16, God’s “blessing” of progeny is applied to Sarah (“I will bless her”), in Isa 52:2 it is applied to Abraham (“I blessed him”). In both cases, however, the blessing refers to the birth of Isaac and the subsequent number of progeny that would accrue to his lineage. Although Second Isaiah appears to have transferred Sarah’s blessing to Abraham (or vice versa), it is significant that Sarah is nonetheless mentioned: the inclusion of Sarah points to a recognition of the crucial role she played in giving birth to Isaac, through whom Abraham’s lineage would be named. Isaiah 51 focuses not only on Abraham, but also on Sarah, who is relevant to the prophetic message that the deserted city Zion would be transformed, metaphorically becoming fertile after a period of infertility.

26

Many English versions read this very differently. For example, NRSV, NIV, ESV, and NJPS read “the quarry”; KJV reads “the whole of the pit.” This kind of reading does not give the clear picture of water flowing; thus, I follow J. Gerald Janzen, “An Echo of the Shema in Isaiah 51:1–3,” JSOT 43 (1989), 71. For ‫מקבת‬, HALOT lists “excavation,” and for the phrase ‫ מקבת בור‬in Isa 51:1, “mouth of a cistern” (s.v. “‫מקבת‬,” 1), indicates that ‫ בור‬is possibly a gloss. 27 So HALOT, s.v. “‫ ;”חיל‬s.v. “‫ילד‬.”

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This view differs from previous views by James Muilenburg,28 Claus Westermann,29 and Joseph Blenkinsopp,30 who hold the idea that the mention of Abraham and Sarah in Isa 51:1–3 refers to YHWH’s promise to Abraham that he will possess the land of Judah. Because the land of Zion is in despair and hopeless, Second Isaiah appeals to the story of Abraham from Gen 12:1–3 and 15:5. Muilenburg writes, “as YHWH had called Abraham, and had blessed and multiplied him according to his promise, so Israel in her present plight may look forward to a miraculous increase of her population.”31 These scholars, however, overlook the importance of Sarah in Isa 51:1–3, and focus exclusively on the male figure of Abraham as the mediator of YHWH’s promise in this passage by recalling the Genesis account. Even in some Genesis accounts, the importance of Sarah in God’s promise to Israel’s ancestors is forgotten. Frymer-Kensky says, “Sarah and Abraham come to Israel as part of God’s promise of numerous progenies and the land (Gen 12:1–5). Because Sarah’s importance to this promise is not at first obvious, the promise is immediately endangered.”32 After the promise becomes endangered several times by discounting Sarah’s importance, God renames her and blesses her with the birth of Isaac in Genesis 17. Sarah’s importance becomes obvious after the birth of Isaac. Frymer-Kensky concludes, “Having secured Isaac’s position in the family, Sarah disappears from Genesis. … She is remembered in the prophecies of Isaiah 51 (v. 2) as the ancestress of her people.”33 Second Isaiah’s metaphorical use of the figure of Sarah as the model for Israel in Zion seems to have been facilitated in a manner similar to Genesis 17, indicating the emphasis placed on Sarah as the mother through whom God’s promise of progeny would be fulfilled. Genesis 17:15–16 reads: God said to Abraham, “As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you 28 29 30 31 32

33

James Muilenburg and Henry Sloane Coffin, “The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66,” in vol. 5 of The Interpreter’s Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956), 590–91. Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 232–37. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 326–27. Muilenburg, “Book of Isaiah,” 590. Frymer-Kensky, “Sarah 1/Sarai,” in Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books and the New Testament, ed. Carol Meyers, Toni Craven, and Ross S. Kraemer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 150–51. Frymer-Kensky, “Sarah 1/Sarai,” 151.

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a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of people shall come from her.” (NRSV) In the biblical narrative “nations” and “kings” derive from Abraham, with Sarah as their matriarch. Second Isaiah, however, significantly varies the motif of “from infertility to fertility” from Genesis, as can be seen in Isa 51:1–3. In this passage, Abraham and Sarah are referred to using the terms “rock” and “open water cistern.” It is significant that, according to J. Gerald Janzen, ‫ מקבת בור‬is an image of a water source; “human fertility is often imagined as a well or fountain of water.” Janzen argues that Second Isaiah’s use of ‫ מקבת בור‬refers to a water channel coming through rock; this image signifies that the land is bringing forth life.34 Jansen is not wrong to make a direct parallelism between ‫ מקבת בור‬and the land; however, in Isa 51:1–2 ‫ מקבת בור‬is parallel not to Abraham but to Sarah, to whom Israel is called to look and have hope that their empty land will bring forth life. Additionally, the term, “open” in “open water cistern,” connotes childbearing. In the ancient Near East, the open-door motif is used for childbearing and childbirth. Metaphorically opening the door, in contrast to closing the door, refers to the child coming out from her mother’s womb, and “seeing the light of the sun.”35 The motif of the closing and opening of the womb is utilized in connection with many infertile women in the Hebrew Bible, including Sarah (Gen 20:18), Rachel (Gen 30:22), and Hannah (1 Sam 1:5–6). Comparing the personified city, Mother Zion, with Sarah in this text, God opens the womb of the infertile Zion in the moment of childbearing. On the literary level, Sarah’s association with the “open” water cistern is indicated by the poetic parallelism of the text: A Look to the rock from which you were hewn, B and to the open cistern from which you were dug. A′ Look to Abraham your father B′ and to Sarah who bore you. (Isa 51:1b–2a NRSV [modified]) The references to the rock and cistern (A and B) in Isa 52:1 are paralleled by references to Abraham and Sarah (A′ and B′): Abraham is likened to a rock, and Sarah is likened to a cistern. The parallelism is clearly indicated by the repetition of “look to” (‫ )הביטו‬in A and A′ and of the phrase “and to” (‫ )ואל‬in B and B′. 34 J. Gerald Janzen, “Rivers in the Desert of Abraham and Sarah and Zion (Isaiah 51:1–3),” HAR 10 (1986) 139–51. 35 Bergmann, Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis, 55.

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This understanding of the parallelism is strengthened by the gendered use of these images elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, where “rock” is associated with YHWH, the “mighty One of Jacob” and “shepherd” in Gen 49:24 (see also Deut 32:4, 15). The gendered imagery, however, may sometimes be mixed: in Deut 32:18, the “Rock,” “El,” is the one who “gave birth to” Israel, even though the relevant verb is grammatically masculine. In an admonition to a young man (“my son”; Prov 5:1) to avoid intercourse with a “stranger woman” (‫;זרה‬ Prov 5:3), Prov 5:15 advises: “Drink water from your own cistern [‫]מבורך‬, flowing water from your own well [‫ ;”]מתוך בארך‬that is, engage in intercourse only with one’s wife. The text uses the same term, ‫בור‬, that is used in Isa 51:1. When the sexual activity of the male is referred to in Prov 5:16, the terms “springs” (‫ )מעינתיך‬and “streams” (‫ )פלגי־מים‬are used, not “cistern” or “well.” As Katharine Dell notes, “Water is a euphemism for sexual activity (cf. Song 4:12b, 15). Your own cistern and well refer to ‘your wife’ as the source of that water.”36 Thus Abraham’s association with the “rock” and Sarah’s association with the “cistern” cohere with the gendered associations of these terms elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. The poetic association of Sarah with a cistern of water furthers the fertility motif that is encountered elsewhere in Second Isaiah and helps form an association between Sarah and Zion, both of whom are portrayed as experiencing a transition from infertility to fertility as the result of divine intervention. Second Isaiah concludes Isa 51:2 with the promise similarly mentioned in Genesis that “Abraham was one when I called him, blessed him, and made him many”; however, unlike Genesis, Second Isaiah makes the matriarch Sarah an exemplum whose experience is to be recapitulated by a hopeless Israel and its deserted city Jerusalem, indicating that the promise of God is always fulfilled. Sarah was once infertile, but later bore many children. The poetic parallelism between the water cistern, ‫מקבת בור‬, and Sarah’s fertility is connected to Zion’s transformation from depopulated to repopulated city in Isa 51:3. Immediately after naming Sarah in verse 2, the prophet states: For the Lord will comfort Zion; [the Lord] will comfort all her waste places and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. 36 Katharine Dell, “Proverbs,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: An Ecumenical Study Bible, College Edition, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Hebrew Bible, 902 (emphasis in original, indicating terms in the biblical text).

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In the prophet’s view, the empty city of Zion would be repopulated and filled with joy, gladness, and songs of thanksgiving. The dialectic between infertility and fruitfulness continues in Isa 54:1–3, where the theme of infertility again evokes the imagery of Sarah from the Genesis narrative. Genesis 11:30 says, “And Sarai was infertile [‫]עקרה‬, and she had no child”; on the other hand, Gen 17:15–16 describes how the infertile Sarai is renamed and transformed: she gives rise to nations, ‫לגוים‬. God’s promise to Abraham as being a great nation is fulfilled by the renamed and transformed Sarah. Second Isaiah remembers the transformation of Sarah from being infertile to becoming the mother of many children; this metaphor is used to address the transformation of the deserted city Zion in Isaiah 51 and 54. Isaiah 54 opens with the imperative, “Sing, O infertile one [‫]עקרה‬.” Susan Ackerman argues that this verse, Isa 54:1, recalls the jubilant hymn of Hannah after her infertility has ended in 1 Sam 2:1–10.37 Muilenburg also argues that this verse refers generally to any infertile wife of Israel’s ancestress; however, he mentions one name in particular, Hannah.38 Blenkinsopp also argues that this passage is about the blessing of fertility. The transformation of infertility to fertility of Jerusalem recalls the stories of the ancestors, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, who are initially childless in Genesis.39 Though it could be that Second Isaiah recalls any of the infertile wives from Genesis in Isa 54:1–3, Sarah is the only infertile woman (‫ )עקרה‬mentioned by name in Isa 40–55. Isaiah 54:1–3 is the continuation of Isaiah 51 in that the infertile one, Sarah, is going to have many children. There is no direct comparison between Sarah and Zion in Isaiah 54; however, W.A.M. Beuken argues that the infertile one (‫ )עקרה‬in the text can be identified with Sarah, and she is also considered to be identified with Zion in Second Isaiah.40 Therefore, the imagery of the infertile wife, Sarah, who carries the promise of God, is Second Isaiah’s most likely point of reference among these possibilities. After calling for the infertile one to sing for her fertility in Isa 54:1, Second Isaiah summons Sarah-Zion to enlarge, stretch out, and lengthen the place for her descendants in Isa 54:2: Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; 37

Susan Ackerman, “Isaiah,” in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, ed. Walter J. Harrelson (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 1032. 38 Muilenburg, “Book of Isaiah,” 634. 39 Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 361. 40 W.A.M. Beuken, “Isaiah LIV: The Multiple Identity of the Person Addressed,” in Language and Meaning: Studies in Hebrew Language and Biblical Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 29–70.

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do not hold back; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. A series of imperatives are used by Second Isaiah to address the message to the deserted city, Zion, which is about to have many children. Zion is personified as a mother, using childbirth imagery. The tent’s enlargement recalls the image of a pregnant woman, whose belly is enlarged by the child/children in her womb. Commanding her not to “hold back” indicates a dangerous moment in childbearing, portrayed in Gen 38:27–30: the child should not be “held back” but rather pushed from the womb. Holding back before pushing the baby out is potentially dangerous; it is always a difficult moment of hope in the childbearing of the mother.41 Moreover, “lengthen her cords” develops the theme that additional space will be needed to house Zion’s children. These images of a pregnant Zion, about to give birth, provide hope for Israel by asking the people to look at their model, Sarah, who progressed from a state of infertility to bearing a child, and indeed becoming the ancestress of many. Isaiah 54:2–3 vividly describes the image of Mother Zion’s transformation, as the deserted city must make ready to become a place crowded with her own children. Who are the addressees in this passage (Isa 54:1–3) to whom Second Isaiah offers the metaphor of the transformation of the infertile wife? Lena Sophia Tiemeyer argues that the metaphors described in this passage highlight particular aspects of Zion’s current situation. The text acknowledges the image of the transformation of the city. Tiemeyer rejects the views of scholars, including Beuken, who argues that the image in Isa 54:7 symbolizes the exilic community. Tiemeyer shows that “it is Zion, rather than her offspring, who is being gathered.” She translates the verb (‫ )קבץ‬as “gathering together,” which gives the image of “God as a mother bird, who gathers her chicks under her wing for protection.” Therefore, Tiemeyer concludes that the addressee of Isaiah 54 is Zion “as a symbol for the earthly city of Jerusalem.”42 Following Tiemeyer, it can be suggested that since the population was reduced in the deserted city Zion during the exilic period, the people in the 41

In the ancient Near Eastern Text, Babylonians had a saying for a woman’s difficult childbearing, i.e., “If her hands are holding her belly, then she will not have an easy childbirth”; so Marten Stol, Women in the Ancient Near East, trans. Helen Richardson and Mervyn Richardson (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 63. 42 Tiemeyer, For the Comfort of Zion, 301–4.

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land must bear in mind the infertile wife (‫)עקרה‬, Sarah, who carries God’s promise by giving birth to nations (‫)לגוים‬, becoming a crucial figure through whom the empty land would be repopulated: [Zion’s] descendants will possess the nations [‫]לגוים‬ make the desolate cities to be inhabited. (Isa 54:3) Although Isa 54:1–3 does not mention the names Sarah and Zion, Second Isaiah has already claimed these names in Isa 51:1–3. Moreover, in Isa 51:1–3, Second Isaiah already portrayed the transformation of Sarah from an infertile woman to a mother of many nations, paralleled with the desolate city, Zion, which would soon be repopulated. Isaiah 51 and 54 likewise trace YHWH’s promise through Sarah as much as through Abraham. Both texts formulate a parallel between the feminine city Zion and the matriarch Sarah.

Conclusion

The narrative about the infertility of Sarah and the childlessness of Abraham, Sarah’s god-induced ability to conceive a child later in life, the birth of Isaac, and the stories surrounding the events in Isaac’s childhood and youth appear to be—at first glance—an eventful and exciting narrative about a small family who comes to terms with what it means to conceive, bear, and raise a child. This family, however, is not like any other. They form the nucleus of what is to become Israel, which is why their initial infertility is of great consequence within the large picture of the birth of a people. Their successful conception of one son shows God’s will for all of Israel. Their dealings with Isaac in the first years of his life are models for what is to come, both on the level of the narratives of the Hebrew Bible as well as for later generations who receive these narratives as their holy Scriptures and the people described in them as exemplars of their faith and subsequent ritual behavior. There are several points within the narratives about Sarah and Abraham in the book of Genesis that would lend themselves easily to being vantage points for ritual modelling. The theme of covenant is very dominant within them, and the circumcision of Isaac indeed became a model for ritual behavior that now is one of the distinctive markers of what it means to be Jewish. Other details, such as the festival on the occasion of the weaning of Isaac as it is narrated in Gen 21:7–8, were not turned into a common Jewish ritual. Apparently, not all of Sarah’s and Abraham’s actions were equally suitable to become examples to be

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followed by later generations or blueprints for other texts within the Hebrew Bible and outside of it. The infertility of Sarah, however, and her ability to overcome it with divine help is one of the most important topics in biblical literature. Several of the important matriarchs in the narrated early history of the people are portrayed as being initially infertile. The fact that God interferes on their behalf is supposed to show that the birth of a people happens according to the divine will. In the book of Isaiah, Sarah’s infertility and subsequent divinely granted fertility are metaphors for the transformation of the city Zion and a model for the people: as Sarah received a son under unlikely circumstances, so, too, would Zion become fertile and repopulated, if only the people “look to” and take courage from Sarah’s exemplary experience. It is, after all, not only the patriarch Abraham but also the matriarch Sarah who serves to mediate the divine promise to the people that they would become “many.” When Second Isaiah turns Sarah into a metaphor for a transformed Zion, Sarah becomes a model of hope to a hopeless Israel in its presently ruined city. Hope is to be drawn from the promise that, like the human model Sarah, the city, too, will be filled with offspring. Bibliography Ackerman, Susan. “Isaiah.” Pages 955–1049 in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Edited by Walter J. Harrelson. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003. Barstad, H. The Myth of the Empty Land, A Study of the History and Archeology of Judah During the “Exilic” Period. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996. Bergmann, Claudia D. Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis. Evidence from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and 1QH XI, 1–18. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Bergmann, Claudia D. “Infant Israel Growing Up: The Theme of Breastfeeding in the Hebrew Bible.” Bib 102, no. 2 (2021): 161–81. Bergmann, Claudia D. “Mothers of a Nation: How Motherhood and Religion Intermingle in the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 132–144 in Motherhood(s) in Religions: The Religionification of Motherhood and Mother’s Appropriation of Religion. Edited by Giulia Pedrucci. Special issue of OT 6 (2020). Bergmann, Claudia D. “Turning Birth into Theology: Traces of Ancient Obstetric Knowledge within Narratives of Difficult Childbirth in the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 17–34 in Children in the Bible and the Ancient World. Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children. Edited by Shawn W. Flynn. London: Routledge, 2019.

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Beuken, W.A.M. “Isaiah LIV: The Multiple Identity of the Person Addressed.” Pages 29– 70 in Language and Meaning: Studies in Hebrew Language and Biblical Exegesis. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Budin, Stephanie Lynn. Gender in the Ancient Near East. London: Routledge, 2023. Chapman, Cynthia R. House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Conrad, J. “‫קשר‬.” TDOT 13:196–201. Dell, Katharine. “Proverbs.” Pages 905–44 HB in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: An Ecumenical Study Bible, College Edition. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Fishbane, Michael A. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Motherprayer. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories. New York: Schocken, 2002. Garroway, Kristine Hendricksen. Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018. Holtz, Gudrun. Jungfrauengeburt und Greisinnengeburt: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte von Gen 21,1f im antiken Judentum und im frühen Christentum. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017. Janzen, J. Gerald. “An Echo of the Shema in Isaiah 51:1–3.” JSOT 43 (1989): 69–82. Janzen, J. Gerald. “Rivers in the Desert of Abraham and Sarah and Zion (Isaiah 51:1–3).” HAR 10 (1986): 139–55. Kline, Jonathan G. Allusive Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible. AIL 28. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016. Kunz, Andreas. “Die Vorstellung von Zeugung und Schwangerschaft im antiken Israel.” ZAW 111 (1999): 561–82. Latt, May May. “Zion/Jerusalem, the Physical Location in Judah in the Final Form of Isaiah 40–66; Utilizing Synchronic-Rhetorical Criticism.” PhD diss., Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 2012. Muilenburg, James, and Henry Sloane Coffin. “The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66.” Pages 381–773 in vol. 5 of The Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by George Arthur Buttrick. New York: Abingdon, 1956. O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter, 2016.

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Preuss, H.B. “‫יצא‬.” TDOT 6:225–50. Roth, Wolfgang W.M. “The Wooing of Rebecca: A Traditional-Critical Study of Genesis 24.” CBQ 34 (1972): 177–87. Stol, Marten. Birth in Babylonia and the Bible. Groningen: Styx, 2000. Stol, Marten. Women in the Ancient Near East. Translated by Helen and Mervyn Richardson. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. Tiemeyer, Lena Sophia. For the Comfort of Zion: The Geographical and Theological Location of Isaiah 40–55. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Westermann, Claus. Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969.

Chapter 2

Abraham as a Model and Mediator of Worship Practices in the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees Mika S. Pajunen In general, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not show a particular interest in Abraham. He is typically mentioned briefly in connection with the covenant (4Q388a 7ii 2; 4Q389 8ii 8–9), often with Isaac and Jacob (e.g., 4Q393 3 7, 4 5; 4Q505 124 6).1 In these instances, the references to Abraham are not directly connected with worship or ritual practices, but there are three compositions, partly extant in the Dead Sea Scrolls, that provide a marked exception to this overall depiction of Abraham. The Genesis Apocryphon, Aramaic Levi Document (hereafter ALD), and Jubilees stress Abraham’s role as one of the main figures in the Levitical line that established most of the cultic practices well before the revelation of the law at Sinai. The Genesis Apocryphon and ALD are written in Aramaic and usually dated to the early to mid-Hellenistic period,2 whereas Jubilees was written in Hebrew, and is roughly a century later, from the midsecond century BCE.3 These three compositions retell some of the traditions found in the book of Genesis, and each of them has its own specific emphasis. The Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees go through much of the Genesis timeline and present their depiction of events as a fuller and more reliable account than the one preserved in Genesis. The Genesis Apocryphon does this by employing 1 For an overview on passages dealing with the patriarchs in the Dead Sea Scrolls and on how they are generally depicted, see Ariel Feldman, “Patriarchs and Aramaic Traditions,” in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. George J. Brooke and Charlotte Hempel (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 459–81. 2 See, for instance, Daniel Machiela, “Situating the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Reconsidering Their Language and Socio-Historical Settings,” in Apocalyptic Thinking in Early Judaism: Engaging with John Collins’ The Apocalyptic Imagination, ed. Cecilia Wassen and Sidnie White Crawford, JSJSup 182 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 88–109. The dating of the Genesis Apocryphon is a contested issue, partly related to the relationship between it and Jubilees, with suggestions ranging from the third to the first century BCE. 3 For the dating and a general introduction to Jubilees, see Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology, JSJSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–41. See also Cana Werman, The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation and Interpretation [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2016).

© Mika S. Pajunen, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004722620_004

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first-person voices of the patriarchs (in the extant text, Lamech, Enoch, Noah, and Abram) and stressing the reliable transmission of traditions from one patriarch to the next,4 whereas Jubilees presents its account as revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and written on heavenly tablets (e.g., Jub. 1:4–7, 26–28). The ALD is written in the voice of Levi, depicting some of the main events of his life, and Abraham is mentioned mainly as the source of a law of the priesthood (ALD 13–61) that Isaac teaches to Levi.5 This study will, therefore, mostly focus on the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees, both of which highlight Abraham’s role as a ritual initiator, a model for certain practices, and as one of the main figures in a continuum of liturgical revelation and praxis. The ALD will only be briefly discussed in connection with Jubilees because it seems that the Genesis Apocryphon and ALD, or at least the broader traditions represented by them, were used as sources by the author of Jubilees and thus perhaps contributed to its depiction of Abraham. Many scholars have proposed that ALD was a source for Jubilees,6 whereas the relationship between the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees is more complex, and scholars are divided over which is the earlier composition or whether they are both dependent on a shared tradition rather than directly on one another.7 For the purposes of this article, it is not essential to establish the exact literary relationship between these compositions. The important thing is that these 4 See esp. Mika S. Pajunen, “Transmitting Patriarchal Voices in Aramaic: Claims of Authenticity and Reliability,” in Vision Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Text from Qumran: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14–15 August, 2017, ed. Mette Bundvad et al., STDJ 131 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 31–51. 5 References to the Aramaic Levi Document follow the arrangement of the composite text in Henryk Drawnel, An Aramaic Wisdom Text from Qumran: A New Interpretation of the Levi Document, JSJSup 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 6 See, e.g., Drawnel, Aramaic Wisdom Text, 63–75; Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times, SDSSRL (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 65; Esther Eshel, “The Aramaic Levi Document, the Genesis Apocryphon, and Jubilees: A Study of Shared Traditions,” in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 82–98. The priority of Jubilees to ALD in its current form is in turn suggested, for instance, by James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation, JSJSup 156 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 341–42, 349–51. 7 For a presentation and examination of the evidence typically discussed when investigating the relationship between Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon, see James C. VanderKam, “Some Thoughts on the Relationship between the Book of Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Is There a Text in This Cave? Studies in the Textuality of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of George J. Brooke, ed. Ariel Feldman, Maria Cioată, and Charlotte Hempel, STDJ 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 371–84. See also, Eshel, “Aramaic Levi,” 82–98; Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 305–42; White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 105–29. There is, however, still further evidence, such as the ritual acts discussed in this article, that need further study before the particulars of this intricate connection can be more conclusively decided.

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three sources demonstrate how the overall tradition concerning Abraham’s role as a “priestly” exemplar developed during the mid to late Second Temple period. The passages investigated here suggest that the Genesis Apocryphon is an older representative of this tradition than Jubilees. It is, however, possible that both compositions rely on a common source and the Genesis Apocryphon is, in these instances, just closer to it. This study will proceed by first presenting an outline of how the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees differ from the Genesis account in terms of Abraham’s ritual actions and then providing some synthesizing conclusions about these depictions and what they may reveal about the motivations and intentions of the authors of these compositions in the broader historical setting of (late) Second Temple period Judaism. However, because the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees both highlight Abraham’s ritual continuity with Noah, a brief synopsis will first be offered on how the Noah tradition in Genesis has been changed in them in terms of ritual acts. This will provide both an example of how these compositions engage with their source traditions and a necessary background for understanding the role of Abraham. 1

Noah’s Ritual Acts in the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees

In the Genesis account, Noah’s ritual acts are limited to the first animal sacrifice in the biblical timeline, which is described in a rudimentary manner by stating that Noah gave a burnt offering from all the clean domesticated animals and clean birds (Gen 8:20). In the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 10:13–17), this sacrificial act is presented in more detail by describing each of Noah’s ritual acts, listing the sacrificed animals separately, and adding a grain offering.8 Jubilees adds to this even more details (Jub. 6:1–3) concerning the animals and especially the grain offering, but the marked similarities show it clearly has the same tradition as the Genesis Apocryphon in its background because of shared elements in the list of sacrificed animals that are missing in Genesis.9 Jubilees further marks this event as the establishment of the Feast of Weeks and notes that it was afterwards celebrated by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 8 The text and translation of the Genesis Apocryphon follow Daniel Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation with Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13–17 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 9 For a detailed examination of the Noah accounts in the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees, see esp. Cana Werman, “Qumran and the Book of Noah,” in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the Second International Symposium of the Orion Center, 12–14 January 1997, ed. Michael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon, STDJ 31 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 171–81.

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and Jacob’s children (Jub. 6:17–18),10 thus already anticipating ritual continuity from Noah to these other key patriarchal figures. Furthermore, in Jubilees Noah also sets the seasonal feasts (Jub. 6:23–31; 7:35–36), making him in effect the initiator of many of the important calendrical rituals. However, neither the Genesis Apocryphon nor Jubilees relates this sacrifice as Noah’s only ritual act, as is the case in Genesis. The Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 11:12–14) recounts that Noah praised and blessed God for his mercy and just judgment when surveying the land after the flood. Moreover, and more importantly, the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 12:13–17) transforms the Genesis account of Noah planting a vineyard and becoming drunk (Gen 9:20–21) into a feast day celebration, complete with a thanksgiving made at an altar. Jubilees again concurs with the Genesis Apocryphon in this overall depiction, but once more offers further details about the sacrifices (Jub. 7:3–5). Jubilees furthermore connects Noah with the first use of an apotropaic prayer to ward off evil spirits (Jub. 10:1–6), and Noah subsequently writes down in a scroll information regarding medicinal herbs effective against diseases caused by the evil spirits, which he then passes down to Shem (Jub. 10:12–14). Because the Genesis Apocryphon continues directly from the Noah account to Abraham (somewhere in the lost part of column 18 or the beginning of column 19), and Jubilees emphasizes that there is discontinuity of proper practices after Noah until Abraham (Jub. 6:18–19), the Noah accounts set the stage in both compositions for the depiction of Abraham as the next in the line of models of correct worship practices. The Noah accounts in the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees already highlight the two foremost ritual aspects also in Abraham’s case: sacrificial rituals and the establishment of major feast days, as well as the use of apotropaic prayers or incantations against evil spirits. 2

Abraham and Worship in the Genesis Apocryphon

The preserved parts of the Genesis Apocryphon unfortunately break off in the middle of the Abraham cycle after the Melchizedek episode related in Genesis 14. It is nevertheless clear from what remains of the composition that certain ritual practices are emphasized in relation to Genesis. In the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 19:13–20:33), Abram and Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt is retold in a more extensive manner than in Gen 12:10–20. According to Gen 12:17, 10

The text and translation of Jubilees throughout this article follow James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text, CSCO 510 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989); VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: Translated, CSCO 511 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989).

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God sends plagues to afflict Pharaoh and his court because of Sarai’s presence in the court. The plagues then cause Pharaoh to return Sarai to Abram. In the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 20:16–17), the plagues have become evil spirits, which was a natural interpretation of diseases at the time it was written, because the Jewish worldview, as expressed in the writings of the literary elite, changed in the Hellenistic period to include a more pronounced presence of both benevolent and malevolent spirits, angels and demons.11 Similarly, it is typical at this time that figures from the past were depicted as interacting with both kinds of spirits, albeit in a different manner. In the Genesis Apocryphon, the plague-inflicting evil spirit is actually sent by God as a direct answer to Abram’s prayer for redress against Pharaoh. This already highlights the efficacy of a righteous person’s prayer. This aspect is further emphasized by the failure of Egyptian magicians to remove the evil spirit, whereas Abram accomplishes the exorcism by prayer and the laying on of hands: “I [Abram] prayed [that he might be cured] and laid my hands upon his [hea]d. The plague was removed from him; the evil [spirit] was banished [from him] and he recovered.”12 The Genesis Apocryphon, thus, stresses the supremacy of the Jewish God even on foreign soil and the efficacy of prayer over evil spirits. In the Genesis account, Abram does not have an active role in the sending of the evil spirit or in curing the affliction, but the healing of Abimelech in Genesis 20 through prayer is very similar and may have partly influenced the account in the Genesis Apocryphon.13 The differences in the accounts show that the Genesis Apoc­ ryphon highlighted Abram and his prayers’ active role in these events. The account of exorcism also provides evidence, with other similar accounts and the increase of incantations and apotropaic prayers in the preserved texts, that the use of incantations had become part of more official ritual practices.14 The Genesis Apocryphon promoted these practices by portraying Abram, a central patriarchal figure, as an efficacious exorcist. The rest of the preserved Abraham cycle in the Genesis Apocryphon continues the slight embellishment of Abraham’s ritual acts in relation to Genesis that was already seen the Noah accounts. After his return from Egypt, Abram 11 See further Mika S. Pajunen, “Fighting Evil with Psalms and Prayers: Incantations and Apotropaic Prayers as a Response to the Changing Worldview of the Late Second Temple Period,” in Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives on the Bible and Its Contexts, ed. Nina Nikki and Kirsi Valkama, MO (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 197–214. 12 Trans. of Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, DSSSE 1:43. 13 Cf. Daniel Falk, The Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures among the Dead Sea Scrolls, LSTS 63 (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 80–84. 14 Pajunen, “Fighting Evil,” 197–214.

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rebuilds an altar at Bethel and offers burnt and cereal offerings (1QapGen 21:1–4) as well as offering praise and thanksgiving to God for his good fortune and safe return to the land. This is comparable to Noah’s ritual acts after his rescue from the flood. This is a clear elaboration of the acts from the tradition in Gen 13:4 that only mentions Abram calling on the name of the Lord. Similarly, after an extensive account of Abram’s journey through the promised land, the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 21:20–22) relates that he builds an altar at Mamre and again offers burnt and cereal offerings as well as eating and drinking, whereas Gen 13:18 only mentions him building the altar, without mentioning any ritual acts. Finally, the event of Abram giving a tithe to Melchizedek the priest of the Most High God in Salem is related in a manner similar to Genesis 14. Overall, the preserved parts of the Genesis Apocryphon thus add more details to Abram’s ritual acts, where only rudimentary elements and interpretive clues are found in Genesis. This coincides with how the Noah accounts have been treated, and these cases reveal the Genesis Apocryphon’s active interest in the sacrificial rituals and prayers performed by these key patriarchal figures. Moreover, the ritual acts of Abram are similar to what Noah is said to have done, and serve to place Noah and Abraham in a ritual continuity and to cast them as models for specific practices. Nevertheless, the accounts related to worship in the Genesis Apocryphon are not particularly detailed, nor are they connected with specific dates or feasts, which is something that changes with Jubilees. 3

Abraham and Worship in Jubilees

Jubilees is now completely extant only in Geʿez. Fragments of fourteen or fifteen Jubilees manuscripts in Hebrew have, however, been found at Qumran (1Q17–18, 2Q19–20, 3Q5, 4Q176a, 4Q216–224, 11Q12). This shows that the work existed in some form at the time the manuscripts were copied, although recent studies have shown that some of these manuscripts may originally have contained only parts of the work.15 The main point of Jubilees concerning

15

Eibert Tigchelaar, “The Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts as Evidence for the Literary Growth of the Book,” RevQ 26 (2014): 579–94; Matthew P. Monger, “The Many Forms of Jubilees: A Reassessment of the Manuscript Evidence from Qumran and the Lines of Transmission of the Parts and Whole of Jubilees,” RevQ 30 (2018): 191–211.

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Abraham is the establishment of the covenant,16 with major emphasis also placed on the testing of Abraham and the inheritance of the land.17 This is stressed at almost every turn, and Jubilees also marginalizes many events of the Abraham cycle that do not directly relate to this topic, like the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Egypt episode. Nevertheless, Jubilees also depicts Abraham as the initiator of several major feast days and as the source of some specific ordinances concerning sacrifices. Abraham is first of all depicted as taking a firm stance against idolatry. This is emphasized particularly at the beginning and end of the Abraham cycle in Jubilees, and hence in a way envelops the whole account.18 Both of these episodes are part of large additions that Jubilees makes to the Genesis account and thus contain elements the author found to be of special importance. At the beginning of the Abraham cycle, it is specifically stated that Abram separated from his father at the age of fourteen so as not to worship idols with him and at that time began to pray to God in order to be saved from falling into the errors of humankind (Jub. 11:16–17). Abram also tries to persuade his father away from idol worship, which he argues to be futile because the idols do not contain spirits. Nevertheless, while his father acknowledges that Abram is right in his criticism, he justifies idol worship because of fearing his neighbors would kill him otherwise (Jub. 12:1–8). This early stance against idol worship results in Abram finally burning down the temple of the idols at the age of sixty (Jub. 12:12), after which Abram left Ur of the Chaldeans with his father and moved to Haran. The importance of worshipping the God of Heaven rather than empty idols is returned to at the very end of the Abraham cycle, where Abraham instructs his descendants in three separate farewell speeches (Jub. 20:6–10; 21:1–25; 22:16–22), admonishing them on the dangers and futility of idol worship (esp. Jub. 20:7–9; 22:17–22). Since these accounts are not found in Genesis, it seems safe to conclude that the stress placed on correct worship

16 Cf. Susan Docherty, “Abraham in Rewritten Scripture,” in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, LSTS 93 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), 59–74 (esp. 60–65). 17 These themes are likewise highlighted concerning Abraham in many other Jewish compositions from the late Second Temple period and in the following centuries; see, e.g., Jared W. Ludlow, “Abraham in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Friend of God and Father of Fathers,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 41–58 (esp. 45–53); Géza G. Xeravits, “Abraham in the Old Testament Apocrypha,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 29–40. 18 See further, Docherty, “Abraham in Rewritten Scripture,” 63–64.

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is a key aspect of Jubilees, and this becomes more evident with the modifications made to other parts of the Abraham cycle. Jubilees contains some rather incidental remarks concerning Abraham praying to God or blessing him where Genesis has nothing similar. As already noted, in Jubilees 11, when still in his father’s house, Abram begins praying to God to keep him from the evil and impure ways of men; and similarly in Jub. 12:19–20, he prays to God for guidance and for deliverance from evil spirits when living in Haran with his father:19 My God, my God, God most High, You alone are my God. … Save me from the power of the evil spirits who rule the thoughts of people’s minds. May they not mislead me from following you, my God. These and similar remarks, like blessing God for living long enough to see his sons (Jub. 17:3), add to the overall image of Abraham’s righteousness and piety as well as instruct the audience on proper occasions for offering prayers and blessings to God for important events and guidance. However, most of the accounts of Abraham’s ritual acts are much more detailed than these prayers and blessings and, as will be suggested in the following, are augmented by Jubilees in relation to the Genesis accounts. For the portions of the Abraham cycle preceding the establishment of the covenant that are also preserved in the Genesis Apocryphon, the Jubilees account of Abram’s ritual acts is quite similar to the Genesis Apocryphon. Before his sojourn in Egypt (Jub. 13), Abram makes altars; first at Shechem, where he offers a sacrifice (Jub. 13:4) not found in Gen 12:7; then at Bethel, where he blesses God for bringing him there, builds an altar, praises the Lord, and makes a burnt offering (Jub. 13:7–9) in the hope that God will be with him for his entire lifetime. In this instance, Gen 12:8 relates Abram’s building of the altar but nothing about his offering praise and sacrifices there. After his journey to Egypt, Abram comes back to this same altar at Bethel (Jub. 13:15), blesses God, offers sacrifices, and praises God for his safe return, in much the same way as he did on the first occasion. Here Gen 13:4 mentions the altar and Abram 19 Abram’s prayer in Jub. 12:16–27 has many similarities with Noah’s prayer in Jub. 10:1–14; see Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8, JSJSup 161 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 49–51. This once again demonstrates the close affinities between the worship practices of these two figures and how important it was to the author of Jubilees to stress this continuity.

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praising God, but once more the Jubilees account is more detailed and in line with similar acts performed by Abram, thus providing a rudimentary model for such occasions of worship. Perhaps slightly surprisingly, Jubilees does not mention an altar or sacrifice after the circuit of the promised land, but it also otherwise largely glosses over this journey. However, in Jubilees the giving of tithes to Melchizedek in Salem is explicitly related to giving the tenth of the first fruits to the Lord and his priests (Jub. 13:25–27): “This law has no temporal limit because he has ordained it for the history of eternity to give a tenth of everything to the Lord—of seed, the vine, oil, cattle, and sheep. He has given (it) to the priests to eat and drink joyfully before him” (vv. 26–27). The account is much more detailed than in Genesis or the Genesis Apocryphon in saying that this is an eternal ordinance and that a tenth of everything should be given to the Lord and his priests. Abram thus becomes the initiator of this practice. However, the part of the Abraham cycle not preserved in the Genesis Apocryphon is where Jubilees truly emphasizes Abraham’s ritual acts and their role in continuing or establishing eternal observances on earth that have been practiced in heaven from the time of creation. Jubilees 14 begins with an offering of specific animals designated by God at the altar in Mamre when the covenant is established (Jub. 14:9–12). Genesis has the same animals but only relates their placement on the altar, not their actual sacrifice (Gen 15:9–11). Jubilees also emphasizes the ritual continuance with the covenant God established with Noah by saying it was made in the same month, and basically the same sacrificial animals are used; but this time with both the appropriate food and drink offerings (Jub. 14:19–20). Jubilees, therefore, depicts at the same time both a ritual continuance and a gradual development of the ritual as its perfection at Sinai draws closer. Jubilees 15 then relates the eternal commandment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant in much the same way as Genesis 17 does. However, the timing is important for Jubilees because the event once more coincides with the first fruits of the grain harvest and is celebrated with the appropriate animal sacrifice and food and drink offerings (Jub. 15:1–2).20 Jubilees thus again stresses the continuity with Noah’s observance of the seasonal feasts, but now with further appropriate offerings, as well as Abraham’s role as a starting point of important rituals, this time circumcision. Isaac’s circumcision in Jubilees 16 follows this same pattern. It is done on the eighth day after birth, and Isaac’s birth again coincides with the Festival of Weeks (Jub. 16:13–14). After this, Jubilees describes Abraham’s establishment 20

On the importance of the timing for Jubilees, see further van Ruiten, Abraham, 137–41.

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of the Feast of Tabernacles. Abraham builds an altar and celebrates the Feast of Tabernacles for the first time for seven days in the seventh month, offering each day a sin offering of animals, a thank offering consisting of fruits and drink, burning the animal fat as a burnt offering, and burning listed fragrant substances in the morning and evening while blessing and rejoicing (Jub. 16:20–27). The celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles is stressed in Jubilees as an eternal ordinance as well, and it is to be celebrated while living in tents with wreaths on the heads of the worshippers and leafy branches and willow branches taken from a stream (Jub. 16:30). Abraham himself holds palm branches and the fruit of good trees while circling the altar seven times each day (Jub. 16:31), but it is not entirely clear whether this is something intended as model ritual behavior or something specific to Abraham. It is possible that Abraham’s ritual actions coincide with contemporary practices related to celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles at the time Jubilees was written, but it is not explicitly stated to be a model. While Genesis briefly relates Isaac’s circumcision (Gen 21:4), it has no mention of the Feast of Tabernacles, so once more Jubilees describes Abraham as the initiator of a major cultic event. In Jubilees 18, the offering of Isaac is related; but unlike in Gen 22:2, the place is explicitly said to be Mount Zion, and the sacrifice of the ram is the first offering there (Jub. 18:6–13), thus serving as a prelude to the later sacrificial rites carried out there. According to Jubilees, these events happen on what would eventually become the first day of the Passover festival described later in Jubilees (Jub. 49:18). While the event is probably not intended as a direct precursor of Passover in Jubilees,21 in the same way as the celebration of the Feasts of Weeks and Tabernacles forms a continuum with the later festivals, the dating of a (near) offering of Abraham and Sarah’s firstborn to the time of Passover is hardly coincidental, either. Furthermore, after Abraham and Isaac return from their journey, Abraham institutes a seven-day festival of joy to be celebrated forever, not found in the Genesis account, because he and Isaac journeyed for seven days and returned safely (Jub. 18:17–18). This makes the link with the later-instituted Passover festival more direct, as many scholars have observed.22 Nevertheless, this is not the establishment of Passover per se, but rather of a festival of joy celebrated for similar reasons prior to the exodus events. According to Jubilees, since the time of Abraham there has thus been a seven-day festival celebrated at that time, but not for the exact same reason. It is somewhat similar to how Noah first establishes the Feast of Weeks in Jubilees, but the feast gains further 21 Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 108. 22 See van Ruiten, Abraham, 222–26.

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significance, elaboration, and ritual content at the time of Abraham. Abraham, hence, seems to establish an eternal ritual to be celebrated annually during those particular days that is eventually supplanted by the Passover, which, in itself, Abraham cannot be made to establish because its reasons derive from the later exodus. Jubilees’s ordinance concerning a seven-day eternal feast to be celebrated at that time is kept, even though the reason for the celebration is in time modified from Abraham’s journey to that of Israel’s deliverance. It seems that it is important to the author of Jubilees that Abraham celebrates at the times of the later festivals, by continuing and developing the Feast of Weeks, establishing the Feast of Tabernacles, and a joyful festival that in time will be supplanted by Passover. There is a distinct pattern related to Abraham in Jubilees that at every major event of his life, he perfects or typically initiates the celebration of a major festival or the observance of a cultic event. As the covenant was established with Abraham and is so central to Jubilees, it seems to be of almost equal importance that the major festivals and ritual practices of the author’s day were also begun at that time, not later by Levi, Moses, Aaron, or David. 4

Abraham’s Role in Establishing Ritual Continuity in Jubilees

The final parts of Jubilees’s Abraham accounts are also intriguing because they happen when Abraham’s death has already been narrated in the Genesis storyline (Gen 25:8). The dates given in Genesis about Abraham’s life, Isaac, and the birth of Esau and Jacob, however, mean that Abraham would have been alive for fifteen years during the lifetimes of Esau and Jacob. Jubilees takes advantage of this chronology by offering an account of Abraham’s last years, when Esau and Jacob have already been born (Jub. 13–14). This section, therefore, derives almost entirely from the author of Jubilees and/or from sources for the tradition other than Genesis. In Jubilees, Abraham becomes the main driving force in Jacob’s election over Esau and for arguing why Jacob is the correct choice (Jub. 19:16–31). Abraham justifies Rebekah’s actions on behalf of Jacob, and Abraham, for example, blesses Jacob twice, rather than Isaac (Jub. 19:23, 26–29; 22:10–30), professing to love him more than his own sons (Jub. 19:21).23 Jacob, however, is not depicted as a priest in Jubilees, and the line of ritual continuance goes through Isaac (and then Levi; see Jub. 30:18) instead. The final parts of the Jubilees Abraham cycle explicitly emphasize that the correct 23 Cf. van Ruiten, Abraham, 297.

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practices Abraham had continued and initiated were transmitted onward to Isaac. Abraham is said to have related in great detail ordinances that Isaac should follow concerning ritual sacrifices (Jub. 20:27; 22:10–30).24 The ritual ordinances (esp. Jub. 21:1–26) are said to derive from books Abraham found written in the words of Enoch and Noah (Jub. 21:10): “This is the way I found (it) written in the book of my ancestors, in the words of Enoch and the words of Noah.” This places a marked emphasis on ritual continuity from primordial times to Abraham and through Isaac to Levi and the Levitical line. In addition to detailed instructions on performing sacrifices, Abraham’s teachings include a list of appropriate types of wood to be burned in conjunction with sacrifices, the need for ritual washing before and after sacrificing at the altar, and warnings about blood and any acts related to it. These instructions have a great deal in common with the Law of Priesthood related in the somewhat earlier Aramaic Levi Document (ALD 13–61).25 There Isaac admonishes Levi on these issues, and says that Abraham taught them to him (ALD 22–25a, 50, 57) and Abraham had in turn discovered some of them in a book of Noah (ALD 57). The Law of Priesthood includes details on making sacrifices, emphasizes the importance of washing, lists appropriate types of wood to be used, and relates basically the same things about blood as Jubilees. So many points of connection are hardly a coincidence, and it seems that Jubilees is here using this portion of the ALD as a source. Jubilees, however, claims to provide the more “original” discourse between Abraham and Isaac that ALD claims to be the basis of Isaac’s instructions to Levi that are narrated in it. This is interesting in itself because Jubilees stresses Hebrew as the language of creation and the only reliable language for Genesis traditions, even while it uses an Aramaic text as its source, at least for this particular passage. The final events of Abraham’s life related in Jubilees begin rather appropriately with Abraham’s last celebration of the Feast of Weeks with Isaac and Ishmael (Jub. 22:1–9). As noted, the Feast of Weeks in Jubilees is directly connected with the establishment of the covenant that is such a central element of the Abraham cycle in it. This emphasis is likewise shown by Abraham’s final blessing of God (Jub. 22:6–9) that ends in proclamations of hope for Israel’s continued covenant relationship with God. Finally, in terms of ritual continuity, it is noteworthy that during Abraham’s final celebration of the 24 For comparison of these instructions and Pentateuchal laws, see van Ruiten, Abraham, 282–93. 25 For the close correspondence between the lists of appropriate woods in ALD and Jubilees as well as further similarities in the Levi stories, see Eshel, “Aramaic Levi,” 82–87.

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Feast of Weeks, it is Isaac, not Ishmael or Jacob, who performs the sacrifices (Jub. 22:3–4). This demonstrates in practice that the priestly duties have been passed down from Abraham to Isaac, as the previous admonitions on cultic regulations from Abraham to Isaac already strongly suggested. Jubilees, therefore, is most of all concerned over Abraham’s role as the beginning of Israel’s covenant relationship with God, and as such also as the initiator of most of the central ritual practices and a faithful continuator and developer of the few practices begun by Noah. The centrality of Abraham’s role as a ritual initiator and continuator for the author of Jubilees can also be seen in the way Jubilees treats its source text in Genesis. Most of the significant additions and revisions center on such elements, that is, smaller additions turning altar building into sacrificial acts, celebration and initiation of major festivals (the Feasts of Weeks and Tabernacles, a precursor of Passover), tithing, circumcision, passing on cultic ordinances to Isaac, and polemics against idols at the beginning and end of the Abraham cycle.26 As for Abraham’s role as an exorcist that the Genesis Apocryphon added to Abraham’s ritual role, Jubilees does not describe Abraham as using incantations to banish evil spirits, but it does use apotropaic elements meant to ward off such spirits in the wording of prayers and blessings,27 and circumcision is said to provide a similar protective function as well (Jub. 15:25–32). Furthermore, Abraham is said to pass ten divine tests that were partly instigated by Mastema (Satan’s name in Jubilees). This shows that Abraham was, in practice, able to ward off the spirits and to use the preventive measures Jubilees claimed to have been written down and transmitted onward by Noah. 5

Abraham’s Growing Role as a Worshipper

Finally, it is time to briefly present some of the main contemporary literary trends and discussions these compositions took part in because they also relate to why Abraham’s role was extended from Genesis to cover exorcism, the 26 For the relationship between the Genesis and Jubilees Abraham cycles, see esp. van Ruiten, Abraham (a helpful table of the major additions in Jubilees can be found on pp. 334–35). 27 For such elements, see, for example, Esther Eshel, “Apotropaic Prayers in the Second Temple Period,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of The Orion Center for The Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19–23 January, 2000, ed. Esther Chazon, STDJ 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 69–88; Pajunen, “Fighting Evil,” 205–9.

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celebration of specific festivals, and the transmission of some ordinances concerning sacrifices. As parts of the Aramaic corpus from Qumran, the Genesis Apocryphon and the ALD were part of a wider literary agenda to add fresh divine revelations to the pre-Sinai period.28 Most of the preserved Aramaic texts from Qumran have their literary setting in this period. They utilized different patriarchal voices to influence their contemporary audiences. I have elsewhere argued that the reason for the choice of the literary setting is probably related to the ambiguity of the origins of the Genesis traditions. Since the revelation at Sinai apparently could no longer be changed, authors wishing to claim ancient authority for their theological ideas or contemporary practices that were not part of the Sinai revelation utilized the patriarchal setting instead. They used a number of similar literary strategies in order to accomplish this, such as the use of a first-person “I” as the implied author and stressing the faithful transmission of the traditions through the centuries, usually by the Levitical line.29 While fresh prophetic revelations are much more prominent in these works, some of them also extend the beginnings of certain ritual practices to a pre-Sinai period. The Genesis Apocryphon does this for some sacrificial practices and the practice of exorcism, whereas the Aramaic Levi Document enhances Levi’s role as the first ordained priest, instead of Aaron, and gives some specific ritual ordinances ancient roots. Some contemporary ritual practices, not mentioned in the Pentateuchal laws, were hence argued in these works to have an even longer history as part of a chain of ritual continuance since Noah’s time. This literature incidentally relativized the role of Sinai. It was no longer the only central revelatory event but rather the culmination of an already long line of significant preceding revelations. Jubilees reacted against some of these claims (e.g., Jub. 12:26–27) even though, at the same time, it incorporated and supplemented certain elements represented by the Aramaic traditions, such as the prominence of the Levitical line and key patriarchs in the gradual establishment of cultic practices. Jubilees 28 Cf. Devorah Dimant, “The Qumran Aramaic Texts and the Qumran Community,” in Flores Florentino: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez, ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Émile Puech, and Eibert Tigchelaar, JSJSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 200–203; Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Hebrew and Aramaic Writing in the Pseudepigrapha and the Qumran Scrolls: The Ancient Near Eastern Background and the Quest for a Written Authority” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 78 (2009): 27–60; Andrew B. Perrin, The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, JAJSup 19 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). 29 Pajunen, “Transmitting Patriarchal Voices,” 31–51.

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made Sinai the sole revelatory center again by claiming that the pre-Sinai events related in it were written on heavenly tablets and shown to Moses at Sinai, and by arguing that Hebrew is the only proper revelatory language used since the creation. However, because Jubilees in this way retained the centrality of Sinai, it also extended some of the central tenets of the law further backwards in time than the Aramaic works had. In the framework of Jubilees, they did not compete with Sinai but rather showed that righteous past individuals had already initiated and followed many of the key rituals and laws.30 In fact, Jubilees makes the law an eternal one that has always existed in heaven, albeit only gradually revealed to humanity. Adam is the first to offer rudimentary sacrifice,31 whereas Noah does this in a more detailed manner, and Abraham is the starting point for the correct observance of most of the important festivals and rituals that already have their most crucial components. In Jubilees, Abraham is at the same time just one link in a chain of righteous individuals and ritual continuity stretching from Adam to Levi and beyond (Jub. 45:16), and a key figure in this line of transmission and gradual revelation who has inherited Noah’s writings, receives revelations from God on particular ordinances, and acts on his own accord as an initiator of some festivals, finally transmitting all of this knowledge onward to Isaac.32 Jubilees takes part in several major discussions apparently going on during the second century BCE, but its main emphasis in this respect is on election. Other roughly contemporary works, such as Ben Sira and 4QNon-Canonical Psalms B, argue that God first chose humanity and only later Israel, and that humanity already began at least the practice of praising God.33 Jubilees, in contrast, claims that the covenant with Israel was established at creation but revealed only later, and it uses the righteous patriarchs as examples of the 30 Cf. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 7–8. For an overview on occasions of worship in Jubilees in relation to Genesis, see Erik Larson, “Worship in Jubilees and Enoch,” in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 369–83. 31 See esp. Jessi Orpana, “Awareness of Nudity in Jubilees 3: Adam Portrayed as a Priest in the Garden,” in Crossing Imaginary Boundaries: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Context of Second Temple Judaism, ed. Mika S. Pajunen and Hanna Tervanotko, PFES 108 (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2015), 241–58. 32 For Jubilees’s depiction of Levi as the continuation of the priestly tradition, see, for example, White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 75–78. 33 See further Mika S. Pajunen, The Land to the Elect and Justice for All: Reading Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Light of 4Q381, JAJSup 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Pajunen, “The Praise of God and His Name as the Core of the Second Temple Liturgy,” ZAW 127 (2015): 475–88.

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gradual revelation and establishment of the full covenant with Israel as well as the ritual practices connected with its observance. It is probably at least partly for this reason that the covenant receives even more emphasis in the Jubilees Abraham cycle than in Genesis, and perhaps why it was important to depict Abraham as an initiator of the major festivals and a model for proper worship. This is, in general, how it seems that the Abraham tradition grew to depict him as a more prominent model for ritual practices in the mid to late Hellenistic period than he is in Genesis. Contemporary practices were anchored to him, and, as the starting point of the covenant between God and Israel, central worship practices later formulated in the Sinai revelation were connected to him. 6

Conclusions

This study has discussed the ways in which Abraham’s depiction as one of the central ritual innovators among the patriarchs, along with Noah and Levi, differs in the Genesis Apocryphon, the Aramaic Levi Document, and Jubilees from the Abraham cycle in Genesis. All three of these compositions emphasize the ritual continuity between Noah and Abraham (and, except for the extant Genesis Apocryphon, also Levi), but at least the ALD and Jubilees also stress the gradual perfection of the ritual practices owing to continuing divine revelation during the patriarchal era. The Genesis Apocryphon is the closest of these to the Genesis accounts of Abraham’s acts as a worshipper, only providing slight embellishments of ritual acts and prayers that could be reasonably related to the previous accounts and making some implicit links between Noah’s and Abraham’s ritual acts. The ALD, on the other hand, uses Abraham in a line of tradents involving ritual ordinances, along with Noah and Isaac, that all contribute to the regulations given to Levi and purportedly constituting a large part of ALD itself. Jubilees uses some of the traditions in these works, and perhaps other lost representatives of the Abraham tradition as well, as a springboard for a full-scale depiction of Abraham as a key ritual model and initiator of worship practices. He is at the same time explicitly mentioned as a continuator of practices begun by Noah, the beginning point for most of the main annual festivals and more incidental prayers and rituals as well as a source of specific ritual instructions. The development of the Abraham tradition from Genesis to these compositions demonstrates the way Abraham gradually becomes a more prominent figure and an exemplary model in the “scriptural history” of ritual observances and proper worship practices that served as a basis for some subsequent representations of Abraham as a worshipper of God.

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Bibliography Ben-Dov, Jonathan. “Hebrew and Aramaic Writing in the Pseudepigrapha and the Qumran Scrolls: The Ancient Near Eastern Background and the Quest for a Written Authority” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 78 (2009): 27–60. Dimant, Devorah. “The Qumran Aramaic Texts and the Qumran Community.” Pages 197–205 in Flores Florentino: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez. Edited by Anthony Hilhorst, Émile Puech, and Eibert Tigchelaar. JSJSup 122. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Docherty, Susan. “Abraham in Rewritten Scripture.” Pages 59–74 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne DomoneyLyttle. LSTS 93. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019. Drawnel, Henryk. An Aramaic Wisdom Text from Qumran: A New Interpretation of the Levi Document. JSJSup 86. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Eshel, Esther. “Apotropaic Prayers in the Second Temple Period.” Pages 69–88 in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of The Orion Center for The Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19–23 January, 2000. Edited by Esther Chazon. STDJ 48. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Eshel, Esther. “The Aramaic Levi Document, the Genesis Apocryphon, and Jubilees: A Study of Shared Traditions.” Pages 82–98 in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees. Edited by Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Falk, Daniel. The Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures among the Dead Sea Scrolls. LSTS 63. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2007. Feldman, Ariel. “Patriarchs and Aramaic Traditions.” Pages 459–81 in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by George J. Brooke and Charlotte Hempel. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018. Kugel, James L. A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation. JSJSup 156. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Larson, Erik. “Worship in Jubilees and Enoch.” Pages 369–83 in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees. Edited by Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Ludlow, Jared W. “Abraham in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Friend of God and Father of Fathers.” Pages 41–58 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle. LSTS 93. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019. Machiela, Daniel. The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation with Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13–17. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

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Machiela, Daniel. “Situating the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Reconsidering Their Language and Socio-Historical Settings.” Pages 88–109 in Apocalyptic Thinking in Early Judaism Engaging with John Collins’ The Apocalyptic Imagination. Edited by Cecilia Wassen and Sidnie White Crawford. JSJSup 182. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Monger, Matthew P. “The Many Forms of Jubilees: A Reassessment of the Manuscript Evidence from Qumran and the Lines of Transmission of the Parts and Whole of Jubilees.” RevQ 30 (2018): 191–211. Orpana, Jessi. “Awareness of Nudity in Jubilees 3: Adam Portrayed as a Priest in the Garden.” Pages 241–58 in Crossing Imaginary Boundaries: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Context of Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Mika S. Pajunen and Hanna Tervanotko. PFES 108. Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2015. Pajunen, Mika S. “Fighting Evil with Psalms and Prayers: Incantations and Apotropaic Prayers as a Response to the Changing Worldview of the Late Second Temple Period.” Pages 197–214 in Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives on the Bible and its Contexts. Edited by Nina Nikki and Kirsi Valkama. MO. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021. Pajunen, Mika S. The Land to the Elect and Justice for All: Reading Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Light of 4Q381. JAJSup 14. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Pajunen, Mika S. “The Praise of God and His Name as the Core of the Second Temple Liturgy.” ZAW 127 (2015): 475–88. Pajunen, Mika S. “Transmitting Patriarchal Voices in Aramaic: Claims of Authenticity and Reliability.” Pages 31–51 in Vision Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Text from Qumran: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14–15 August, 2017. Edited by Mette Bundvad and Kasper Siegismund, with the collaboration of Melissa Sayyad Bach, Søren Holst, and Jesper Høgenhaven. STDJ 131. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Perrin, Andrew B. The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls. JAJSup 19. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Ruiten, Jacques T.A.G.M. van. Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8. JSJSup 161. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Segal, Michael. The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology. JSJSup 117. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Tigchelaar, Eibert. “The Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts as Evidence for the Literary Growth of the Book.” RevQ 26 (2014): 579–94. VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text. CSCO 510. Leuven: Peeters, 1989. VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees: Translated. CSCO 511. Leuven: Peeters, 1989. VanderKam, James C. “Some Thoughts on the Relationship between the Book of Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon.” Pages 371–84 in Is There a Text in this Cave? Studies in the Textuality of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of George J. Brooke. Edited by Ariel Feldman, Maria Cioată, and Charlotte Hempel. STDJ 119. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

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Werman, Cana. The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation and Interpretation [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2016. Werman, Cana. “Qumran and the Book of Noah.” Pages 171–81 in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Proceedings of the Second International Symposium of the Orion Center, 12–14 January 1997. Edited by Michael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon. STDJ 31. Leiden: Brill, 1999. White Crawford, Sidnie. Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times. SDSSRL. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. Xeravits, Géza G. “Abraham in the Old Testament Apocrypha.” Pages 29–40 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle. LSTS 93. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019.

Chapter 3

“Look toward the Heavens and Count the Stars”: Abraham the Astronomer in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism Stephen O. Smoot The Second Temple period witnessed the proliferation of a tradition that the biblical patriarch Abraham was a great astronomer or astrologer.1 This depiction of the “father of the faithful” as a sagacious observer of the stars and teacher of celestial science has been studied extensively as scholars have scrutinized the textual corpus that composes a truly rich ancient exegetical and narrative tapestry. The tradition of Abraham the astronomer was not generated ex nihilo, but rather was gradually unfolded out of imaginative engagements with the Hebrew Bible; supplemented, it appears, by earlier traditions or sources that are no longer extant.2 In this paper, I wish to revisit this subject and reevaluate the sources that contribute to the ancient portrait of Abraham as an astronomer. I will focus on Second Temple and rabbinic sources that evince signs of the continued evolution of this tradition well after the first century CE. I will also discuss a Second Temple textual genre that I believe is often neglected yet deeply relevant to any examination of the tradition of Abraham as an astronomer. As I will argue, there was no one single, monolithic depiction of Abraham as a learned 1 The categories of “astronomy” (the scientific study of celestial objects and space) and “astrology” (the attempt to reveal the will of supernatural forces concerning human affairs through observing celestial objects) as delineated in the post-Enlightenment West were not so neatly distinguished in the ancient world. (See for example the collection of essays in John M. Steele, ed., The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World [Leiden: Brill, 2016], or N.M. Swerdlow, ed., Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999] or Alexus McLeod, Astronomy in the Ancient World: Early and Modern Views on Celestial Events [New York: Springer, 2016] for a sense of how often these two categories were conflated in the ancient world and are often difficult to fully untangle.) Bearing this in mind, unless the primary sources indicate otherwise, this paper favors the use of “astronomer” to describe Abraham and “astronomy” to describe his behavior but without necessarily any judgement as to the validity of either of these enterprises. 2 As will be shown below, some of those who report on Abraham’s astronomy explicitly claim to be citing earlier transmitters of the tradition. At the very least, this suggests a greater antiquity for the motif than the extant data would currently seem to indicate.

© Stephen O. Smoot, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004722620_005

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stargazer among the ancient interpreters who preserved this motif, but rather a constellation of depictions that were adapted to the particular interests and sensibilities of the respective transmitters. 1

Abraham the Stargazer and Chaldean in the Hebrew Bible

Before discussing the witnesses from the Second Temple period, however, a quick look at the biblical texts that catalyzed the tradition of Abraham as an astronomer is necessary to properly orient our examination of these later sources. Three biblical passages in particular stand out as the mostly likely sources of inspiration: one passage that depicts Abraham as a nighttime stargazer, another that evokes astral imagery in a divine pronouncement concerning his promised offspring, and a third that identifies him as a Chaldean. 1.1 Genesis 15:1–6 The first and arguably most important passage from the Hebrew Bible that concerns us is found at the beginning of Genesis 15. In this text, the word of God comes to Abraham (then Abram) in a vision sometime after the events narrated at Genesis 14:17–24:3 ‫ל־ּת ָירא ַא ְב ָרם‬ ִ ‫ל־א ְב ָרם ַּב ַּמ ֲחזֶ ה ֵלאמֹר ַא‬ ַ ‫ ַא ַחר ַה ְּד ָב ִרים ָה ֵא ֶּלה ָהיָ ה ְד ַבר־יְ �הוָ ה ֶא‬15:1 ‫הֹולְך‬ ֵ ‫ן־לי וְ ָאנ ִֹכי‬ ִ ‫ה־ּת ֶּת‬ ִ ‫אמר ַא ְב ָרם ֲאד ֹנָ י יֱ �הוִ ה ַמ‬ ֶ ֹ ‫ וַ ּי‬2 ‫ָאנ ִֹכי ָמגֵ ן ָלְך ְׂש ָכ ְרָך ַה ְר ֵּבה ְמאֹד‬ ֶ ‫יתי הּוא ַּד ֶּמ ֶׂשק ֱא ִל‬ ִ ‫ן־מ ֶׁשק ֵּב‬ ֶ ‫ּוב‬ ֶ ‫ֲע ִר ִירי‬ ‫אמר ַא ְב ָרם ֵהן ִלי לֹא נָ ַת ָּתה זָ ַרע וְ ִהּנֵ ה‬ ֶ ֹ ‫ וַ ּי‬3 ‫יעזֶ ר‬ ֵ ‫יתי‬ ִ ‫ן־ּב‬ ֵ ‫ֶב‬ ‫י־אם ֲא ֶׁשר יֵ ֵצא ִמ ֵּמ ֶעיָך‬ ִ ‫ וְ ִהּנֵ ה ְד ַבר־יְ �הוָ ה ֵא ָליו ֵלאמֹר לֹא יִ ָיר ְׁשָך זֶ ה ִּכ‬4 ‫יֹורׁש א ִֹתי‬ ‫ם־ּתּוכל‬ ַ ‫ּכֹוכ ִבים ִא‬ ָ ‫ּוספֹר ַה‬ ְ ‫יְמה‬ ָ ‫אמר ַה ֶּבט־נָ א ַה ָּׁש ַמ‬ ֶ ֹ ‫חּוצה וַ ּי‬ ָ ‫ּיֹוצא אֹתֹו ַה‬ ֵ ַ‫ ו‬5 ‫הּוא יִ ָיר ֶׁשָך‬ ‫ וְ ֶה ֱא ִמן ַּבי�הוָ ה וַ ּיַ ְח ְׁש ֶב ָה ּלֹו ְצ �ד ָ ָֽקה‬6 ‫אמר לֹו ּכֹה יִ ְהיֶ ה זַ ְר ֶעָך‬ ֶ ֹ ‫ִל ְסּפֹר א ָֹתם וַ ּי‬

15:1 After these affairs the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great.” 2 Abram said, “O lord Yahweh, what will you give me? I continue to go childless; and the heir of my house, it is damesheq Eliezer.” 3 Abram said, “Alas, you have not given me seed; behold, a member of my household will be my inheritor!” 4 But behold, the word of Yahweh was with him, saying, “This one will not be your heir, but rather what goes out of your belly; he will be your heir.” 5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are even able to count 3 All translations from the Hebrew Bible are my own. I have reproduced the Hebrew text from BHS (minus the cantillation marking) for the convenience of the reader.

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them.” He said to him, “Thus shall be your descendants.” 6 He trusted in Yahweh, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. Besides a few ambiguous points,4 this text is otherwise fairly straightforward. The especially relevant portion for our purposes occurs at Gen 15:5, where God brings the patriarch outside (‫ )ויוצא אתו החוצה‬and orders him to look upon (‫ )נבט‬the heavens.5 God’s command for Abram to count the stars of the heavens (‫ )ספר הכוכבים‬serves on a narrative level to rhetorically highlight the irony of the situation: Abram, dismayed at the seeming impossibility of the earlier covenant promise (Gen 12:2–3; 13:14–17), is given a truly impossible task that presages the outcome of the narrative cycle (the birth of Isaac and, thereby, an innumerable multitude of future progeny). That the word of God came to Abram “in a vision” (‫ )במחזה‬is also notable, as it launches the events so described into a sort of cosmic, otherworldly plane even as the scene retains a sense of grounded, terrestrial physicality. This detail, I believe and will elaborate on below, provided ample room for the later apocalyptic portrayal of Abraham as preserved in at least one crucial Second Temple work. 1.2 Genesis 22:15–19 The second passage that arguably contributed to the ancient portrayal of Abraham as an astronomer occurs at the end of the Akedah episode recorded in Genesis 22. In the second revelatory intervention (the first occurring at Gen 22:11–12) of this episode, the following is narrated: ‫אמר ִּבי נִ ְׁש ַּב ְע ִּתי נְ ֻאם־יְ �הוָ ה‬ ֶ ֹ ‫ וַ ּי‬16 ‫ן־ה ָּׁש ָ ֽמיִ ם‬ ַ ‫ל־א ְב ָר ָהם ֵׁשנִ ית ִמ‬ ַ ‫ וַ ּיִ ְק ָרא ַמ ְל ַאְך יְ �הוָ ה ֶא‬22:15 ‫י־ב ֵרְך ֲא ָב ֶר ְכָך‬ ָ ‫ ִּכ‬17 ‫ת־ּבנְ ָך ֶאת־יְ ִח ֶידָך‬ ִ ‫ת־ה ָּד ָבר ַהּזֶ ה וְ לֹא ָח ַׂש ְכ ָּת ֶא‬ ַ ‫ית ֶא‬ ָ ‫ִּכי יַ ַען ֲא ֶׁשר ָע ִׂש‬ ‫ל־ׂש ַפת ַהּיָ ם וְ יִ ַרׁש זַ ְר ֲעָך ֵאת‬ ְ ‫כֹוכ ֵבי ַה ָּׁש ַמיִם וְ ַכחֹול ֲא ֶׁשר ַע‬ ְ ‫וְ ַה ְר ָּבה ַא ְר ֶּבה ֶאת־זַ ְר ֲעָך ְּכ‬ ‫ וַ ּיָ ָׁשב ַא ְב ָר ָהם‬19 ‫ וְ ִה ְת ָּב ֲרכּו ְבזַ ְר ֲעָך ּכֹל ּגֹויֵ י ָה ָא ֶרץ ֵע ֶקב ֲא ֶׁשר ָׁש ַמ ְע ָּת ְּבק ִֹלי‬18 ‫ַׁש ַער א ָֹיְביו‬ ‫ל־ּב ֵאר ָׁש ַבע וַ ּיֵ ֶׁשב ַא ְב ָר ָהם ִּב ְב ֵאר ָׁש ַבע‬ ְ ‫ֶאל־נְ ָע ָריו וַ ּיָ ֻקמּו וַ ּיֵ ְלכּו יַ ְח ָּדו ֶא‬

4 One thing that remains unresolved in this text is the identity of Eliezer. The meaning of the word ‫ דמשׁק‬used to describe Abraham’s servant remains a crux interpretum, with many translators opting for something like “steward” or rendering it as a proper name, but both of these are little more than conjecture. I have opted here to leave the word untranslated. See the discussion and overview in E.A. Speiser, Genesis, AB (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 111–12; Claus Westermann, Genesis 12–36: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 219–220; Nahum Sarna, Genesis, JPSTC (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 382–83. 5 HALOT 1:661. As will be seen below, the rabbis made much out of the choice of this verb over the more conventional ‫ראה‬.

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22:15 The angel of Yahweh called to Abraham a second time from the heavens. 16 He said, “By myself I have sworn, says Yahweh. Because you have done this deed, and have not spared your son, your only one, 17 I will surely bless you and multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens and the sand that is upon the seashore. Your seed will inherit the gates of their enemies. 18 By your seed shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have listened to my voice.” 19 Abraham returned to his lads, and they arose and went as one to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. In this passage, astral imagery is once again evoked as a similitude for the quantity of offspring Abraham would claim as a result of his faithfulness. Even though in this text the patriarch is not depicted as counting or otherwise looking upon the stars, the language is nevertheless reminiscent of what is encountered earlier at Gen 15:5, albeit with additional imagery (that of the sands upon the seashore: ‫ )חול אׁשר על שפת הים‬included to further amplify the simile. Indeed, it is tempting to see this expanded promise as deliberately building on Gen 15:5 in a way that heightens the climax of the covenantal promise. 1.3 Genesis 11:31 The final passage that is crucial to understanding the origin of the motif of Abraham as an astronomer is found at the very beginning of the Abraham cycle, where the patriarch is identified as having at one point resided with his family at Ur of the Chaldeans: “Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son, and went with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go toward the land of Canaan. They came as far as Haran and dwelt there” (Gen 11:31: ‫ת־א ְב ָרם ְּבנֹו‬ ַ ‫וַ ּיִ ַּקח ֶּת ַרח ֶא‬

‫ן־ּבנֹו וְ ֵאת ָׂש ַרי ַּכ ָּלתֹו ֵא ֶׁשת ַא ְב ָרם ְּבנֹו וַ ּיֵ ְצאּו ִא ָּתם ֵמאּור ַּכ ְׂש ִּדים ָל ֶל ֶכת‬ ְ ‫ן־ה ָרן ֶּב‬ ָ ‫וְ ֶאת־לֹוט ֶּב‬ ‫ד־ח ָרן וַ ּיֵ ְׁשבּו ָׁשם‬ ָ ‫) ַא ְר ָצה ְּכנַ ַען וַ ּיָ בֹאּו ַע‬. Wherever the actual location of this Ur of the Chaldeans (‫)אור כשׂדים‬,6

what is important for our purposes here is that by the Second Temple period, “Chaldean” had become universally identified with and thus synonymously understood to mean Babylonian.7 But more than simply that, by then 6 I have given an overview of the history of the search for Abraham’s Ur of the Chaldeans, as well assessed the arguments for the various proposed sites, in Stephen O. Smoot, “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYUSQ 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37. 7 Notice also the parallelism at Isa 43:14; 48:14, to say nothing of the interchangeable usage of these ethnonyms throughout Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

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“Babylonian” (“Chaldean”) in both Jewish and Greek usage had taken on a secondary (and somewhat pejorative) meaning of “superstitious,” and thus was closely associated with “astrologer, soothsayer.” As James L. Kugel notes, “In the ancient world, Chaldea was famous for one thing in particular: it was the home of astronomy and astrology. So great was the association between Chaldea and the study of the stars that the very word ‘Chaldean’ came to mean ‘astronomer’ in both Aramaic and Greek.”8 This later association is undoubtedly due in no small part to the fact that the popular, widespread Hellenistic form of astrology (such as the use of horoscopes) that these ancient interpreters were familiar with originated from Babylon sometime after the fifth century BCE.9 If the passages in Gen 15:5 and 22:17 weren’t enough, the identification of Abraham as a Chaldean at Gen 11:31 would have made it all the easier for these interpreters to assume “that Abraham the Chaldean must himself have been something of an astronomer.”10 2

Abraham as Astronomer in Second Temple Jewish Sources

With this groundwork now laid, we can proceed to examine the Second Temple sources that depict Abraham as an astronomer. In fact, even a casual look at the extant sources reveals the tremendous currency this motif held in the Greco-Roman Jewish world. As Annette Yoshiko Reed succinctly put is, “The association of Abraham with astronomy/astrology arises frequently in early Jewish literature.”11 In this chapter, we will examine the more noteworthy sources to show how this motif morphed as it circulated among the different communities of the Greco-Roman Jewish diaspora. Although additional

8

James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 249. See also the discussion and references conveniently collected in Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews: Josephus, Ant. 1.154–168, and the Greco-Roman Discourse About Astronomy/Astrology,” JSJ 35, no. 2 (2004): 124–125, nn. This pejorative sense of the name even appears in the later writings of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Dan 2:2, 10; 4:7; 5:7, 11), and survived well past the close of the Second Temple period (Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 21). 9 Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 98–120. 10 Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 249. 11 Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist,” 124.

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(fragmentary) sources preserved by later chroniclers could also be reviewed,12 for brevity’s sake we will omit them from the current discussion. 2.1 Jubilees 12:16–21 The first work to consider is the book of Jubilees, a retelling of early biblical history composed in Hebrew sometime between the fourth century BCE and the first century CE (most likely in the mid-second century BCE).13 Being, as it is, in part a revision of material from the book of Genesis, Abraham features prominently in this specimen of “rewritten Scripture.”14 The twelfth chapter of Jubilees narrates the following about the patriarch: In the sixth week, during its fifth year, Abram sat at night—at the beginning of the seventh month—to observe the stars from evening to dawn in order to see what would be the character of the year with respect to the rains. He was sitting and observing by himself. A voice came to his mind and he said: “All the signs of the stars and signs of the moon and the sun—all are under the Lord’s control. Why should I be investigating (them)? If he wishes he will make it rain in the morning and evening; and if he wishes, he will not make it fall. Everything is under his control.” That night he prayed and said: “My God, my God, God most High, You 12 Eusebius attributes three sources on Abraham’s astronomy to the Hellenistic Jewish writers Eupolemus, Artapanus, and Aristobulus (Praep. ev. 9.17–18; 13.12), and a fourth to an anonymous writer (Praep. ev. 9.18). (See E.H. Gifford, ed., Evangelicae Praeparationis Libri XV, 4 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1903], 1:418–420; 2:665.) Although Abraham is not explicitly named in the Aristobulus quotation, there is little doubt that a reference to the patriarch is intended in the passage. “The idea that Abraham was well versed in astrological and astronomical matters was, in fact, the general view in Jewish Hellenistic circles of this period,” including the authorities quoted by Eusebius. We read in these sources that “Abraham had discovered astrology and astronomy, and came to the recognition of God through, or at least in conjunction with, his knowledge of the stars,” that he taught astronomy to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians (including the Egyptian monarch and members of the Egyptian priesthood at, appropriately, Heliopolis), and that he derived his astronomical knowledge from figures such as Enoch (Paul Mandel, “The Call of Abraham: A Midrash Revisited,” Proof 14, no. 3 [1994]: 269 and n. 7). This depiction is in complete agreement with the other Hellenistic Jewish authorities discussed below. 13 James C. VanderKam, trans., The Book of Jubilees, CSCO 511 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), v–vi; Jacques T.A.G.M. Van Ruiten, “Jubilees, Book of,” in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 307–12; Cana Werman, The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation and Interpretation [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2016). 14 Jacques T.A.G.M. Van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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alone are my God. You have created everything; everything that was and has been is the product of your hands. You and your lordship I have chosen. Save me from the power of the evil spirits who rule the thoughts of people’s minds. May they not mislead me from following you, my God. Do establish me and my posterity forever. May we not go astray from now until eternity.” Then he said: “Shall I return to Ur of the Chaldeans who are looking for me to return to them? Or am I to remain here in this place? Make the path that is straight before you prosper through your servant so that he may do (it). May I not proceed in the error of my mind, my God.” (Jub. 12:16–21)15 In this passage, Abraham’s practice of astronomy comes after his rejection of his father’s idolatry (Jub. 12:1–8) and is couched in the context of a confessional prayer that displays the patriarch’s newfound devotion to monotheism.16 However, as Kugel has recognized, there is in this passage a hint of ambiguity, since “although he had rejected idol-worship, Abram still believed that the stars can be used to predict what would be the character of the year with respect to the rains.” As the narrative unfolds, however, the patriarch comes to the (self) revelation that “the God of Heaven, the only deity who exists in reality, can determine the rainfall on His own: everything is under His control. Abram therefore prays directly to this God (apparently for the first time in his life), asking to be saved from the evil spirits who rule the thoughts of people’s minds.”17 One of the earliest attestations of Abraham’s astronomical enterprise, then, can be understood as a sort of exegetical or narrative signpost on the evolutionary path to the postexilic emergence of “classical” monotheism in ancient Israel. Rather than asserting monotheism only in an abstract or ideological sense, the author of Jubilees and the communities of Jews (and later Christians) that preserved this text projected this monotheism back onto the protohistory of Israel by narrating Abraham as the first of the patriarchs to be endowed with revelatory insight (via his astronomy) into the true nature of God and the cosmos. 15 Trans. is that of VanderKam, Book of Jubilees, 71–72; cf. James C. VanderKam, ed., The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text, CSCO 510 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 74–75; VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018), 441–42. 16 Van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 40–54; VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 452–54. 17 James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 89. The issue of moral agency and the influence of spirits was an ongoing issue in Second Temple Judaism. See Miryam Brand, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).

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2.2 4Q225/4Q226/4Q227 (“Pseudo-Jubilees”) The next text in our survey is attested in three fragmentary Qumran copies dating to the second half of the first century BCE. Sometimes deemed “Pseudo-Jubilees” due to its similarity to the book of Jubilees just quoted above, this nomenclature might actually be misleading because the text in question does not appear to derive from Jubilees but is an independent composition.18 Whatever one calls it, the text preserved in fragment 4Q225 is noteworthy in how it depicts Abraham as an astronomer: 3 [And A]braham [said] to God: “My Lord, I go on being childless and Eli[ezer] 4 is [the son of my household,] and he will be my heir.” vacat 5 [The Lo]rd [said] to A[b]raham: “Lift up (your eyes) and observe the stars, and see 6 [and count] the sand which is on the seashore and the dust of the earth, for if 7 these [can be num]bered, and al[so] if not, your seed will be like this.” And [Abraham] be[lieved] 8 [in] G[o]d, and righteousness was accounted to him. A son was born af[ter] this 9 [to Abraha]m, and he named him Isaac. (4Q225/4QpsJuba frag. 2, col. ii)19 Although this passage clearly parallels Gen 15:1–6, it nevertheless departs from the biblical text in some crucial ways.20 For example, line 5 employs the verbs ‫ נשׂא‬and ‫צפא‬/‫“( צפה‬lift up [the eyes]” and “observe, watch”) to describe Abraham’s interactions with just the stars,21 whereas in Gen 15:5 Abraham “looks upon” (‫ )נבט‬the heavens and “counts” (‫ )ספר‬the stars. “The context [in 4Q225] speaks of looking at the stars, so lifting up the gaze towards them is thereby indicated.”22 While at first glance this may not seem significant, Dimant has persuasively argued that this Qumranic scribal revisioning of Gen 15:1–6 was deliberate in order to make the picture of Abraham as an astronomer more

18

Devorah Dimant, “Abraham the Astrologer at Qumran? Observations on Pseudo-Jubilees (4Q225 2 I 3–8),” in Textual Criticism and Dead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebelloe Barrera, ed. Andrés Piquer Otero and Pablo A. Torijano Morales (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 71–72. 19 Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, ed., The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1:611. 20 This is not to even mention how immediately after the quoted portion it goes on to telescope the narrative sequence of Genesis by skipping to the events that begin at Gen 21:1, as noticed by Dimant, “Abraham the Astrologer at Qumran?,” 74. 21 Parry and Tov, Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, 1:610. 22 Dimant, “Abraham the Astrologer at Qumran?,” 78.

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overt, “for the Qumranites were themselves versed in astrology, as is evident from the astrological texts discovered among the scrolls.”23 If we accept this argument (as I believe we should), then 4Q225 would serve as another example of how the motif of Abraham as an astronomer was refashioned into a new image that conformed more closely with the identarian needs and expectations of the Qumran community transmitting the tradition. In the case of Jubilees, Abraham the astronomer is the archetypal (proto-)monotheist who uses his astronomical acumen to divine the reality of a singular omnipotent deity. At Qumran, Abraham the astronomer is closely and watchfully scrutinizing the stars for what appears to be astrological purposes.24 As we will see immediately below, once Abraham the astronomer was brought into wider Hellenistic discourse, his role as an astronomer once again reformed in a way that spoke more forcefully to the broader Greco-Roman world. 2.3 Philo of Alexandria The image of Abraham as an astronomer appears in the voluminous writings of the Alexandrian savant Philo (ca. 20 BCE–50 CE). This should come as no surprise, since “Abraham is a major figure in Philo’s writings, with numerous treatises dedicated to his narrative in Genesis.”25 In no less than three different works, Philo touches specifically on the tradition of Abraham’s astronomy. True to form, Philo approaches Abraham’s stargazing from an allegorical perspective. In On the Change of Names, Philo allegorizes (ἀλληγοροῦντες) the

23 Dimant, “Abraham the Astrologer at Qumran?,” 79, citing 4Q186, 4Q318, and 4Q561. On divination at Qumran see especially Armin Lange, “The Essene Position on Magic and Divination,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995; Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten, ed. Moshe J. Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 377–435; Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2015). It appears from the available Qumranic evidence that in many ways the mapping of the cosmos for divinatory purposes paralleled the sectarians’ interest in physiognomy (finding revelatory knowledge in the shape and features of human bodies). 24 Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 240–42, further suggests that the Qumran copy of Jubilees 11QJubilees (frag. 8, ll. 2–6) could indicate that “Abram was casting an astrological chart, rather than physically observing the stars,” and insists that “an element of divination was involved” in this rendition of Jub. 12:16–20. 25 Sean A. Adams, “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria,” in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 75.

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significance of Abraham’s name as it relates to his astronomical prowess and his acquisition of wisdom: 9.66 The name Abram, being interpreted, means “sublime father,” but Abraham means the “elect father of sound”; and how these names differ from one another we shall know more clearly if we first of all read what is exhibited under each of them. 67 Now using allegorical language, we call that man sublime who raises himself from the earth to a height, and who devotes himself to the inspection of high things; and we also call him a haunter of high regions, and a meteorologist, inquiring what is the magnitude of the sun, what are his motions, how he influences the seasons of the year, advancing as he does and retreating back again, with revolutions of equal speed, and investigating as he does the subjects of the radiance of the moon, of its shape, of its waning, of its increase, and of the motion of the other stars, whether fixed or wandering; 68 for the inquiry into these matters belongs not to an ill-conditioned or barren soul, but to one which is eminently endowed by nature, and which is able to produce an entire and perfect offspring; on which account the scripture calls the meteorologist, “father,” inasmuch as he is not unproductive of wisdom. (Mut. 9.66–68)26 Twice in this passage Philo attributes to Abraham the title of “meteorologist” (μετεωρολόγιος), implying that he understood Abraham as enjoying a sort of systematic, “scientific” understanding of celestial phenomena. He builds on this by further elaborating how his Hebrew name (‫אברהם‬/‫)אברם‬, when allegorized through a Platonic lens, implies a knowledge of celestial and other sciences (Mut. 10.69–72).27 Elsewhere, in On Dreams (Somn. 1.10.52–60), Philo explicitly links Abraham’s Chaldean background portrayed in Gen 11:31 with his astronomical ability in an elaborate allegorical retelling of Gen 11:27–12:3.28 Finally, in Questions and Answers on Genesis (QG 3.42–43), Philo provides even more allegorical interpretation of the significance of Abraham’s name, proposing that “the dissyllabic name Abram is explained as meaning ‘excellent father,’ on account of his affinity to the knowledge of sublime wisdom, that is, astronomy and mathematics,” and concluding, “Here therefore is wisdom, 26 Charles Duke Yonge, trans., The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, repr. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 346–347. For the Greek text, see Paul Wendland, ed., Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, 7 vols. (Rome: Berolini, 1896–1915), 3:169. 27 Wendland, Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, 3:169. 28 Wendland, Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, 3:216–218.

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and that the best kind of wisdom, which God called in the Chaldaic dialect Abraham, namely the father of elect sound, giving as it were a definition of a wise man; for as the definition of man is a mortal animal endowed with reason, so also the mysterious definition of a wise man is the father of elect sound.”29 By “father of elect sound” Philo appears to means a skillful communicator of science, elaborating how the name Abraham is that “of a really wise man; for what else is sound in us, except the utterance of a pronounced word?” Indeed, Philo extends this allegorical understanding of Abraham’s name to an almost fanciful degree, explaining at length how his production of learned speech and his pronouncement of wisdom is somehow like the begetting of children: “the mind is the familiar and natural father of the uttered word, because it is the especial property of the father to beget, and the word is born from the mind.”30 For Philo, Abraham’s production of scientific utterances in mathematics and astronomy, among other potential subjects, were thus connected to his status as the venerable forefather of a multitude of nations. Unlike either Jubilees or the Qumran texts, Philo does not portray Abraham’s knowledge of astronomy as indication of his monotheistic piety or his keen interest in astrology. Rather, for Philo the patriarch’s acquisition of celestial science was part of his intellectual journey into the archetypical Platonic philosopher. “The acquisition of virtue allows Abraham to become a philosopher king, one who is appointed, not by humans, but by Nature, a reality acknowledged by those around him. … Abram is an astronomer, but Abraham is the Sage.”31 This aligns well with Philo’s overall intellectual project of “interpret[ing] specific actions [of biblical figures] as meaningful and/or symbolic” in ways that “align with his philosophical perspective” and speak to his Hellenistic sensibilities.32 What is extraordinary here (or perhaps not, given his penchant for this exegetical behavior) is just how much Philo extrapolated on Abraham’s astronomy out of a handful of verses in Genesis, and with the exception of Gen 11:31, not the ones we might otherwise expect. 29 Yonge, trans., Works of Philo, 856. The Greek original to this work by Philo is, with the exception of a small portion, lost. It survives only in later versions such as Latin and Armenian. Most translations, including Yonge’s, are reliant on these later witnesses. (Kenneth Schenck, A Brief Guide to Philo [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005], 15–16; Ralph Marcus, trans., Philo Supplement I: Questions and Answers on Genesis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951], v–vi.) Scholars are in general agreement, however, that the Armenian versions overall faithfully preserve Philo’s Greek text. 30 Yonge, trans., The Works of Philo, 856. 31 Adams, “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria,” 77. 32 Adams, “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria,” 92. See further Maren R. Niehoff, Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

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2.4 Josephus The final source from the Second Temple period worth exploring is also perhaps the best known: Josephus, the first century Jewish historian (37–100 CE). In his Antiquities (Ant. 1.7.1–1.8.2), Josephus captures a portrait of Abraham the astronomer in ways that both perpetuate the earlier motifs already encountered and also introduce new elements.33 For instance, like Jubilees, Josephus portrays Abraham as the first monotheist. “He was a man of ready intelligence on all matters,” he writes of the patriarch, “persuasive with his hearers, and not mistaken in his inferences. Hence he began to have more lofty conceptions of virtue than the rest of mankind, and determined to reform and change the ideas universally current concerning God. He was thus the first boldly to declare that God, the creator of the universe, is one.” This, we are informed, Abraham divined from observing “the changes to which land and sea are subject, from the course of sun and moon, and from all the celestial phenomena” (παθήμασι τοῖς τε περὶ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς κατ᾽ οὐρανὸν συμβαίνουσι).34 Josephus then tethers Abraham’s astronomy back to the canonical biblical narrative by obligingly offering details concerning what is otherwise left undescribed in the text of Genesis: why Abraham’s family left Ur of the Chaldees in the first place. The answer Josephus provides is that Abraham’s revelation concerning the implication of God’s sovereignty over the cosmos angered the Chaldeans “and the other peoples of Mesopotamia” to such a degree that they “rose against him,” and so that “he, thinking fit to emigrate, at the will and with the aid of God, settled in the land of Canaan” (Ant. 1.7.1).35 In a radical departure from his forerunners mentioned above, Josephus next reports in his recounting of Gen 12:10–13:1 that Abraham not only knew and utilized his astronomical knowledge (ἀστρονομία), but also that he transmitted this knowledge, along with mathematics (ἀριθμητικὴ), to the Egyptians. For, seeing that the Egyptians were addicted to a variety of different customs and disparaged one another’s practices and were consequently at enmity with one another, Abraham conferred with each party and, 33 Josephus’s account of Abraham as an astronomer has been widely discussed in academic literature. For representative samples of this work, see Louis H. Feldman, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 103, 228–229, 232–233; Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews,” 119–158. 34 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV, trans. Henry St.J. Thackeray, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 1.7.1; Benedikt Niese, ed., Flavii Iosephi Opera, 7 vols. (Rome: Berolini, 1885–1895), 1:38–39. Translations of Jewish Antiquities herein are those of Thackeray. 35 Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera, 1:38–39.

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exposing the arguments which they adduced in favour of their particular views, demonstrated that they were idle and contained nothing true. Thus gaining their admiration at these meetings as a man of extreme sagacity, gifted not only with high intelligence but with power to convince his hearers on any subject which he undertook to teach, he introduced them to arithmetic and transmitted to them the laws of astronomy [τήν τε ἀριθμητικὴν αὐτοῖς χαρίζεται καὶ τὰ περὶ ἀστρονομίαν παραδίδωσι]. For before the coming of Abraham the Egyptians were ignorant of these sciences, which thus travelled from the Chaldaeans into Egypt, whence they passed to the Greeks. (Ant. 1.8.2)36 Accentuating Josephus’s report is his citation of no less than three gentile authorities (Ant. 1.7.2).37 That Josephus would enlist such expert witnesses to certify his account is hardly surprisingly, since “the most widespread view of Abraham within Graeco-Roman paganism was his reputation as an astrological expert.”38 The first he mentions by name is Berossus, the Babylonian priest writing in Greek three centuries prior, who is quoted in Antiquities as describing the patriarch as being “versed in celestial lore” (τὰ οὐράνια ἔμπειρος; Ant. 1.7.2).39 The second is Hecataeus of Abdera, the fourth-century BCE Greek historian to whom Josephus attributes an entire book on Abraham that is now (presumably) lost, without explicit quotation or further comment.40 Third, and finally, Josephus enlists the first-century BCE writer Nicolaus of Damascus, quoting from the latter’s History on Abraham’s migration into Canaan (Ant. 1.7.2).41 The cumulative effect of Josephus’s citations of these witnesses is to place Abraham’s stargazing in the broader Greco-Roman discursive environment 36 Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera, 1:41–42. 37 Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera, 1:39–40. On Abraham in non-Jewish Greco-Roman sources, consult Jeffrey S. Siker, “Abraham in Graeco-Roman Paganism,” JSJ 18, no. 2 (1987): 188–208. 38 Siker, “Abraham in Graeco-Roman Paganism,” 194. 39 Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera, 1:39. Although the account by Berossus is only preserved in later sources, Siker, “Abraham in Graeco-Roman Paganism,” 189, n. 3, makes a compelling case for authenticity of Josephus’s quotation. 40 The authenticity of Hecataeus’s On Abraham (referred to not just by Josephus by quoted by later writers such as Clement of Alexandria) has come into serious question, with the authorship thereof being doubted by, among others, Bezalel Bar-Kochva, The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 90–135. Nevertheless, it is clear that the ancient authorities citing this work believed it was authentic. 41 Siker, “Abraham in Graeco-Roman Paganism,” 192–194, reviews Nicolaus’s contributions on the origins of Abraham.

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on the topic of astronomy/astrology.42 What’s more, far from dispassionately reporting the facts “as they were,” Josephus consciously “articulates GrecoRoman ideals by means of earlier Jewish traditions, even as he adapts the latter to reflect the values (both Jewish and non-Jewish) of his own time.”43 In Josephus’s account, Abraham the Chaldean scientist stands out as an exemplary figure from hoary antiquity to whom his gentile audience owes a debt of gratitude for preserving and transmitting astral science and mathematics.44 The apologetic maneuver behind this retelling and reframing of Abraham’s astronomy is self-evident.45 3

Abraham’s Heavenly Ascent

The sources reviewed above are the more noteworthy texts that depict Abraham as an astronomer. They are also the best known. But there is another instance of a Second Temple portrayal of Abraham as an astronomer, of sorts, that is often overlooked. The Apocalypse of Abraham, composed most likely originally in Hebrew (or less likely in Palestinian Aramaic) in the mid to late first century CE but currently preserved only in medieval Slavonic manuscripts, recounts an expanded version of the eponymous patriarch’s covenant with God.46 The first part of the text (Apoc. Ab. 1–8) retells “a story of Abraham’s youth and his perception of idolatry,” while the second part (Apoc. Ab. 9–32) 42 Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist,” 135–142, provides a helpful overview of this discourse in its Greco-Roman context. 43 Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist,” 156. 44 As George H. Van Kooten (“Enoch, the ‘Watchers,’ Seth’s Descendants and Abraham as Astronomers,” in Recycling Biblical Figures: Papers Read at a NOSTER Colloquium in Amsterdam, 12–13 May 1997, ed. Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten [Leiderdorp: Deo Publishing, 1999], 292–316) has further explained, Hellenized Jewish writers including Josephus and Philo reapply the Greek motif of the “first inventor” to Jewish figures such as Abraham but also Enoch and Seth. 45 As rightly recognized and discussed in Michael Avioz, “Abraham in Josephus’ Writings,” in Adams and Domoney-Lyttle, Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 98, 107. 46 Alexander Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 1–3; “Abraham, Apocalypse of,” in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, 93–94. For an older but still useful presentation of the text, see H.G. Lunt and R. Rubinkiewicz, “The Apocalypse of Abraham,” OTP 1:681–705. For yet older (and inferior) renditions of this text, see G.H. Box, ed. and trans., The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: SPCK, 1918); E.H. Anderson and R.T. Haag, trans., “The Book of the Revelation of Abraham,” IE 1, no. 10 (August 1898): 705–714; Gottlieb Nathanael Bonwetsch, trans., Die Apokalypse Abrahams: Das Testament der 40 Märtyrer, SGTK 1 (Leipzig: A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1897).

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narrates Abraham’s visionary ascent with the guidance of the angel Iaoel or Yahoel.47 It is the second part of the text that concerns us here, specifically the nineteenth and twentieth chapters. As Kulik has noticed, the two parts of the text “make up a coherent narrative presenting a prehistory and expansion on the biblical story” recorded in Genesis 15.48 This is significant to bear in mind when readers encounter the following in the apocalyptic portion of the text: And a voice came to me out of the midst of the fire, saying, “Abraham, Abraham!” And I said, “Here am I!” And he said, “Look at the levels which are under the expanse on which you are brought and see that on no single level is there any other but the one whom you have searched for or who has loved you.” And while he was still speaking, and behold, the levels opened, ⟨and⟩ there are the heavens under me. And I saw on the seventh firmament upon which I stood a fire spread out and light, and dew, and a multitude of angels, and a power of the invisible glory from the Living Creatures which I had seen above. ⟨But⟩ I saw no one else there. And I looked from the altitude of my standing to the sixth expanse. And I saw there a multitude of incorporeal spiritual angels, carrying out the orders of the fiery angels who were on the eighth firmament, as I was standing on its suspensions. And behold, neither on this expanse was there any other power of other form, but only the spiritual angels, and they are the power which I had seen on the seventh firmament. And he commanded the sixth expanse to remove itself. And I saw there, on the fifth [level], hosts of stars, and the orders they were commanded to carry out, and the elements of earth obeying them. And the Eternal Mighty One said to me, “Abraham, Abraham!” And I said, “Here am I!” ⟨And he said,⟩ “Look from on high at the stars which are beneath you and count them for me and tell ⟨me⟩ their number!” And I said, “Would I be able? For I am [but] a man.” And he said to me, “As the number of the stars and their host, so shall I make your seed into a company of nations, set apart for me in my lot with Azazel.” (Apoc. Ab. 19:1–20:5)49 This text stands out from the other sources heretofore reviewed for a number of reasons. First is the fact that the excerpted passage (consistent with the rest

47 Lunt and Rubinkiewicz, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” 681. 48 Kulik, “Abraham, Apocalypse of,” 93. 49 Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 24–25; cf. Lunt and Rubinkiewicz, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” 698–99.

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of the text) is narrated in the first person,50 demonstrating what should otherwise come as little surprise: by the end of the Second Temple period there was a pseudepigraphic tradition that attributed texts to the patriarch.51 Second is the explicit linkage of Gen 15:1–6 with Abraham’s apocalypse and vision of the firmament. Indeed, the invocation of and expansion on the language of Gen 15:5 in particular cannot be missed in the passage above. Third is the fact that Abraham’s stargazing in this passage is overtly depicted as a visionary experience, thus nodding to the language of Gen 15:1. Earlier in the text, God reveals himself to the patriarch and informs the latter of his intention to show him the unfolding orders of creation (Apoc. Ab. 9:9–10).52 Later (Apoc. Ab. 15:1–16:4) this promise is made good when Yahoel (presumably) exalts the patriarch into the celestial realm.53 The cumulative effect of all of this is to place Abraham and his stargazing in the apocalyptic tradition of the Second Temple period through an act of pseudepigraphic expansion on the biblical text.54 Even allowing for a late Second Temple date (or even after 70 CE) for the composition of the text, it cannot be doubted that this imaginative reworking of elements from Gen 15:1–6 constitutes an authentic continuation of the earlier tradition of Abraham as an astronomer already examined. 4

Abraham as Astronomer in Rabbinic Sources

Abraham’s reputation as an astronomer or astrologer persisted well past the Second Temple period. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic exegetical and parabiblical sources well into the nineteenth century prolonged the tradition that the 50

The text opens with, “On the day I when I was destroying the gods of my father Terah and the gods of my brother Nahor, when I was testing which one was the truly strong god, at the time when my lot came up, when I had finished the services of my father Terah’s sacrifice to his gods of wood, stone, gold, silver, brass, and iron, I, Abraham, having entered their temple for the service, found a god named Mar-Umath, carved out of stone, fallen at the feet of an iron god, Nakhon” (Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 9). 51 Kulik, “Abraham, Apocalypse of,” 93, therefore reasonably categorizes the text as a pseudepigraphon. 52 Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 17. 53 Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 21–22. 54 See further the insightful discussion and commentary offered in Andrei A. Orlov, Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 154–89, who, like Kulik (Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 1), recognizes, among other things, the strong likelihood that the Apocalypse of Abraham, specifically the visionary latter half, bridges the gap between earlier Second Temple apocalyptic works such as Daniel and 1 Enoch with later rabbinic and medieval sources of Jewish mysticism.

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patriarch was adept at astronomy.55 It is not within the scope of this paper to analyze all or even most of these works, but a few words on just a sampling of rabbinic sources from the centuries following the Second Temple period seem appropriate as a sort of coda to this study to demonstrate one way in which this tradition developed. 4.1 The Talmud The appropriate place, of course, to begin our look at the rabbinic formulation of this tradition is the Talmud. Several tractates from this authoritative repository of rabbinic learning speak to Abraham as an astrologer. Although the Talmud itself speaks of “astrologers” (‫ )כלדיים‬and “astrology” (‫)איצטגנינות‬ with a noticeable measure of ambivalence,56 overall the rabbis are in agreement that Abraham was gifted in the practice. Thus the tractate Shabbat 156a, the locus classicus for Talmudic astrology, wherein we encounter the following in the context of a debate over whether Israel is under astral influence:57 ‫אמר לפניו רבונו של עלום נסתכלתי באיצטגנינות שלי ואיני ראוי להוליד בן אמר לו‬ ‫צא מאיצטגנינות שלך שאין מזל לישראל מאי דעתיך‬

55

A useful gathering of these sources has been made by John A. Tvedtnes, Brian M. Hauglid, and John Gee, eds., Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham (Provo: Brigham Young University, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000), with helpful thematic indexing and collation of sources by religion (Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Muslim) and time period (earlier to later). To my knowledge, the most recent parabiblical narrative depiction of Abraham as an astronomer (and the only one that has any sort of canonical status within a modern Christian movement) appeared in 1842 in the form of the Book of Abraham, one of the scriptural works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Joseph Smith, trans., “The Book of Abraham,” TSeas 3, no. 9 [1842]: 704–6; Smith, “The Book of Abraham,” TSeas 3, no. 10 [1842]: 719–722; Smith, “A Fac-Simile from the Book of Abraham,” TSeas 3, no. 14 [1842]: 783–84; Smith, “The Book of Abraham,” in The Pearl of Great Price: A Selection from the Revelations, Translations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013], 29–42). For a brief overview of this text, which purports, among other things, to preserve an ancient account of the patriarch receiving a heavenly vision of the stars and other celestial bodies and imparting knowledge of such to the Egyptians, see Brian M. Hauglid, “Book of Abraham,” EBR 4:351. 56 For overviews, see James H. Charlesworth, “Astrology in the Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Palestinian Synagogues,” HTR 70, nos. 3/4 (1977): 185–88; Alexander Altmann, “Astrology,” EncJud 2:616–20; Gregg Gardner, “Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 314–38. 57 Translations from the Hebrew and Aramaic in this section of the paper are my own.

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(Abraham) said before him, “Master of Eternity, I have consulted my astrological chart and I am not fit to bear a son.” (God) said to him, “Emerge out of your astrology; there is no constellation for Israel. What is your thinking?” Although this passage appears to question the propriety of Abraham’s astrology, it does not outright condemn the patriarch for such nor deny his involvement. Nor does the tractate Yoma 28b, which frankly speaks of a tremendous skill for astrology being possessed by the patriarch (‫א״נ שאני אברהם דאיצטגנינות‬ ‫)גדולה היתה בלבו‬. In fact, R. Elazar goes so far as to claim in the tractate Baba Batra (16b) that “astrology was in our father Abraham’s heart so that all the kings from the east and the west would arise early to his door” seeking a consultation (‫איצטגנינות היתה בלבו של אברהם אבינו שכל מלכי מזרח ומערב משכימין‬ ‫ ;)לפתחו‬a practice which R. Shimon appears to connect to “a precious stone” in Abraham’s possession with which he healed the sick (‫אבן טובה היתה תלויה‬ ‫)בצוארו של אברהם אבינו שכל חולה אותו מיד מתרפא‬.58 Indeed, as Gregg Gardner has rightly noticed, the patriarch would have been “an ideal fit” for the rabbis to turn to in their ongoing debate over astrology precisely because of texts like Gen 15:5 and the “many traditions in Jewish writings that portray Abraham as an astrologer.”59 4.2 Midrash Genesis Rabbah Turning from the Talmud to another important source of rabbinic exegesis, the midrash,60 we discover yet further evidence of post-Second Temple Jewish 58

Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 332, citing this text and a passage from the Zohar (see below), makes the argument that Abraham’s glowing stone, which he wore around his neck, functioned as an astrolabe. 59 Gardner, “Astrology in the Talmud,” 330–31. 60 Strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to use the plural rather than the singular to describe this method of Jewish exegesis and interpretative commentary on the Bible, inasmuch as scholars have long recognized various schools and methods of midrashim that developed over the centuries. For my purposes here, however, I use midrash to refer collectively to the “sustained hermeneutical attention” given to the Bible by the rabbis and other Jewish sages from the second or third centuries CE onward that resulted in “a rich harvest of interpretations that virtually transform the Bible into a rabbinic work.” See Michael Fishbane, “Introduction,” in The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, ed. Fishbane (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), 1. For additional overviews, see Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Hermann L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus Bockmuehl, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), esp. 234–359.

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interest in the tradition of Abraham as an astronomer. In Bereshit Rabbah (44:12), one of the oldest extant midrashic works (composed ca. 300–500 CE) that drew, in part, from earlier traditions,61 the following commentary is offered on Gen 15:5: ‫אמר רבי יהודה בשם רבי יוחנן העלה אותו למעלה מכפת הרקיע הוא דאמר ליה‬ ‫הבט נא … השמימה אין הבטה אלא מלמעלה למטה רבנן אמרי נביא את ואן את‬ ‫אסטרולוגוס כבר אברהם אביכם בקש לבוא לידי מדה זו ולא הנחתי אותו‬

R. Judah said in the name of R. Johanan, “He exalted him (Abraham) above the dome of the firmament. It is he (God) who said to him, ‘Look toward the heavens.’ ‫ הבט‬does not [mean] to look upward but [to look] downward from above.” The rabbis say [that God said to Abraham], “You are a prophet; you are not an astrologer. … Long ago Abraham your father sought to think according to this manner [astrology], but I did not permit him.” Recalling that the verb used in Gen 15:5 to describe Abraham’s stargazing is not ‫ ראה‬but ‫( הבט‬the hiphil form of ‫)נבט‬, it is striking that the rabbis used this semantic distinction as grounds to undermine Abraham’s attempt to be an astrologer (‫ )אסטרולוגוס‬by instead affirming that the verb signifies he was a prophet (‫)נביא‬. The point appears to be not to deny that the patriarch had a penchant for astrology per se, but rather to set his nighttime stargazing apart from common astrological practice (such as casting horoscopes).62 The explanation from the rabbis that ‫ הבט‬meant to look downward from above, not the other way around, was apparently aimed to reinforce their reading of Gen 15:1–5 as a visionary experience (i.e., Abraham was viewing the stars from above the heavenly firmament) and thereby not a rote, mundane astrological performance (a point they return to elsewhere).63 Like Bereshit Rabbah before it, Shemot Rabbah (38:6), composed most likely between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE but also likely preserving 61 62

Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 278–80. Efforts to distinguish Abraham’s behavior from the other kinds of astrology practiced in antiquity show the staying power of the tradition since such arguments presuppose that the image of Abraham as a stargazer had to be reckoned with rather than simply ignored or denied. 63 See, e.g. Gen. Rab. 48:6, which contains a parallel rendering of this commentary: ‫רבי‬ ‫יהודה בר רבי סימון בשם רבי חנין בשם רבי יוחנן העלה אותו למעלה מכפת הרקיע הדא‬ ‫דהוא אמר ליה הבט נא השמימה אינו שיך למור הבט אלא מלמעלה למטה‬.

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earlier sources,64 affirms Abraham’s astrology while simultaneously subverting it. Commenting once again on Gen 15:5, this text depicts Abraham’s incredulity at God’s covenant promise of numberless posterity as arising from the patriarch’s astrological (mis)information: “(Abraham) said before him, ‘Master of Eternity! I appear so because my star [indicates] that I am not to be a parent.’ (God) said to him, ‘Is it because of a star that you are so afraid?’” (‫אמר‬ ‫)לפניו ִרבונו של עולם כך אני רואה במזל שלי שאיני מוליד אמר לו מן המזל אתה מתיירא‬. In response to the patriarch’s doubtfulness, and in a display of his superiority over astrological speculation, it was at this moment, the rabbis muse, that “the Holy One, blessed be he, exalted Abraham above the dome of the firmament and said to him, ‘Look toward the heavens and count the stars …’ [quotation of Gen 15:5]” (‫העלה הקדוש ברוך הוא את אברהם למעלה מכפת הרקיע ואמר לו הבט‬ ‫)נא השמימה וספר הכוכבים‬. As before, this midrash does not deny Abraham’s involvement with astrology, but instead suggests that such was misleading the patriarch and was a detriment to his covenant faithfulness. One final passage from the midrash (Num. Rab. 2:14, composed perhaps at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but, again, likely preserving earlier material65) is noteworthy since it retroactively projects an eschatological understanding of Abraham’s stargazing back onto the biblical text. In attempting to explain why Genesis 15 has God commanding Abraham to “count” (‫)ספר‬ the stars even though, by his own admission, it seemed impossible (‫אם־תוכל‬ ‫)לספר אתם‬, the rabbis offered the following explanation: ‫הראה אותו תחלה במספר אחד ואחר כך שנים ואחר כך שלשה ואחר כך שנים‬ ‫עשר ואחר כך שבעים ואחר כך הראה לו מזלות שאין להם מספר ולמה הראה אותו‬ ‫כך סימן הראה אותו שהוא מרבה אותן כך בעולם הראה אותו אחד שמתחלה הוא‬ ‫… חזר והראה אותו שנים אברהם ויצחק חזר והראה אותו שלשה‬ .‫היה יחיד בעולם‬ ‫אברהם יצחק ויעקב וחזר והראה אותו שנים עשר שבטים ואחר כך שבעים כנגד‬ ‫שבעים נפש שירדו למצרים ואחר כך הראה אותו מזלות שאין להם מספר שישראל‬ ‫עתידין לפרות ולרבות באחרונה שאין להם מספר‬

He showed him at first only one in number; then afterwards two; then afterwards three; then afterwards twelve; then afterwards seventy; then afterwards he showed him constellations which were innumerable. Why did he show him thus? He showed him as a sign of how he would so magnify them [Abraham’s descendants] in the world. He showed him 64 65

Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 309. Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 311.

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one because at first he was alone in the world. … Again he showed him two: Abraham and Isaac. Again he showed him three: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Again he showed him [twelve: the] twelve tribes (of Israel). Afterwards seventy, according to the seventy souls which descended into Egypt. Afterwards he showed him constellations that were innumerable, which was Israel in the future, being fruitful and multiplying at last, and innumerable. In this passage, the progressive multiplication of the stars in Abraham’s view corresponds to the progressive unfolding of the patriarch’s future dynasty until it fulfills the promise of Gen 15:5.66 That the midrashic exegetes would make this connection is not surprising; what is remarkable is the explicit prophetic or eschatological context (with the use of ‫באחרונה‬, ‫ )עתידין‬into which they recast Abraham’s stargazing.67 The basic thrust of the midrashic approach to Abraham’s astrology, then, is to subvert the patriarch’s involvement in such by portraying his astrology as misguided. The patriarch is reproved, but not outright condemned, for relying on his lucky stars and Zodiac charts to determine his future when instead (as he eventually learns) he should have relied on God’s faithfulness and overriding sovereignty. 4.3 The Zohar The last source we shall turn to is the Zohar, the “book of radiance” (‫)ספר זהר‬ that is foundational for the medieval Jewish school of mysticism known as Kabbalah and deemed by one authority “the highest expression of Jewish literary imagination in the Middle Ages.”68 This text was “first revealed to the world around the year 1300” through the agency of the Spanish rabbi Moses de León, who attributed the work to the second century rabbi Shimon b. Yochai.69 Whether one accepts the traditional view of the Zohar as an early work or opts

66 The importance of the progression of the vision from one, to two, to three, to twelve is self-evident in this passage. The skip from twelve to seventy (cf. Gen 46:27; Exod 1:5) is important in terms of the overall Abrahamic promise since the table of nations in Genesis 10 has seventy nations. Thus, the seventy stars shown to Abraham is an important marker on the way to the fulfillment of the universal eschatological promise. 67 In this same passage the rabbis connect the Abrahamic promise at Genesis 15:5 with Exod 1:7 and Hos 1:10 (2:1 in Hebrew). 68 Arthur Green, “Introduction,” in Daniel C. Matt, trans., The Zohar (Stanford: Standford University Press, 2004), xxvii. 69 Green, “Introduction,” xxviii.

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for the modernist position that it is a medieval pseudepigraphon, it may be in any case be properly categorized as rabbinic.70 Although the Zohar does not explicitly identify Abraham as an astronomer or astrologer, it does in Parashat Lekh Lekha speak of the patriarch’s use of an instrument to measure cosmic phenomena that may hint at such. In expanding on the meaning of God’s command in the Bible for Abraham to ‫ לך לך‬out of his ancestral home, the Zohar provides the following: ‫ורזא דמלה לך לך דהא קודשא בריך הוא יהיב ליה לאברהם רוחא דחכמתא והוה‬ ‫ידע ומצרף סטרי דיישובי עלמא ואסתכל בהו ואתקל בתיקלא וידע חילין די ממנן על‬ ‫סטרי יישובא‬

Now the secret which [is behind] the phrase ‫ לך לך‬is that the Holy One, blessed be he, gave Abraham a spirit of wisdom. He knew and tested the dimensions of the inhabited world, and gained insight into them, and weighed [them] with a balance, until he knew the powers that are appointed upon the dimensions of civilization. (Zohar 1:78a) The text then goes on to specify that with this ‫“( תיקלא‬scale, balance”) Abraham lingered in Haran (cf. Gen 11:31) and “gazed” at (‫)שגח‬, “observed” (‫)צפר‬, and otherwise “measured” (‫ )תקל‬a variety of worldly and otherworldly phenomena, including “those who have dominion over the dimensions of civilization and the rulers of the stars and constellations” (‫והוה תקיל וצריף אנון דשלטין בסטרי‬ ‫)דישובא מדברי ככביא ומזליהון‬, thereby divining “which among them overpowered the others” (‫)מאן אנון תקיפין אלין על אלין‬. In short, with his ‫ תיקלא‬Abraham discovered “the entire hierarchy of heavenly powers.”71 The question naturally arises what exactly this fantastic instrument was. The difficulty is that the word used in the passage is a “Zoharic neologism” that, while clearly deriving from the Aramaic ‫תקל‬, nevertheless carries a broad range of meaning (including “scale,” “potter’s wheel,” and “water clock,” among other possibilities).72 Matt follows the suggestion made by other authorities that in this instance the device in question may be an astrolabe,73 “a circular 70

For a concise and informative overview of the Zohar and its place in Judaism, see Melila Hellner-Eshed, “Zohar,” EncJud 21:647–64. 71 Matt, Zohar, 9, n. 60. 72 Matt, Zohar, 8, n. 51. 73 Specifically, Matt cites the prolific sixteenth century rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522–1570), who identified the ‫ תיקלא‬as an astrolabe in his comprehensive commentary on the Zohar Or Yakar (‫“ ;אור יקר‬precious light”). See Moshe Cordovero, Zohar Or Yakar, vol. 4 of Sefer ha-Zohar [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ahuzat Israel, 1967), 127–29.

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instrument used to determine the position of the sun and the stars.”74 If this enticing identification of the ‫ תיקלא‬in this passage is correct, then it would suggest a conspicuous Islamic influence on this Jewish portrayal of Abraham as “imitat[ing] the divine act of weighing and gauging the elements of creation.”75 5

Conclusion

This study has traced the Jewish motif of Abraham as an astronomer over the course of nearly a millennium and a half from its earliest extant iterations in the Second Temple period to its enshrinement in the authoritative texts of the rabbinic canon. As I have hopefully demonstrated, there was no one single, static depiction of the patriarch as a learned stargazer. Taking their prompts from both biblical material and, evidently, extrabiblical written (and oral?) sources, generations of Jewish readers of the Bible produced imaginative and sophisticated rehearsals of this motif that spoke to (and reflected) their cultural and religious sensibilities and concerns. In this manner, these interpreters projected themselves and their communities back onto the biblical text, retrofitting the father of the faithful into an idealized reimagining with each retelling. There remains, of course, the question as to why this view of Abraham as an astronomer multiplied during the Second Temple period and not earlier (as it would appear according to our present knowledge). A tempting answer is to attribute this to sustained Jewish interaction with astral science from Babylon and Greece in the second half of the first millennium BCE. If we follow the conventional understanding that the later “classical” astrology of Greece, Rome, and Ptolemaic Egypt ultimately derived its origin from Babylon,76 the 74 Matt, Zohar, 8, n. 51. 75 Matt, Zohar, 8, n. 51, mentions briefly the transmission of knowledge of the Islamic astrolabe into Jewish circles in Spain as early as the mid-thirteenth century, which could conceivably account for its ostensible appearance here in the Zohar. See further Daniel C. Matt, trans., Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1983), 259; Josefina Rodríguez Arribas, “Medieval Jews and Medieval Astrolabes: Where, Why, How, and What For?” in Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, ed. Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 221–72. 76 For representative samples of the literature on this point, consult variously Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 9–31; Jacco Dieleman, “Stars and the Egyptian Priesthood in the Graeco-Roman Period,” in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, ed. Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 137–53; Roger Beck, A Brief History of Ancient Astrology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 9–19.

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exposure to this material during and after the exile, as well as during and after the cultural longue durée that was the Hellenization of Judaism throughout the Mediterranean world beginning around 330 BCE, could conceivably have shaped exegetical trends in ways that prompted Jewish writers to reconsider how they interpreted the biblical texts about the Chaldean stargazer Abraham reviewed at the outset of this chapter. But this answer would seem to only provide a partial solution to the question. Recall that Josephus, for instance, explicitly cites independent witnesses, including non-Jewish ones, in his own portrayal of Abraham as an astronomer, and does not so much appear to base his depiction on his own learned reckoning of the biblical text. Unless we insist on an otherwise doggedly minimalist approach to evaluating the reliability of Josephus as a historical source, it seems from his own account that there were traditions about the patriarch as an astronomer that circulated independent of the Jewish exegetes and divines of the Graeco-Roman period. At the very least, it would appear that, if nothing else, Josephus thought there were such independent traditions that bolstered his effort to give Judaism the respectable intellectual pedigree he desired of it for his Roman readers. We therefore cannot entirely rule out the possibility that besides new trends in the Jewish exegetical tradition of the Second Temple period that multiplied depictions of Abraham as an astronomer, ancient authorities circulated and preserved parabiblical accounts to the same effect that, unfortunately, are now either lost entirely or are preserved only as mere mentions in the writings of later authors. After my own study, I am in general agreement with Ludlow’s conclusion that despite the variations seen in the different renditions of this motif, “an examination of the texts containing accounts of Abraham’s having a heavenly vision and passing astronomical knowledge on to the Egyptians indicates a possible earlier tradition. Two major facets of this tradition are (1) Abraham came to know God through the stars and learned that the stars were governed by God or higher powers; and (2) Abraham taught astrology to the Egyptians.”77 Just how much this supposed tradition predates our earliest extant sources, however, is currently impossible to determine. The ongoing recovery of ancient sources may (or may not) push the portrayal of Abraham as an astronomer to an earlier date than is currently attested. But in the meantime, scholars and lay readers of the Bible alike can take great satisfaction in the abundantly rich 77 Jared W. Ludlow, “Abraham’s Visions of the Heavens,” in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, ed. John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid (Provo: Brigham Young University, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005), 70. Note that Ludlow draws also from Christian sources left unexamined in this paper to reach this conclusion.

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corpus of material presently at their disposal as they encounter and continue to engage this fascinating and meaningful tradition. Bibliography Adams, Sean A. “Abraham in Philo of Alexandria.” Pages 75–92 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne DomoneyLyttle. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Altmann, Alexander. “Astrology.” EncJud 2:616–20. Anderson, E.H., and R.T. Haag, trans. “The Book of the Revelation of Abraham.” IE 1, no. 10 (August 1898): 705–714. Arribas, Josefina Rodríguez. “Medieval Jews and Medieval Astrolabes: Where, Why, How, and What For?” Pages 221–72 in Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition. Edited by Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Avioz, Michael. “Abraham in Josephus’ Writings.” Pages 93–108 in Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Sean A. Adams and Zanne DomoneyLyttle. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Bar-Kochva, Bezalel. The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Barton, Tamsyn. Ancient Astrology. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Beck, Roger. A Brief History of Ancient Astrology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Bonwetsch, Gottlieb Nathanael, trans. Die Apokalypse Abrahams: Das Testament der 40 Märtyrer. SGTK 1. Leipzig: A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1897. Box, G.H., trans. The Apocalypse of Abraham. London: SPCK, 1918. Brand, Miryam. Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Charlesworth, James H. “Astrology in the Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Palestinian Synagogues.” HTR 70, nos. 3/4 (1977): 183–200. Cordovero, Moshe. Zohar Or Yakar. Volume 4 of Sefer ha-Zohar [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ahuzat Israel, 1967. Dieleman, Jacco. “Stars and the Egyptian Priesthood in the Graeco-Roman Period.” Pages 137–53 in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World. Edited by Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Dimant, Devorah. “Abraham the Astrologer at Qumran? Observations on PseudoJubilees (4Q225 2 I 3–8).” Pages 71–82 in Textual Criticism and Dead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebelloe Barrera. Edited by Andrés Piquer Otero and Pablo A. Torijano Morales. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

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Feldman, Louis H. Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Fishbane, Michael, ed. The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993. Gardner, Gregg. “Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156.” Pages 314–38 in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity. Edited by Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Gifford, E.H., ed. Evangelicae Praeparationis Libri XV. Oxford: Clarendon, 1903. Hauglid, Brian M. “Book of Abraham.” EBR 4:351. Hellner-Eshed, Melila. “Zohar.” EncJud 21:647–64. Jacobs, Irving. The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Jacobus, Helen R. Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Josephus. Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV. Translated by Henry St.J. Thackeray. LCL. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Kugel, James L. Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Kugel, James L. A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Kulik, Alexander. “Abraham, Apocalypse of,” Pages 93–94 in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Daniel M. Gurtner and Loren T. Stuckenbruck. London: T&T Clark, 2020. Kulik, Alexander. Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004. Lange, Armin. “The Essene Position on Magic and Divination.” Pages 377–435 in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995; Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten. Edited by Moshe J. Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Ludlow, Jared W. “Abraham’s Visions of the Heavens.” Pages 57–73 in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant. Edited by John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid. Provo: Brigham Young University, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005. Lunt, H.G. and R. Rubinkiewicz. “The Apocalypse of Abraham.” OTP 1:681–705. Mandel, Paul. “The Call of Abraham: A Midrash Revisited.” Proof 14, no. 3 (1994): 267–284. Marcus, Ralph, trans. Philo Supplement I: Questions and Answers on Genesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951. Matt, Daniel C., trans. The Zohar. Stanford: Standford University Press, 2004.

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Matt, Daniel C. Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1983. McLeod, Alexus. Astronomy in the Ancient World: Early and Modern Views on Celestial Events. New York: Springer, 2016. Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography. AYBRL. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Niese, Benedikt, ed. Flavii Iosephi Opera. 7 vols. Rome: Berolini, 1885–1895. Orlov, Andrei A. Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Parry, Donald W. and Emanuel Tov, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Popović, Mladen. Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews: Josephus, Ant. 1.154–168, and the Greco-Roman Discourse About Astronomy/ Astrology.” JSJ 35, no. 2 (2004): 119–158. Rochberg, Francesca. The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sarna, Nahum. Genesis. JPSTC. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989. Schenck, Kenneth. A Brief Guide to Philo. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005. Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Siker, Jeffrey S. “Abraham in Graeco-Roman Paganism.” JSJ 18, no. 2 (1987): 188–208. Smith, Joseph, trans. “The Book of Abraham.” Pages 29–42 in The Pearl of Great Price: A Selection from the Revelations, Translations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013. Smith, Joseph. “The Book of Abraham.” TSeas 3, no. 9 (1842): 704–6. Smith, Joseph. “The Book of Abraham.” TSeas 3, no. 10 (1842): 719–722. Smith, Joseph. “A Fac-Simile from the Book of Abraham.” TSeas 3, no. 14 (1842): 783–84. Smoot, Stephen O. “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited.” BYUSQ 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37. Speiser, E.A. Genesis. AB. New York: Doubleday, 1962. Steele, John M., ed. The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Strack, Hermann L. and Günter Stemberger. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. Translated by Markus Bockmuehl. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996. Swerdlow, N.M., ed. Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Tvedtnes, John A., Brian M. Hauglid, and John Gee, eds. Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham. Provo: Brigham Young University, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000. VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees. CSCO 511. Leuven: Peeters, 1989.

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VanderKam, James C. The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text. CSCO 510. Leuven: Peeters, 1989. VanderKam, James C. Jubilees 1–21. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018. Van Kooten, George H. “Enoch, the ‘Watchers,’ Seth’s Descendants and Abraham as Astronomers.” Pages 292–316 in Recycling Biblical Figures: Papers Read at a NOSTER Colloquium in Amsterdam, 12–13 May 1997. Edited by Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten. Leiderdorp: Deo, 1999. Van Ruiten, Jacques T.A.G.M. Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Van Ruiten, Jacques T.A.G.M. “Jubilees, Book of.” Pages 301–12 in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Daniel M. Gurtner and Loren T. Stuckenbruck. London: T&T Clark, 2020. Wendland, Paul, ed. Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt. 7 vols. Rome: Berolini, 1896–1915. Werman, Cana. The Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation and Interpretation [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2016. Westermann, Claus. Genesis 12–36: A Commentary. Translated by John J. Scullion. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985. Yonge, Charles Duke, trans. The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993.

Chapter 4

Right Knowledge of God and the Rejection of False Religion: Abraham in Romans 1 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr 1

The New Testament from the Perspective of the History of Religion1

Since the Enlightenment, the consensus for scholarly exegesis of the Bible at least has been that the New Testament Scriptures, as texts, cannot be regarded as sui generis or as privileged, first-hand sources attesting to direct revelation, standing outside of any relationship to history. However, the question of which areas of the history of religion and of literature in the ancient world these texts can be assigned has since then been answered in a variety of quite different ways. If we look at the religious and historical contexts within which researchers have chosen to examine the New Testament, we can observe a series of wave-like changes. “Old Wettstein”2 and its contemporaries approached the texts as part of the totality of ancient Greek literature, from the classical poets and philosophers to the writers of Hellenistic and Roman times and then of late antiquity, alongside biblical and Jewish literature, which were considered somewhat in the margins. History of religion around the turn of the twentieth century (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) brought the pagan sources of ancient religion in Roman times, from the cult of Mithras to the mystery religions, to the center of the discussion.3 There followed the great period of research into the rabbinical sources, exemplified in the classic work of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck.4 The discovery of the texts at Nag Hammadi then gave rise to 1 Translated by David Finch. A German version of this essay appeared in the published papers of the 29th International Bible Conference in Szeged 2018: Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Das Neue Testament im Kontext jüdisch-hellenistischer Literatur: Röm 1,19–23 als Testfall,” in The Hellenistic and Judaic Background to the New Testament: 29th International Biblical Conference Szeged 27–29 August, 2018, ed. György Benyik (Szeged: JATE Press, 2019), 327–42. 2 Johann Jakob Wettstein, Novum Testamentum Graecum, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: [n.p.], 1751–1752; repr., Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1962). 3 Representative here is the monograph by Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos: Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums bis Irenaeus, FRLANT 21 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913). 4 Hermann Leberecht Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1926–1928; repr. 1956–1961). © Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004722620_006

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a wave of interest in Gnosticism, bringing also to attention the pagan sources of late antiquity, in particular the Platonist and Neoplatonist writers;5 and the discovery of the scrolls at Qumran led once more to a countermovement towards Jewish sources.6 Most Bible scholars today are in agreement that an either/or approach to the relevance of Jewish and pagan texts as sources of reference for the New Testament Scriptures is not adequate to the Scriptures themselves or to those elements within the history of religion that must be taken into account in relation to any exegesis.7 By virtue of their language, the texts are part of the study of Hellenism; but, equally, the understanding of God adhered to throughout leaves no room for doubt that, in terms of the history of religion, they are a part of the Judaism of the ancient world. A one-sided privileging of either the Jewish or of the pagan contexts, or even setting them up in opposition to each other, can only lead to a narrowing of the field of view and consequently to inadequate judgements within the history of religion. What is required, not least given the increasing range of sources now available to us, is a productive division of labor to enable the necessary precision and depth of focus in the exploration of the historical and religious contexts of individual New Testament texts.8 If we enquire, as part of the Erfurt research program, into the dynamic of Jewish ritual practices in pluralistic contexts from antiquity to the present 5 An example here would be Bultmann’s commentary on the Gospel of St John: Rudolf Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes, KEK 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1937–1941 [21st. ed., 1986]). 6 Now widely used in the German-language context is the parallel text study edition of the main texts by Eduard Lohse, Die Texte aus Qumran: Hebräisch und Deutsch; Mit masoretischer Punktation, Übersetzung, Einführung und Anmerkungen, 4th. ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986). 7 This is given exemplary expression in the reworking of a classic textbook by Jens Schröter and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, eds., Texte zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments, UTB 3663 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). The study by Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jhs. v. Chr., WUNT 10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969; 3rd ed., 1988), proved epoch-making for the reevaluation of the religious and historical contexts of early Judaism. 8 An approach taken by the project Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT); see also Roland Deines and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “The Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti-Project: From the Past to the Future,” EC 1 (2010): 633–39; Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Das Corpus Hellenisticum: Anmerkungen zur Geschichte eines Problems,” in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont biblischer Theologie: Mit einem Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, WUNT 162 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 361–82; Nikolaus Walter, “Zur Chronik des Corpus Hellenisticum: Aus den Akten in Halle zusammengestellt (Halle 1955/58), mit Nachträgen Naumburg 1999,” in Kraus and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Frühjudentum und Neues Testament, 325–44; for a restart of the project, see https://cjhnt-info.saw-leipzig.de/de.

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day, the question touches—at least as far as antiquity is concerned—on the internal tension of “Judaism and Hellenism” just mentioned, if only in a quite specific way. As more recent research into early Judaism has shown, it is difficult to overestimate the multiplicity of religious practices of Jewish9 groups in different parts of the Mediterranean region in antiquity (we know simply too little about the Orient in the prerabbinic period). Nevertheless, at least for the period before the destruction of the temple during the Jewish-Roman war, there are some clearly defined elements of Jewish religious practice that can be regarded as specific characteristics of Jewish groups, and that were both internally and externally recognised as such. These include, alongside the separation from all non-Israelite divinities and their worship—which did not necessarily preclude the adoption of selected religious traditions connected with them—the general abandonment, outside of Jerusalem, of a cult of sacrifice and associated shrines.10 Furthermore, in those early Jewish practices determined by the specifically ritual requirements of the Torah, the distinction was consciously and clearly marked between the practices prescribed within the “land of Israel” (however its borders were defined) and those laid down for the diaspora.11 This raises the question of a more precise definition of the terms “ritual,” “ritual practice,” and so on. This task cannot, however, be tackled in this essay. In considering Abraham as “ritual model,” we must, however, say at the outset that the term “ritual”12 in relation to the early Jewish texts referred to can at best be used only in a very broad and even almost figurative sense. This is partly to do with the specific character already mentioned of Jewish religious practice in the diaspora, from which most of the texts referred to here originate, and whose religious practice they probably reflect. It is also partly because we 9 While remaining conscious of the relevant contemporary debates, I continue for the time being to use the received terminology “Judaism,” “Jewish,” etc., because in my opinion the currently proposed alternatives such as “Judean” or “Judaic,” etc. do not assist in the necessary task of distinguishing between religious, ethnic, cultural or other aspects of early Judaism. 10 For exceptions to this, see Jörg Frey, “Temple and Rival Temple: The Cases of Elephantine, Mt. Garizim, and Leontopolis,” in Gemeinde ohne Tempel—Community without Temple: Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, ed. Beate Ego, Armin Lange, and Peter Pilhofer, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 171–203. 11 See Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Offene Fragen zur Gesetzespraxis bei Paulus und seinen Gemeinden (Sabbat, Speisegebote, Beschneidung),” BThZ 25 (2008): 16–51. 12 Ideas on early Christian religious practice appear to be more clearly defined. Representative here is Risto Uro, Ritual and the Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 7–70.

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simply know too little about those rites, in the narrow sense, practised in the Greek-speaking synagogues of the diaspora.13 Nevertheless, the biblical character of Abraham as received by early Judaism can be regarded as an exemplary figure, and exemplary specifically from a religious standpoint. The adoption of various aspects of the Abraham of tradition in the Scriptures of the New Testament is living evidence of this.14 One aspect of this image of Abraham that was of particular interest both for the early Jewish and the early Christian reception of Abraham is his turning away from the religious practices of his ancestors. There are already indications of this in Gen 11:31–12:4, and it is then relatively widely taken up and accentuated in the early Jewish literature. It is my thesis here that this aspect is also present at least in the background of Paul’s argument in his letter to the Romans. The Abraham figure stands at the threshold between universal humanity, created by God at the time of Adam, and its multiplication into different groups of humans after the expulsion from paradise. Since Abraham, one can make a distinction between humans who revere other created beings instead of God (sometimes with religious fervor), on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the people of God, Israel, who received the divine promise. According to the narrative chronology of the biblical tradition, Abraham is the one human being within the history of humanity who acknowledges God and realizes that the reverence of created things over and against the reverence of God is the wrong path (Gen 11:27–12:4). Both in the biblical tradition (Jdt 5:6–9) and in extrabiblical Jewish literature, Abraham’s rejection of idol worship becomes the distinctive mark between Jew and non-Jew, as well as a warning within the Jewish community concerning religious practices that are not condoned by Torah. 13

14

Even for Rome, where the situation in regard to sources is relatively good, not a great deal has been established as to the specifics of Jewish religious practice. See Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Roman Jews under Nero: Personal, Religious, and Ideological Networks in Mid-First Century Rome,” in The Last Years of Paul: Essays from the Tarragona Conference, June 2013, ed. Armand Puig i Tàrrech, John M.G. Barclay, and Jörg Frey, WUNT 352 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 67–89. On Abraham in the New Testament, see Terence L. Donaldson, “Paul, Abraham’s Gentile ‘Offspring,’ and the Torah,” in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, ed. Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 135–50; Matthias Köckert, Abraham. Ahnvater—Vorbild—Kultstifter, BG 31 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 348–79; Christfried Böttrich, “Abraham in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments,” in Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, ed. Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eißler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 67–101; Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews: Josephus, Ant. 1.154–168, and the Greco-Roman Discourse about Astronomy/Astrology,” JSJ 35 (2004): 119–57; Friedrich E. Wieser, Die Abrahamvorstellungen im Neuen Testament, EHS 23 (Bern: Lang, 1987).

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If this picture and function of Abraham in early Jewish literature is taken into account, then the relevance of the Abraham figure for Paul’s argument is evident not only with regard to Romans 4, where Paul explicitly refers to Abraham, but for Romans 1 as well, where Paul polemically deals with pagan religious practice and prompts his audience in Rome, consisting of Gentiles by majority, to turn away from any forms of religion of their ancestors. 2

Romans 1 as a Test Case for the New Testament in the Context of Jewish-Hellenistic Literature

2.1 The Context of the Argument in Romans 1 The starting point for Paul’s argument in his letter to the Romans15 is the semantic opposition set up in Rom 1:16 between Ἰουδαῖος (πρῶτον) and Ἕλλην. This opposition divides the whole of humanity, as conceived of by Paul following Jewish biblical tradition, into two (historically and numerically, admittedly unequal) halves. The semantic poles of “Jew” versus “Greek” are held together by faith, as is shown in the inclusio πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων (Rom 1:16) and ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως (Rom 1:17). The goal of the argument contained in Rom 1:16–2:29 is the semantic opposition in Rom 2:28–29: ὁ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ Ἰουδαῖος and ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ Ἰουδαῖος. This opposition is in turn “elevated” in a higher commonality: that of God’s final judgement of “(somebody who lives as) a Jew in secrecy” (ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ Ἰουδαῖος) and of a “circumcision of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (περιτομὴ καρδίας ἐν πνεύματι οὐ γράμματι) (Rom 2:29). The semantic opposition “Jew” versus “Greek” of Rom 1:16 is therefore qualified to such an extent in the argument that follows, that by the end a theologically determined commonality exists between the two. Thus, the “Jew in secrecy” who is “circumcised in heart” actually refers to a (believing) “Greek.” It is striking, however, that Paul is able to use the word “Jew” to refer to both sides of this traditional semantic opposition of “Jew” and “Greek.”16 15 Recent readings of the letter to the Romans include Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, 2 vols., EKK 6 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Ostfildern: Patmos, 2014–2019); Robert Jewett, Romans. A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); Eduard Lohse, Der Brief an die Römer, KEK 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003); Klaus Haacker, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer, ThHK 6, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019). 16 For my view on the argument and its construction in the letter to the Romans, see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Menschenbild, Gottesverständnis und Ethik: Zwei paulinische Argumentationen (Röm 1,18–2,29; 8,1–30),” in Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen. Internationales Symposium in

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In view of this intention of Paul’s argument and its relation to the aims of his mission at the time, we cannot take even his statements on the right or wrong knowledge of God of all people in Rom 1:19–23 as a general declaration, in the sense of a “natural theology.” Paul is speaking here rather from the perspective of the revelation of Christ and its consequences for the inclusion of non-Jews in the eschatological fulfilment of the biblical promises.17 From this standpoint, he invokes the possibilities and the reality of humankind as a totality of beings created by God. Though people can decide for themselves for or against God’s will, in reality all are subject to his “wrath … revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18 NRSV). Knowledge of God before Abraham: Rom 1:19–23 in the Context of Early Judaism Paul’s argument in Rom 1:16–2:29 is therefore couched in terms of a division of humanity into Jews and non-Jews. In relation to texts from the corpus of early Jewish literature, particular attention is therefore due to passages in which polemic against pagan religion and statements on the recognition of God through the order of nature are linked to the question of the identity of the people of Israel. This brings us to the biblical figure of Abraham,18 standing 2.2

Verbindung mit dem Projekt Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT) 17.–20. Mai 2012, Heidelberg, ed. Matthias Konradt and Esther Schläpfer, WUNT 322 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 139–161; “Nicht alle aus Israel sind Israel (Röm 9,6b): Römer 9–11 als Zeugnis paulinischer Anthropologie,” in Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11, ed. Florian Wilk and J. Ross Wagner, WUNT 257 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 433–62. A different interpretation of the addressees of Paul’s argument in Romans is given by some of the proponents of the so-called “Paul within Judaism” perspective; see, e.g., Matthew Thiessen, “Paul’s Argument against Gentile Circumcision in Romans 2:17–29,” NovT 56 (2014): 373–91; Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 156–58. For my own interaction with this current debate, see my view in Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Einführung: Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit; Der Heidenapostel aus Israel in neuer Sicht; Mit einem Nachtrag zur ‘New Perspective on Paul’ seit 2010,” in Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit: Gesammelte Studien, WUNT 489 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 1–40. 17 See my view in Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen, WUNT 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992); Niebuhr, “Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre in der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion,” in Worum geht es in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Das biblische Fundament der “Gemeinsamen Erklärung” von katholischer Kirche und Lutherischem Weltbund, ed. Thomas Söding, QD 180 (Freiburg: Herder, 1999), 106–30, as well as the generality of more recent Pauline research. 18 On Abraham in early Jewish tradition, see Donaldson, “Paul, Abraham’s Gentile ‘Offspring,’ and the Torah,” 135–50; Beate Ego, “Abraham im Judentum,” in Böttrich, Ego,

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as he does at the point of intersection between universal humanity created by God and descended from Adam, and its division into different human groups. Since Abraham, a distinction has existed between people(s) who have strayed from their creator to worship his creatures, and the chosen people of Israel who were called to abandon such errors and to whom the promise was made. Thus Abraham enters human history, in the narrative chronology of biblical tradition, as the one who is led by his recognition of the creator to realise the fatal error of the worship of created things.19 Abraham’s rejection of idolatry is invoked in both the biblical texts20 and in nonbiblical early Jewish literature, not only with the paraenetic intention of dissociating the Jewish people from non-Jews but also as a warning directed inwards, against mistaken religious practices forbidden by the Torah. Of course, the theme of the rejection of idolatry and the right knowledge of God plays an important part in the early Jewish literature quite independently of the reception of the biblical figure of Abraham. The writings of Philo are of particular importance here: in De ebrietate 107–110, he considers in depth the origins of idolatry, which he finds is rooted in mankind’s false perceptions of the “Existent One,” leading them to take the heavenly bodies visible to the eye as the origin and cause of all things. In Leg. 1.60–61, he discusses Adam’s right knowledge of God in Eden;21 in Opif. 8–10 and Leg. 3.97–101, he considers Moses’s knowledge of God in opposition to that of the philosophers who maintain that the world is uncreated.22 In Post. 16–21, though he discusses both Moses’s knowledge of God (in relation to Exod 33:13) and that of Abraham, whose reason enabled him to discern the “place” (i.e., the mountain in Moriah to sacrifice Isaac as appointed by God, according to the biblical context), at

and Eißler, Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, 29–40; Ferdinand Hahn, “Die Gestalt Abrahams in der Sicht Philos,” in Zion: Ort der Begegnung; Festschrift für Laurentius Klein zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjahres, ed. Ferdinand Hahn et al., BBB 90 (Bodenheim: Athenäum, 1993), 203–215; Köckert, Abraham, 290–348; Anke Mühling, “Blickt auf Abraham, euren Vater”: Abraham als Identifikationsfigur des Judentums in der Zeit des Exils und des Zweiten Tempels, FRLANT 236 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 248–325; Reed, “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist,” 119–57; Wieser, Die Abrahamvorstellungen im Neuen Testament, 153–79; Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel, 93–95. 19 See Gen 11:27–12:4. 20 See Jdt 5:6–9. 21 With reference to the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”; see Gen 2:9. 22 Similarly Conf. 94–98; Fug. 12.

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least from afar,23 here the idea of the rejection of earlier, mistaken apprehensions of God is missing.24 However, the example of Abraham is central to the argument of a number of early Jewish texts that oppose right knowledge of God to pagan religious error. Thus Joshua, in LAB 23:5a, reminds the assembled Israelites of the patriarch in prophetic speech: “And when all those inhabiting the land were being led astray after their own devices, Abraham believed in me and was not led astray with them.”25 According to Pseudo-Orpheus B 27–31, “a certain person, a unique figure, by descent an offshoot of the Chaldean race,” observed the movements of the spheres around the earth and concluded from them that God “with wind [πνεύματι] … creates currents around both air and stream.”26 Without mentioning Abraham by name, Sib. Or. 3.218–47 also contrasts the Chaldeans with “a race of most righteous men” who do not concern themselves with astrology, soothsaying, and other such misguided things, “such as foolish men inquire into day by day,” but attend to what is just and virtuous.27 2.3 Abraham as a Model of the Rejection of Idolatry The selection criteria for the texts discussed below at somewhat greater length are, in accordance with the intentions of the argument in Rom 1:19–23, the reference to Abraham, the related theme of the rejection of mistaken religion, and the question, implicit in the context of these ideas, of the identity of Israel as distinct from the other peoples of the earth. The sequence in which the texts are discussed is not chronological, but follows a criterion concerning content; namely, the development of philosophical and religious reflection within

23 24 25 26

27

With reference to Gen 22:3–4; similarly Somn. 1.65–67. Philo reads Gen 28:11 in the context of Post. 16–21 (Somn. 1.61–64, 68–69), according to which Jacob also arrives at a “place” in Haran. Similarly Somn. 1.70 on Abraham’s knowledge of God in Gen 18:33. Trans. Daniel J. Harrington, OTP 1:332–33. Cf. Josh 24:2–3. Trans. Carl R. Holladay, Orphica, vol. 4 of Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 175. See also Ps.-Eup., frag. 1.3–4: Abraham “excelled all men in nobility of birth and wisdom. In fact, he discovered both astrology and Chaldean science. Because he was eager in his pursuit of piety, he was well-pleasing to God.” Trans. Carl R. Holladay, Historians, vol. 1 of Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors (Chico: Scholars Press, 1983), 171–73. Trans. John J. Collins, OTP 1:367. Pseudo-Philo, De Jona, pars. 1–6, by contrast, uses the example of the Ninevites to address the problem that the gifts of God’s creation are not received with gratitude to the Creator. For the text, see Folker Siegert, Drei hellenistischjüdische Predigten: Ps.-Philon, “Über Jona,” “Über Simson” und “Über die Gottesbezeichung ‘wohltätig verzehrendes Feuer,’” WUNT 20 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980), 9–50.

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which Paul’s argument in Romans 1 can be located. For this reason, Philo is considered last in the sequence. 2.3.1 Abraham’s Rejection of the Idolatry of His Ancestors (Jub. 12:2–7) According to the book of Jubilees, Abram, while still a boy, “began understanding the straying of the land, that everyone went astray after graven images and after pollution.” He therefore separated himself from his father, so that he would not worship idols himself (Jub. 11:16). Indeed, long before Abram left Haran for Canaan in the promised land, to become the father of the people of Israel (see Jub. 12:28; 13:1), he had already recognised that idols are worthless, “because there is not any spirit in them” (Jub. 12:3). Impelled by this insight, Abram admonishes his father: And he said, “What help or advantage do we have from these idols before which you worship and bow down? Because there is not any spirit in them, for they are mute, and they are the misleading of the heart. Do not worship them. Worship the God of heaven, who sends down rain and dew upon the earth, and who makes everything upon the earth, and created everything by his word, and all life is in his presence. Why do you worship those who have no spirit in them? Because they are works of the hands and you are carrying them upon your shoulders, and there is no help from them for you, except great shame for those who made them and the misleading of the heart for those who worship them. Do not worship them.” And his father said to him, “I also know (that), my son, but what shall I do to the people who have made me minister before them? And if I speak to them in righteousness, they will kill me because their souls cleave to them so that they might worship them and praise them.”28 With the term “spirit,” which is denied in relation to idols and thereby implicitly attributed to the creator God alone, the reference to the works of God’s creation—sky, rain, dew, and everything upon the earth—is accorded theological depth. Similarly, the mention of God who “created everything by his word” implies a reflexive reiteration of the biblical accounts of the creation. 2.3.2 Abraham’s Anger at His Father’s Idolatry (Apoc. Ab. 6:1–4) The Apocalypse of Abraham narrates at length and with biting scorn how Abraham, while still living in his father’s house, and through a process of reflection and reasoning on all of the forms of religious practice he observed 28 Jub. 12:2–7. Translations are those of Orval S. Wintermute, OTP 2:79–80.

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going on around him, was led to the right answer to the question of “which god is in truth the strongest” (Apoc. Ab. 1:1). This is also the unifying question of the text: it is stated explicitly at the start; and in the course of the events described, it is answered first through narrative (Apoc. Ab. 1–6), then through revelation (Apoc. Ab. 8–10), but also, in chapter 7, through reflection (“philosophically”), where the four elements of which the world is composed are shown to be subordinate to the one creator. Abraham therefore seeks “the God who created all the gods supposed by us (to exist)” (Apoc. Ab. 7:10).29 The stubborn trust of Abraham’s father in the power of idols has already led his son to address him in tones of desperation: When I, Abraham, heard words like this from my father, I laughed in my mind, and I groaned in the bitterness and anger of my soul. I said, “How then is a figment of a body made by him (Terah) an aid for my father? Or can he have subordinated (his) body to his soul, his soul to a spirit, and the spirit30 to stupidity and ignorance?” And I said, “It is only proper to endure evil that I may throw my mind to purity and I will expose my thoughts clearly to him.” I answered and said, “Father Terah, whichever of these gods you extol, you err in your thought.” (Apoc. Abr. 6:1–4) Noetic and emotional forms of expression are strikingly combined here to reinforce the paraenetic thrust of the passage. Right knowledge of God and the rejection of idols come about through a profound change in thought and feeling, leading to a renewal of the practice of life. 2.3.3

Abraham’s Recognition of God through Creation (Josephus, Ant. 1.7.1, §155–56) Josephus also, most probably on the basis of his source, Pseudo-Hecataeus 2,31 describes Abraham as possessing, even before he left “Mesopotamia,” exceptional judgement and virtue, qualities that led him to develop ideas about God 29 Trans. of the Apocalypse of Abraham throughout are those of Ryszard Rubinkiewicz, OTP 1:689–705. Cf. the numerous noetic expressions, e.g., in Apoc. Ab. 1:1: “I was testing (to find out)”; 1:4: “And I thought in my mind”; 2:7: “I considered it in my heart”; 3:2: “I said in my heart”; 4:1: “And thinking thus”; 5:1: “having pondered”; 6:3: “I will expose my thoughts clearly to him.” 30 The anthropological distinction between body, soul and spirit, which is also found in early Jewish texts (cf. Wis 7:22; 8:19–20; Ps.-Phoc. 105–8), follows Platonic tradition, but could also be the result of a Byzantine interpolation, see Ryszard Rubinkiewicz, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave: Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire (Lublin: Societé de Lettres et des Sciences de l’Université de Lublin, 1987), 115. 31 Cf. Ant. 1.159; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.113.

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and virtue that were closer to the truth than the notions of those around him. He was therefore the first to be able to draw the right conclusions from the contemplation of creation: that there is only one God, the creator of all things, and that the created world is not itself the cause of its own preservation and change, but is subordinate to the command of him to whom all thanks and adoration are due. 155 διὰ τοῦτο καὶ φρονεῖν μεῖζον ἐπ᾽ ἀρετῇ τῶν ἄλλων ἠργμένος καὶ τὴν περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξαν, ἣν ἅπασι συνέβαινεν εἶναι, καινίσαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν ἔγνω. πρῶτος οὖν τολμᾷ θεὸν ἀποφήνασθαι δημιουργὸν τῶν ὅλων ἕνα, τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν εἰ καί τι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν συντελεῖ κατὰ προσταγὴν τὴν τούτου παρέχειν ἕκαστον καὶ οὐ κατ᾽ οἰκείαν ἰσχύν. 156 εἰκάζεται δὲ ταῦτα τοῖς γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης παθήμασι32 τοῖς τε περὶ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς κατ᾽ οὐρανὸν33 συμβαίνουσι. 155 For this reason also he was the first to understand how to think better than others about virtue, and to renew and transform the apprehension of God on which all had been agreed. He was therefore the first to dare to say aloud that God, the Creator of the Universe, is One, and that if some one or other of the rest should accomplish something for the good of all, then it is (only) following the command which He has given to each of them, and not from their own strength. 156 He gained this insight from his observation of earth and water, which stand in relation both to the sun and to the moon, and of everything, which takes place in accordance with the laws of heaven. Like Philo, Josephus associates Abraham’s understanding of nature with his origins in Chaldea, the land of the astronomers. Fragment 2 of PseudoEupolemus takes a similar view: “After Abraham had been instructed in the science of astrology, he first came into Phoenicia and there taught the Phoenicians astrology. Then he went to Egypt.”34 Abraham’s origins in Chaldea and his knowledge of astronomy are acknowledged here, but not his new understanding of God and his rejection of idolatry. 32

The word πάθημα in the plural can refer to events, changes or processes, including those affecting heavenly bodies. 33 The phrase κατ᾽ οὐρανόν is translated here in context as “in accordance with the laws of heaven.” 34 Trans. of Holladay, Historians, 177. Compare also Ps.-Eup., frg. 1.3–4, and Ps.-Orph. B 27–31 (see at n. 26).

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2.3.4 Abraham’s Thought on the Works of Creation (Philo, Abr. 60–88) Philo’s interpretation, in Abr. 60–88, of Abraham’s departure from his father’s house is particularly instructive. He has already described Abraham as a “symbol of virtue gained through instruction” (σύμβολον διδασκαλικῆς ἀρετῆς), emphasising Abraham’s philosophic character in contrast to the “natural” (φυσικῆς) virtue of Isaac and the virtue of Jacob, which was “gained through practice” (ἀσκητικῆς) (Abr. 52). For Philo, Abraham is distinguished in particular by the fact that he follows not only the spoken or written commandments of God, but also those “which are revealed through more definite signs in Nature” (Abr. 60). Philo interprets Abraham’s departure allegorically as a turning away from the astronomy of the Chaldeans, who have inferred from the study of the movements of the stars “that the cosmos itself is God,” and in doing so have “equated that which has come to be with Him who made it” (Abr. 69). Unlike them, Abraham, who himself grew up sharing these beliefs, has opened the eye of his soul as if waking from a deep sleep, says Philo, and recognised in the pure light thus perceived the ruler of the world (Abr. 70). From the contemplation of the invisible nous,35 which rules in the human mind and guides our steps and senses, Philo infers the equally invisible (ἀόρατος) king and ruler of the world, who holds it together and reigns over it justly. Thus every human being is able to recognise for him or herself36 that the world itself is not the highest God, but the work of the highest God and father of all, who is invisible, but who “brings everything to light, revealing the natures of both big and small things.” After further philosophical and theological discussion, Philo concludes his thoughts on Abraham’s emigration from the world perceived through the senses, and praises the “reasoning” Abraham, who does not direct his thoughts towards the existence that is perceptible to the senses, or take the “visible cosmos” to be God, but who “looked towards another and different Nature, one better than the visible, that is one which is ‘noetic.’”37 60 λεκτέον δ᾽ ἑξῆς, ἐν οἷς ἕκαστος ἰδίᾳ προήνεγκεν, ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου τὴν ἀρχὴν λαβόντας. ἐκεῖνος τοίνυν εὐσεβείας, ἀρετῆς τῆς ἀνωτάτω καὶ μεγίστης, ζηλωτὴς γενόμενος ἐσπούδασεν ἕπεσθαι θεῷ καὶ καταπειθὴς εἶναι τοῖς προσταττομένοις ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, προστάξεις ὑπολαμβάνων οὐ τὰς διὰ φωνῆς καὶ γραμμάτων μηνυομένας αὐτὸ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς διὰ τῆς φύσεως τρανοτέροις σημείοις δηλουμένας, ἃς ἡ ἀληθεστάτη τῶν αἰσθήσεων πρὸ ἀκοῆς τῆς ἀπίστου καὶ ἀβεβαίου καταλαμβάνει. 61 θεώμενος γάρ τις τὴν ἐν τῇ φύσει τάξιν καὶ τὴν 35 Cf. Abr. 73: νοῦς ἀόρατος; Abr. 74: νοῦς ἡγεμὼν ἐπιτεταγμένος. 36 Cf. Abr. 75: ἀναδιδασκόμενος ἔκ τε ἑαυτοῦ. 37 Abr. 88; compare similar but shorter interpretations in Her. 97–99, Virt. 212–15.

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παντὸς λόγου κρείττονα πολιτείαν, ᾗ χρῆται ὁ κόσμος, ἀναδιδάσκεται φθεγγομένου μηδενός, εὔνομον καὶ εἰρηνικὸν βίον ἐπιτηδεύειν εἰς τὴν τῶν καλῶν ἐξομοίωσιν38 ἀποβλέποντα. ἐναργέσταται δὲ τῆς εὐσεβείας ἀποδείξεις εἰσίν, ἃς περιέχουσιν αἱ ἱεραὶ γραφαί· πρώτην δὲ λεκτέον, ἣ καὶ πρώτη τέτακται. 60 We must now speak of them successively how each was distinguished in his way, and we begin with the first [Abraham], that man who became the most keenly zealous follower of the highest and greatest virtue, namely piety, and took the most exceptional pains to follow God and to be obedient to his instructions. He heeded not only those commands which were proclaimed by means of a voice or of letters, but also those which are made known by the more definite signs of Nature, which the truest of the senses [the eye] grasps more surely than the hearing of an untrustworthy and insecure [person]. 61 For whoever regards the order of Nature and the constitution that determines the cosmos, which is superior to all description in language, will be instructed without hearing a word from anyone to follow a changed course of life, well-ordered and peaceful, as he contemplates the imitation of the beautiful. But clearest are the proofs of piety contained in the holy Scriptures; for we must speak first of what is at the start.39 At the end, Philo seems to allude to the accounts of the creation given at the beginning of the book of Genesis, which precede the giving of the law at Sinai. Philo implies here, as Paul does similarly, a priority—following biblical chronology and related to the status of Abraham—of the universal order of creation over the written Torah of Moses. However, Philo develops this thought from the difference or hierarchy between seeing (contemplating the works of creation) and hearing (receiving the commandments of the Torah). 69 Χαλδαῖοι γὰρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα διαπονήσαντες ἀστρονομίαν … τὸν κόσμον αὐτὸν ὑπέλαβον εἶναι θεόν, οὐκ εὐαγῶς τὸ γενόμενον ἐξομοιώσαντες τῷ πεποιηκότι. 70 ταύτῃ τοι τῇ δόξῃ συντραφεὶς καὶ χαλδαΐσας40 μακρόν τινα χρόνον, ὥσπερ ἐκ βαθέος ὕπνου διοίξας τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄμμα καὶ καθαρὰν αὐγὴν ἀντὶ σκότους βαθέος βλέπειν ἀρξάμενος ἠκολούθησε τῷ φέγγει καὶ κατεῖδεν, ὃ μὴ 38 39 40

The word ἐξομοίωσις has the meaning here of “adaptation,” “assimilation,” “becoming like”; in Opif. 18, “model” or “example” (in this case of the good demiurge, which produces the corporeal works of creation on the basis of incorporeal ideas). Translations of Philo are those of the author. In relation to χαλδαΐζειν, compare Paul’s use of ἰουδαΐζειν (Gal 2:14).

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πρότερον ἐθεάσατο, τοῦ κόσμου τινὰ ἡνίοχον καὶ κυβερνήτην ἐφεστῶτα καὶ σωτηρίως εὐθύνοντα τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον, ἐπιμέλειάν τε καὶ προστασίαν καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ μερῶν ὅσα θείας ἐπάξια φροντίδος ποιούμενον. 69 For the Chaldeans dealt mostly in astronomy. … They took the cosmos itself to be God, impiously equating that which has come to be with him who made it. 70 Having been brought up in this opinion, and having himself reasoned for a time in the manner of the Chaldeans, he [Abraham] opened the eye of his soul as if awaking from a deep sleep. And as he began to see the pure light instead of deep darkness, he followed the light and understood what he had previously not discerned, the charioteer and helmsman of the cosmos who rules over and beneficently directs his own work, exercising also care and authority over those parts [of his work] which are worthy of divine solicitude. Here, too, Philo emphasises perception through the eye as the noetic organ of the soul.41 This immersive and reflective contemplation surpasses the bare perception of the works of creation by means of the senses.42 75 ταῦτά τις ἐπιλογιζόμενος καὶ οὐ πόρρωθεν ἀλλ᾽ ἐγγύθεν ἀναδιδασκόμενος ἔκ τε ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν εἴσεται σαφῶς, ὅτι ὁ κόσμος οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ πρῶτος θεός, ἀλλ᾽ ἔργον τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ συμπάντων πατρός, ὃς ἀειδὴς ὢν πάντα φαίνει μικρῶν τε αὖ καὶ μεγάλων διαδεικνὺς τὰς φύσεις. 75 Whoever considers this and does not take instruction from what is far off, but from what is close at hand, that is from himself and what surrounds him, will be certain that the cosmos is not the first God, but the work of the first God and Father of all,43 who, himself invisible, brings everything to light, revealing the natures of both big and small things. 88 ἑκατέραν οὖν ἀπόδοσιν πεποιημένοι … ἀξιέραστον καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὸν νοῦν44 ἀπεφήναμεν, τὸν μὲν πεισθέντα λογίοις ἐκ δυσαποσπάστων 41 On ψυχῆς ὄμμα, see Opif. 4–5. 42 Philo’s use of the opposition between light and darkness may be taken as another allusion to the creation story (cf. Gen 1:2–4); this is more evident in Opif. 30–35. 43 In relation to the phrase “the first God and father of all,” see Opif. 10: “For reason grasps that the Father and Creator cares for what has been created.” The phrase is Platonic (see Plato, Tim. 28c, also Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus, v. 34). 44 The word ἀνήρ refers here to the figure of Abraham in the literal sense, the word νοῦς in the allegorical sense.

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ἀφελκυσθέντα, τὸν δὲ νοῦν, ὅτι οὐ μέχρι παντὸς ἀπατηθεὶς ἐπὶ τῆς αἰσθητῆς οὐσίας ἔστη τὸν ὁρατὸν κόσμον ὑπολαβὼν μέγιστον καὶ πρῶτον εἶναι θεόν, ἀλλὰ ἀναδραμὼν τῷ λογισμῷ φύσιν ἑτέραν ἀμείνω τῆς ὁρατῆς νοητὴν ἐθεάσατο καὶ τὸν ἀμφοῖν ποιητὴν ὁμοῦ καὶ ἡγεμόνα. 88 Now that we have paid tribute to each of them from both sides [i.e., the literal and the allegorical meanings of the story of Abraham], … we have said that both the man and the nous are worthy of love, the one because in obedience to the words he tore himself free from [bonds that were] hard to throw off, but the nous because it did not remain deceived in attending only to the existence perceptible to the senses and taking the visible cosmos to be the greatest and first God, but climbed upwards in thought and looked towards another nature superior to the visible, that is a spiritual one, and towards the Creator and Ruler of both alike. Here vision itself is in turn hierarchically divided, in a distinction between what is perceptible to the senses (ἀπατηθεὶς ἐπὶ τῆς αἰσθητῆς οὐσίας) and that which is discerned noetically (νοητὴν [φύσιν] ἐθεάσατο). By this distinction, Philo obviously is engaging in a debate between Middle Platonism and Stoicism about epistemology. The Chaldeans, in Philo’s view, represent the Stoic position that God is immanent in Nature, whereas Abraham followed the Platonic position that God is to be identified with the ideal, transcendent realm, not with materiality per se.45 2.4 Summary in Relation to the Extant Early Jewish Literature Right knowledge of God is increasingly discussed in the Hellenistic Jewish literature as a problem of reflection on the basis of perceptions of what we today call “nature.” These perceptions of nature are always related in the early Jewish texts to the question of God the creator. But for Jews, the creator of the perceivable universe and of humankind is at the same time the God of Israel who has set out his will for his people in the Torah. The Torah can therefore not stand in contradiction to creation. Rather, correct understanding leads us to read from creation the same laws of the universe as those that are also laid

45 For Philo’s interaction with philosophical issues of his time, see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Biblische Weisheit und griechische Philosophie in der frühjüdischen Literatur,” in Tora und Weisheit: Studien zur frühjüdischen Literatur, WUNT 466 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 101–48 (esp. 139–44).

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down in writing in the Torah. In this way, creation becomes the comprehensive and evident paradigm for the universal validity of the Torah.46 Alongside religious interest in the origin of the cosmos, this raises the question of correct or false religious practice in the present, and the separation from wrong ideas of God and the pagan errors in religious and ethical practice that result from them. The question is exemplified in the biblical figure of Abraham, the scriptural model of the turning away from idolatry towards the God of Israel. This line of early Jewish interpretation of Gen 11:27–12:4 shapes—amongst others—the interpretation of the figure of Abraham in the New Testament and by the church fathers; in Abraham, the one-time idolater, they see the first worshipper of the true God.47 Beyond this, the story of Abraham is a vehicle for discussion about the laws of creation, and the extent to which human beings can recognise or understand them. While reflective aspects such as these are already present in the narrative texts of early Jewish literature, it is with Philo and Josephus that they first become a central element in the reception of and reflection on the Biblical Abraham tradition. 3

Romans 1 in the Context of Early Jewish Literature

In the context of his message at stake in the letter to the Romans,48 Paul builds his argument concerning the situation of the human being before God on biblical and early Jewish traditions. He is concerned here with the distinction between circumcised and uncircumcised, Jew and pagan, in the community of worshippers of God at the end of days. The subjection of the whole of humanity to God’s will before and up until the lifetime of Abraham, alongside the possibility in principle of recognising God’s will, forms the basis of his argument for the commonality of Jews (“first”!) and non-Jews, given the godlessness and unrighteousness of all people in the light of the revelation of Christ (see

46 See Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Nomos. B. Jüdisch,” RAC 25:1020–39. On Philo, see Matthias Konradt, “Tora und Naturgesetz: Interpretatio graeca und universaler Geltungsanspruch der Mosetora bei Philo von Alexandrien,” in Juden in ihrer Umwelt: Akkulturation des Judentums in Antike und Christentum, ed. Matthias Konradt and Rainer C. Schwinges (Basel: Schwabe, 2009), 87–112; Hindy Najman, “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law,” SPhiloA 11 (1999): 555–73; Najman, “A Written Copy of the Law of Nature: An Unthinkable Paradox?,” SPhiloA 15 (2003): 54–63. 47 See Theresia Heither and Christiana Reemts, Biblische Gestalten bei den Kirchenvätern: Abraham (Münster: Aschendorff, 2005), 244–48. 48 For an overview of the discussion on this, see Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, 41–56.

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Rom 1:16–18). The argument of the first part of the letter to the Romans focuses on the revelation of Christ as the basis of belief for Jews and non-Jews alike. Thus, as the early Jewish texts referred to here indicate, Abraham already stands implicitly in the background of Paul’s argument in Rom 1:18–32. He represents a humanity led to God’s will through the knowledge of God, albeit a humanity that nevertheless does not do God’s will in reality. Abraham, as he is conceptualized in early Jewish tradition as the model of right recognition of God and of the correct religious practice that follows from it, is thereby already present, if concealed, in the argument of Romans 1, even though Paul does not refer to him by name until Rom 4:1, as “Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh.”49 In the context of the development of his argument in Rom 1:18–2:29, Paul’s judgement on wrong ideas about God and the mistaken religious practice to which they lead therefore applies to all people before Abraham; and for the time at which Paul was writing, this means both Jews and non-Jews. The particular situation of Jews is discussed more closely beginning with Rom 3:1; and from 3:21, the inclusion of both Jews and non-Jews in the salvation brought about by the God of Israel on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ is described in more detail. 4

Abraham, Paul’s Letter to the Romans and History of Religion

If Abraham can be detected already in the background of Paul’s argument in Romans 1–2, the traditional interpretation of Rom 1:18–32 (or 1:18–2:10) as referring exclusively to Gentiles becomes less convincing. Following my interpretation, all humankind, including the ancestors of Israel living before Abraham, would belong to those “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” The “all (human beings)” so typical of Paul’s argument in Romans when he refers to “Jews” and “Gentiles”50 therefore determines his argument already when he points to God’s righteous judgment against those who did not honor him as God, whether Jew or Gentile. There has never been a time according 49 Abraham’s significance here is above all as a model of faith (Rom 4:1–5), and the concern is to reject circumcision as a demand on those who already belong to the community of those who believe in Christ (Rom 4:9–12; cf. Gal 3:6–14). Paul is able to allude to other aspects of the early Jewish image of Abraham in this context: see Matthias Konradt, “‘Die aus dem Glauben, die sind Kinder Abrahams’ (Gal 3:7),” in Text, Ethik, Judentum und Christentum: Gesellschaft Ekkehard W. Stegemann zum 60. Geburtstag, vol. 1 of Kontexte der Schrift, ed. Gabriella Gelardini and Ekkehard W. Stegemann (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005), 25–48. 50 Cf. Niebuhr, “Nicht alle aus Israel sind Israel (Röm 9,6b),” 438–41; Niebuhr, “Menschenbild, Gottesverständnis und Ethik,” 147–54.

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to Paul’s understanding of “salvation history” when God did not deal with his people as there will never be such a time in any eschatological future. The time span beginning with the creation of the cosmos and reaching to its completion at the end of time has always been and will ever be a time when God is accomplishing his salvific rule over “all human beings”; that is, Jews as well as Gentiles. Paul’s understanding of the humankind as consisting of “Jews” and “Gentiles” under God’s rule, without any third party existing before, between or outside of this duality, thus reaches back already to Adam; that is, to the creation of the cosmos and of all humankind. Abraham enters the history of humankind as a model of discovering the right recognition and veneration of the one God of Israel, who is at the same time the creator of heaven and earth, and of all humankind as well. Moses and the law come into play still several generations later, according to the Bible and to Paul (Rom 4:13–15; cf. Gal 4:15–18), although the will of God expressed in the law as regards content reaches back to the days of creation, as Paul is well aware (cf. Rom 7:7–11). This view on the law corresponds to an understanding of the law of Moses as being in correlation to the “law of Nature,” as it is developed in Hellenistic Jewish circles, where Paul himself belonged.51 Even though for Paul the precondition of his argument about all humankind as standing under the wrath of God is his conviction that God has revealed his righteousness towards all who believe in Christ, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16), he does not give up his conviction that it is the God of Israel who reigns from the days of the creation of the cosmos up to the end of time. And even though Paul proves to have been nurtured by the Scriptures of Israel and trained in Greek ways of thinking, he developed rather “new” and creative ideas about the cosmos and the human beings, provoked by his experience of the risen Christ. Therefore, any divides between “Judaism,” “Hellenism,” “pagan,” or “Christian,” so popular in history-of-religions research, are to be deconstructed by careful analyses of Paul’s arguments in the contexts of contemporary sources without involving either/or fallacies. Bibliography Böttrich, Christfried. “Abraham in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments,” Pages 67–101 in Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Edited by Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eißler. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009.

51

For this, see my collection of essays: Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Tora und Weisheit: Studien zur frühjüdischen Literatur, WUNT 466 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021).

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Bousset, Wilhelm. Kyrios Christos. Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums bis Irenaeus. FRLANT 21. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913. Bultmann, Rudolf. Das Evangelium des Johannes. KEK 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1937–1941. 21st ed., 1986. Deines, Roland and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr. “The Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti-Project: From the Past to the Future.” EC 1 (2010): 633–39. Donaldson, Terence L. “Paul, Abraham’s Gentile ‘Offspring,’ and the Torah,” Pages 135– 50 in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity. Edited by Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. Ego, Beate. “Abraham im Judentum.” Pages 29–40 in Abraham in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Edited by Christfried Böttrich, Beate Ego, and Friedmann Eißler. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. Fredriksen, Paula. Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Frey, Jörg. “Temple and Rival Temple: The Cases of Elephantine, Mt. Garizim, and Leontopolis.” Pages 171–203 in Gemeinde ohne Tempel—Community without Temple. Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum. Edited by Beate Ego, Armin Lange, and Peter Pilhofer. WUNT 118. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Haacker, Klaus. Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer. 5th ed. ThHK 6. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019. Hahn, Ferdinand. “Die Gestalt Abrahams in der Sicht Philos.” Pages 203–215 in Zion: Ort der Begegnung; Festschrift für Laurentius Klein zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjahres. Edited by Ferdinand Hahn, Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, Hans Jorissen, and Angelika Neuwirth. BBB 90. Bodenheim: Athenäum, 1993. Heither, Theresia, and Christiana Reemts. Biblische Gestalten bei den Kirchenvätern: Abraham. Münster: Aschendorff, 2005. Hengel, Martin. Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jhs. v. Chr. WUNT 10. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969. 3rd ed., 1988. Holladay, Carl R. Historians. Vol. 1 of Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Chico: Scholars Press, 1983. Holladay, Carl R. Orphica. Vol. 4 of Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Jewett, Robert. Romans: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. Köckert, Matthias. Abraham: Ahnvater—Vorbild—Kultstifter. BG 31. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017. Konradt, Matthias. “‘Die aus dem Glauben, die sind Kinder Abrahams’ (Gal 3:7).” Pages 25–48 in Text, Ethik, Judentum und Christentum: Gesellschaft Ekkehard W.

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Stegemann zum 60. Geburtstag. Vol. 1 of Kontexte der Schrift. Edited by Gabriella Gelardini and Ekkehard W. Stegemann. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005. Konradt, Matthias. “Tora und Naturgesetz. Interpretatio graeca und universaler Geltungsanspruch der Mosetora bei Philo von Alexandrien.” Pages 87–112 in Juden in ihrer Umwelt: Akkulturation des Judentums in Antike und Christentum. Edited by Matthias Konradt and Rainer C. Schwinges. Basel: Schwabe, 2009. Lohse, Eduard. Der Brief an die Römer. KEK 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. Lohse, Eduard. Die Texte aus Qumran: Hebräisch und Deutsch; Mit masoretischer Punktation, Übersetzung, Einführung und Anmerkungen. 4th ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986. Mühling, Anke. “Blickt auf Abraham, euren Vater”: Abraham als Identifikationsfigur des Judentums in der Zeit des Exils und des Zweiten Tempels. FRLANT 236. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. Najman, Hindy. “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law.” SPhiloA 11 (1999): 555–73. Najman, Hindy. “A Written Copy of the Law of Nature: An Unthinkable Paradox?” SPhiloA 15 (2003): 54–63. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Biblische Weisheit und griechische Philosophie in der frühjüdischen Literatur.” Pages 101–48 in Tora und Weisheit: Studien zur frühjüdischen Literatur. WUNT 466. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Das Corpus Hellenisticum: Anmerkungen zur Geschichte eines Problems.” Pages 361–82 in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont biblischer Theologie: Mit einem Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti. Edited by Wolfgang Kraus and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr. WUNT 162. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Einführung: Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit; Der Heidenapostel aus Israel in neuer Sicht; Mit einem Nachtrag zur ‘New Perspective on Paul’ seit 2010.” Pages 1–40 in Paulus im Judentum seiner Zeit: Gesammelte Studien. WUNT 489. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. Heidenapostel aus Israel: Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen. WUNT 62. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Menschenbild, Gottesverständnis und Ethik: Zwei paulinische Argumentationen (Röm 1,18–2,29; 8,1–30),” Pages 139–61 in Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen; Internationales Symposium in Verbindung mit dem Projekt Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT) 17.–20. Mai 2012, Heidelberg. Edited by Matthias Konradt and Esther Schläpfer. WUNT 322. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014.

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Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Das Neue Testament im Kontext jüdisch-hellenistischer Literatur: Röm 1,19–23 als Testfall.” Pages 327–42 in The Hellenistic and Judaic Background to the New Testament: 29th International Biblical Conference Szeged 27–29 August, 2018. Edited by György Benyik. Szeged: JATE Press, 2019. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Nicht alle aus Israel sind Israel (Röm 9,6b): Römer 9–11 als Zeugnis paulinischer Anthropologie.” Pages 433–62 in Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11. Edited by Florian Wilk and J. Ross Wagner. WUNT 257. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Nomos. B. Jüdisch.” RAC 25:1020–39. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Offene Fragen zur Gesetzespraxis bei Paulus und seinen Gemeinden (Sabbat, Speisegebote, Beschneidung).” BThZ 25 (2008): 16–51. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre in der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion.” Pages 106–30 in Worum geht es in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Das biblische Fundament der “Gemeinsamen Erklärung” von katholischer Kirche und Lutherischem Weltbund. Edited by Thomas Söding. QD 180. Freiburg: Herder, 1999. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. “Roman Jews under Nero: Personal, Religious, and Ideological Networks in Mid-First Century Rome.” Pages 67–89 in The Last Years of Paul: Essays from the Tarragona Conference, June 2013. Edited by Armand Puig i Tàrrech, John M.G. Barclay, and Jörg Frey. WUNT 352. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm. Tora und Weisheit: Studien zur frühjüdischen Literatur. WUNT 466. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “Abraham as Chaldean Scientist and Father of the Jews: Josephus, Ant. 1.154–168, and the Greco-Roman Discourse about Astronomy/ Astrology.” JSJ 35 (2004): 119–57. Rubinkiewicz, Ryszard. L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave: Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire. Lublin: Societé de Lettres et des Sciences de l’Université de Lublin, 1987. Schröter, Jens, and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, eds. Texte zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments. UTB 3663. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Strack, Hermann Leberecht, and Paul Billerbeck. Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. Munich: Beck, 1926–1928. Repr. 1956–1961. Thiessen, Matthew. “Paul’s Argument against Gentile Circumcision in Romans 2:17– 29.” NovT 56 (2014): 373–91. Uro, Risto. Ritual and the Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Walter, Nikolaus. “Zur Chronik des Corpus Hellenisticum: Aus den Akten in Halle zusammengestellt (Halle 1955/58), mit Nachträgen Naumburg 1999.” Pages 325–44 in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont biblischer Theologie: Mit einem

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Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti. Edited by Wolfgang Kraus and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr. WUNT 162. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Wettstein, Johann Jakob. Novum Testamentum Graecum. 2 vols. Amsterdam: [n.p.], 1751–1752. Repr., Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1962. Wieser, Friedrich E. Die Abrahamvorstellungen im Neuen Testament. EHS 23. Bern: Lang, 1987. Wolter, Michael. Der Brief an die Römer. 2 vols. EKK 6. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Ostfildern: Patmos, 2014–2019.

Chapter 5

Abraham as Exemplum in Fourth Maccabees Jan Willem van Henten Most scholars presuppose that the Fourth Book of Maccabees is composed in the early imperial age, but hitherto interpretations of Fourth Maccabees have not much taken the Roman imperial cultural context into account.1 This contribution is an attempt to bridge this gap by an analysis of Abraham’s role as a model in Fourth Maccabees in comparison to the role of exempla (exemplary figures) in Roman literature in the late republican and early imperial age. From a Roman perspective, Fourth Maccabees can be characterized as exemplary discourse.2 In all extant chapters, biblical or postbiblical heroes play a prominent role as models who highlight specific virtues and/or preferred values and customs, analogous to the function of exempla in Roman literature and the public domain through monuments and inscriptions. The importance of exempla in the Roman literary context can, for example, quickly be glanced from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which includes lists of exempla that illustrate the superiority of the Roman nation. Even closer to Fourth Maccabees is the Roman author Valerius Maximus, who wrote under Tiberius and also highlights religious exempla in his work Memorable Doings and Sayings. This work is a literary monument, foremost for Rome, but also for other nations, which presents in a loose structure circa one thousand two hundred positive and negative models of remarkable deeds and virtues. Matthew Roller has studied the role of Roman exempla in literary and material sources in depth. He developed a pattern of the functions of exempla that I will apply for my own analysis of Abraham in Fourth Maccabees.3 Building on 1 Douglas A. Campbell, The Rhetoric of Righteousness in Romans 3.21–26, JSNTSup 65 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 219–28, argues for a date after 135 CE; see also n. 2 below. 2 For discussions of introductory matters, see, inter alia, Jan Willem van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviours of the Jewish People: A Study of 2 and 4 Maccabees, JSJSup 57 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 58–82; David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees, GAP (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary, SCSer (Leiden: Brill, 2006), xi–liv; Folker Siegert, Einleitung in die Hellenistisch-Jüdische Literatur: Apokrypha, Pseudepigrapha und Fragmente verlorener Autorenwerke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 564–83. 3 Matthew B. Roller, “Exemplarity in Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia,” CP 99 (2004): 1–56. Also Roller, Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and the references in n. 4 below.

© Jan Willem van Henten, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004722620_007

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Roller, my discussion of the key passages about Abraham in Fourth Maccabees will focus on: (1) the actions by Abraham as described in Fourth Maccabees, (2) their assessment by the author, (3) their commemoration, and (4) the imitation of Abraham’s deeds by other figures in the book. I will also discuss the implications of Abraham’s use as an exemplum in Fourth Maccabees for its intended audience: Which virtues, attitudes, and customs are highlighted by Abraham as a model? Before introducing Roller’s pattern, I will give a brief survey of the role of exempla in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and Valerius Flaccus’s Memorable Doings and Sayings. 1

Roman Exempla

In Roman literature, persons could be presented as models of virtue (exempla virtutis) either in the context of private lives or in the setting of the public affairs of the Roman state.4 The etymology of exemplum (