Note sur la réception du Testament d’Abrahamdans la tradition arabo-islamique

This brief note aims at contributing to the study of the reception of parabiblical narratives in hadith literature and Islamic historiography. Taking the Testament of Abraham as a case study, it sets out to analyse a particular literary motif shared by this text and an early version of the miʿrāǧ (Ascension) of the Prophet Muhammad. The comparative analysis demonstrates that the Testament of Abraham could have provided a number of elements for the redaction of at least one particular section of the miʿrāǧ. This hypothesis finds support in other cases of textual correspondence between several sections of the Testament of Abraham and other Islamic works such as the Tafsīr of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 150/767), the unedited Kitāb Mubtadaʾ al-dunyā wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ of Abū Ḥuḏayfa al-Buḫārī Isḥāq ibn Bišr (d. 206/821) and Ibn ʿAsākir’s Taʾrīḫ madīnat Dimašq (d. 571/1176). The examined material thus throws additional light on the continuity between late antique apocrypha and nascent Arabic literature.

In Terram Visionis

In his Transfiguration homily (ca. 1315) Nicephorus Choumnus, a pre-Palamite thinker, put forward a theory that Abraham at the oak of Mamre was granted the vision of the Trinity. This is the third type of the exegesis of Genesis 18, according to Lars Thunberg. By comparison with: (a) Gregory of Nyssa and other patristic authors; (b) the early second-century Testament of Abraham (TA) we have put forward a hypothesis that Abraham, in Choumnus’ view, was granted the vision of the divine light and glory, most likely, in the form of a bright cloud very similar to that which later overshadowed the elected of the prophets and the Apostles on Mount Tabor. Thus, Nicephorus Choumnus mentioned Abraham together with such symbolic OT figures, as Moses and Elijah, who had also the honor of seeing the Face of God on Tabor.

Bemerkungen zu einer Rezension, und zugleich Überlegungen zur Editionspraxis christlich-arabischer bzw. äthiopischer Übersetzungsliteratur

A recently published review on the Testament of Abraham (as ed. by M. Heide) is raising important questions that deal with the adequate method of preparing critical editions of Oriental texts. Besides, the review has not a small number of misunderstandings that need to be clarified.

Echoes of Universalist Testament Literature in Christian and Rabbinic Texts

The ancient text known as the Testament of Abraham is preserved in Coptic in the same codex as two other works, the Testament of Isaac and the Testament of Jacob. These testaments were probably written in the late first or early second centuries CE by Jewish writers, although the manuscript of the Coptic codex containing them is dated to 962. These books were considered part of the “testament” literary genre, which featured a biblical hero imparting his last words of religious wisdom to his family gathered at his bedside. Scholars agree that the stylistic and theological differences among these three testaments indicate that they were not written by the same author. Yet a close reading reveals that the Testament of Isaac is dependent on the Testament of Abraham, and that the Testament of Jacob is dependent on the two earlier texts. Moreover, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac share similarities that distinguish them from the Testament of Jacob: unlike the Testament of Jacob, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac reflect a universalist worldview that depicts a God concerned for all humankind, not only for his chosen people. This God reigns over all people, and themes specific to the Christian and Jewish faiths are virtually absent. Later Christian and Jewish literature concerning the theme of divine judgment exhibits elements that may reflect an awareness of a written or oral tradition that appears in the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac. The images of judgment and punishment, especially those in the Testament of Abraham, appear in the second-century Apocalypse of Peter and the fourth-century Vision of Paul, which is also known as the Apocalypse of Paul. Likewise, midrashic traditions regarding Abraham and Moses are reminiscent of traditions found in these testaments, particularly the Testament of Abraham. The possibility that early Christian apocalyptic texts were aware of these testaments is grounded in the fact that scholars give these texts a common place of origin, Egypt. The provenance of the midrashic texts is more difficult to identify, but because they share literary elements and theological concerns with the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac, I suggest that the authors of these midrashic traditions had access to written or oral traditions prominent in these testaments. This paper will examine early Christian apocalyptic and early Jewish midrashic texts that modify some of the traditions prominent in these testaments in order to accommodate their nonuniversalist rabbinic or early Christian worldviews.

The Construction and Subversion of Patriarchal Perfection: Abraham and Exemplarity in Philo, Josephus, and the Testament of Abraham

In dialogue with recent research on the Roman discourse of exemplarity, this article explores representations of Abraham in selected sources from the first and early second centuries C.E. In the first part of the article, references to the patriarch in the writings of Philo and Josephus are considered in light of the transformation of Greek ideas about exempla by Roman authors like Polybius, Livy, and Valerius Maximus. In the second part, the inversion of Abraham's exemplarity in the Testament of Abraham is investigated in relation to the treatment of famous figures in the Apocolocyntosis and in Juvenal's 10th Satire. By juxtaposing the use of exempla in contemporaneous Roman and Jewish writings, the article explores their parallel reflections on the power of the past and shows how Romans and Jews alike appropriated of elements of Greek culture for the articulation of new expressions of local pride, ethnic specificity, and cultural resistance.