Ladder of Jacob

The Ladder of Jacob (Hebrew: Sulam Yaakov סולם יעקב) is a pseudepigraphic writing (a text whose claimed authorship is unfounded) of the Old Testament. It is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature. The text has been preserved only in Slavonic, and it is clearly a translation from a now lost Greek version. It is not regarded as scripture by Jews or any Christian group.

The text of the Ladder of Jacob has been preserved only in Old Church Slavonic; it is found in the Tolkovaja Paleja, a compendium of various Old Testament texts and comments which also preserved the Apocalypse of Abraham. The Tolkovaja Paleja is a compilation of texts assembled in the 8th or 9th century in Greek and later translated into Slavonic; it is the only translation that has survived. Some plays on words in the Ladder of Jacob suggest an original Hebrew text, or a Greek text intended for readers with at least some knowledge of Hebrew.

Two recensions of the Ladder of Jacob have been identified: a longer one, usually denoted A, which survives in three manuscripts, and a shorter one, usually called B, which is represented by the majority of the manuscript tradition. The chief difference between these is that the shorter recension reduces drastically the prayer of Jacob and omits the name of the angel Sariel (2:2-5:1).

The date and origin of the Ladder of Jacob are uncertain. It is possible to infer at least three stages: an original work written in a Jewish context after the Destruction of the Temple, the use in early Byzantine world and the final translation in Slavonic around the ninth century. In the Christian stages the text was interpolated to form an anti-Jewish polemic, by adding some comments here and there, omitting some sentences and adding a Christian conclusion: Chapter Seven has Christian origin. The expectation of a delayed warrior Messiah and the similarities with 2 Baruch, Apocalypse of Abraham and other apocalyptic literature suggest the original text may have been written in the first half of the second century CE.

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