Testament of Abraham

The Testament of Abraham is a pseudepigraphic text of the Old Testament. Probably composed in the 1st or 2nd century CE, it is of Jewish origin and is usually considered to be part of the apocalyptic literature. It is regarded as scripture by Beta Israel Ethiopian Jews, but not by any other Jewish or Christian groups. It is often treated as one of a trio of very similar works, the other two of which are the Testament of Isaac and Testament of Jacob, though there is no reason to assume that they were originally a single work. All three works are based on the Blessing of Jacob, found in the Bible, in their style.

The Greek text of the Testament of Abraham is preserved in two quite different recensions:

There is no consensus among scholars as to which recension is nearer the original, or whether we shall suppose one or more original texts. The early scholars, as James, but also recently Ludlow, working mainly on the narrative viewpoint, support the priority of the long recension. This view has been challenged for example by Turner, who studied the text from a linguistic point of view, and mainly by Schmidt, who worked deeply on manuscript E of the short recension, which was not available to the early editors.

The text is preserved also in Slavonic,Romanian, Ethiopic (Falasha), Coptic Bohairic and Arabic. These versions, apart one Romanian recension, follow the content of the Greek short recension. The Greek Text was first edited, with an English translation and introduction, by M. R. James in 1892. The Greek text was also early edited by Vassiliev in 1893. in Luc. xxxv. With the exception of x.xi. the work is really a legend and not an apocalypse. To the above conclusions Schürer, takes objection, and denies the reference in Origen, asserting that there are no grounds for the assumption of a partial Jewish origin. Kohler on the other hand has given adequate grounds for regarding this apocryph as in the main an independent work of Jewish origin subsequently enlarged by a few Christian additions, and it is Kohler's stance that most scholars follow today.

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