Apocalypse of Abraham

The Apocalypse of Abraham is a pseudepigraphic work (a text whose claimed authorship is unfounded) based on the Old Testament. Probably composed between about 70–150 AD, it is of Jewish origin and is usually considered to be part of the Apocalyptic literature. It has survived only in Old Slavonic recensions—it is not regarded as authoritative scripture by Jews or any Christian group.

Manuscript tradition

The text of the Apocalypse of Abraham has been preserved only in Slavonic; it occurs in the Tolkovaja Paleja (or Explanatory Paleja, a Medieval compendium of various Old Testament texts and comments that also preserved the Ladder of Jacob). The original language of this text was almost surely Hebrew: it was translated into Slavonic either directly from Hebrew or from a lost intermediate Greek translation. The whole text survives in six manuscripts usually gathered in two families: the main manuscript of the first family is referred to as S edited by Tixonravov in 1863, while the main manuscripts of the other family, which preserve the text integrated in other material of the Tolkovaja Paleja, are referred to as A, B and K. The first English translation appeared in 1898 in the LDS magazine Improvement Era, and another notable English translation was produced by G.H. Box and J.I. Landsman some twenty years later.