Texts in Conversation
In the Ladder of Jacob, an angel explains the temple's destruction and punishment for Jacob's descendants through four periods of time. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, God uses a similar four-part plan to explain how long Abraham's descendants will suffer.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ladder of Jacob 4:2
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
1 But he said this to me: The ladder which you saw, which had twelve steps having two human faces which changed their appearance — now this ladder is this age, and the twelve steps are the times of this age, and the twenty-four faces are the kings of the lawless Gentiles of this age. 2 Under these kings [your children's children and the line] of your sons will be tested: they will rise up against the lawlessness of your descendants, and will lay this place waste through four descents of the sins of your descendants. 3 And from the wealth of the ancestors this palace will be built in the temple of the name of your God and your fathers; but through the anger of your descendants it will be desolate until the fourth descent of this age; for you saw four visions.
Apocalypse of Abraham 28:4
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And I answered and said: "O Mighty, [Eternal One], hallowed by Your power! Be favourable to my petition, [for for this You have brought me up here — and show me]. As You have brought me up to Your height, 2 so make [this] known to me, Your beloved one, as much as I ask — whether what I saw shall happen to them for long?" 3 And He showed me a multitude of His people, 4 and said to me: "On their account through four issues, as you saw, I shall be provoked by them, and in these my retribution for their deeds shall be (accomplished). 5 But in the fourth outgoing of a hundred years and one hour of the age — the same is a hundred years — it shall be in misfortune among the heathen [but one hour in mercy and contumely, as among the heathen]."
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Notes and References
“... The exact meaning of the four ascents is not entirely clear. The term is used twice. In a vision Abraham sees the heathen running towards the seed of Abraham through four ascents and then burning the temple. God interprets this by telling Abraham that his anger will come upon Abraham’s seed through the four ascents and in them will be retribution for their works. He goes on to say that the fourth ascent is one hundred years, so it is clear that the ascents are to be taken as time-periods (28.5). The same phrase appears in the Ladder of Jacob, another pseudepigraphon preserved only in Old Church Slavonic and related in various ways to the Apocalypse of Abraham, where it appears also to have a temporal significance. Most scholars have understood the four ascents to refer to the four kingdoms of Daniel, modified, as they are in other apocalypses, to signify Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. ...”
Jones, Kenneth R.
Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha
(pp. 252-253) Brill, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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