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Apocalypse of Abraham

About this book

The Journey to Horeb

Chapter 12

1 And we went, the two of us together, for forty days and nights, 2 and I ate no bread, and drank no water,⁠ because my food was to see the angel who was with me, and his speech was my drink.⁠ 3 And we came to the Mount of God, the glorious Horeb. 4 And I said to the angel: "Singer of the Eternal One! Look, I have no sacrifice with me, and I do not know of a place for an altar on the mountain: how can I bring a sacrifice?" 5 And he said to me: "Look behind you!" 6 And I looked behind me, and saw all the prescribed sacrificial (animals) following us: the young heifer, and the female goat, and the ram, and the turtledove, and the pigeon. 7 And the angel said to me: "Abraham!" I said: "Here I am." 8 And he said to me: "Slaughter all these, and divide the animals in half, placing the halves opposite each other, but do not cut the birds apart;⁠ 9 and ("but") give the halves to the men I will show you standing beside you, for these are the altar on the Mountain, to offer a sacrifice to the Eternal; 10 but give the turtledove and the pigeon to me, for I will go up on the wings of the birds, to show you what is in heaven, and on the earth, and in the sea, and in the abyss, and in the underworld, and in the Garden of Eden, and in its rivers and in the fullness of the whole world and its circle; you will see everything in (them)."

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 34:28 and Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

In Exodus, Moses spends forty days and nights without bread or water while God renews his covenant with Israel. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, Abraham keeps the same fast on the way to Horeb and reaches the mountain of revelation before Moses does.

Passages

Exodus 34:28

Hebrew Bible
27 The Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 So he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights; he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. 29 Now when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand—when he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to approach him.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And we went, the two of us together, for forty days and nights, 2 and I ate no bread, and drank no water, because my food was to see the angel who was with me, and his speech was my drink. 3 And we came to the Mount of God, the glorious Horeb. 4 And I said to the angel: "Singer of the Eternal One! Look, I have no sacrifice with me, and I do not know of a place for an altar on the mountain: how can I bring a sacrifice?" 5 And he said to me: "Look behind you!" 6 And I looked behind me, and saw all the prescribed sacrificial (animals) following us: the young heifer, and the female goat, and the ram, and the turtledove, and the pigeon.
70–150 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Apocalypse of Abraham

References

“... Here is a likely allusion to Exodus 34:28,16 which reports that Moses was with God forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai without eating bread or drinking water. ...”
Andrei A. Orlov, Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 98.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 34:28 and Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2

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