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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 Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2 and John 4:32

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · New Testament

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Summary

In John, Jesus calls doing God's will his food. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, Abraham also speaks figuratively while he fasts for forty days, calling the sight of the angel his food and the angel's speech his drink.

Passages

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

John 4:32

New Testament
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” 33 So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Don’t you say, ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see that the fields are already white for harvest! 36 The one who reaps receives pay and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together. 37 For in this instance the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
90–110 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in John

References

“... Cf. John iv. 31-34. Elijah ate and drank before starting on his journey to Horeb, and “went in the strength of that meat fort y days and forty nights” (1 Kings xix. 8): cf. Ex. xxiv. 18. There is a close parallel to our text in Philo, Life of Moses, Bk. III. 1, where it is said of Moses in the Mount: “he neglected all meat and drink fo r forty days together, evidently because he had more excellent food than that in those contemplations with which he was inspired from above from heaven. ...”
G. H. Box with J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918), PDF 32.

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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Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2 and John 4:32

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