Texts in conversation

Compare Ladder of Jacob 4:2 and Apocalypse of Abraham 28:4

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

Summary

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.

Passages

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.

1–100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Ladder of Jacob

Apocalypse of Abraham 28:4

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

1 And I answered and said: "Mighty, [Eternal One], holy through Your power! Please grant my request, [for this You have brought me up here, so show me]. As You have brought me up to Your height, 2 so explain [this] to me, Your beloved one, what I ask: will what I saw happen to them for long?" 3 And He showed me a great crowd of His people, 4 and said to me: "Because of them, through four movements, as you saw, they will provoke me, and in these my punishment for their deeds will be (accomplished). 5 But during the fourth movement of a hundred years and one hour of the age, which is a hundred years, it will suffer misfortune among the pagans [but one hour in mercy and insults, as among the pagans]."

70–150 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Apocalypse of Abraham

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. ...”

Kenneth R. Jones, Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha, JSJSup 151 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 252–253.

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

Ladder of Jacob8 chapters

Compare Ladder of Jacob 4:2 and Apocalypse of Abraham 28:4

Summary

Passages

Ladder of Jacob 4:2

Apocalypse of Abraham 28:4

References

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