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Exodus 34 has Moses spend forty days and nights without bread or water while receiving the covenant. The Apocalypse of Abraham echoes this fast on the way to Horeb, placing Abraham at the mountain of revelation before the time of Moses.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
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.
Apocalypse of Abraham 12:2
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And we went, the two of us together, 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 — that 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! Behold! I have no sacrifice with me, nor am I aware of a place of an altar on the mountain: how can I bring a sacrifice?" 5 And he said to me: "Look round!" 6 And I looked round, and behold! there were following us all the prescribed sacrificial (animals) — the young heifer, and the she-goat, and the ram, and the turtle-dove, and the pigeon.
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Notes and 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. ...”
Orlov, Andrei
Heavenly Priesthood in the Apocalypse of Abraham
(p. 98) Cambridge University Press, 2013
* 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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