Dear Friends,

This is my tenth post of direct commentary on How Jesus Became God, by Bart Ehrman. Check here for my introductory comments.

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We begin today’s post with the same question we used in the last post….did Paul believe Jesus was just a supercharged angel?

The ancient writing that Ehrman rolls out today to indirectly support his claims that Paul was a heretic is called the Apocalypse of Abraham .

Never heard of it? That’s your first clue…

Apocalypse of Abraham

In the relevant passage from this anonymous, non-canonical, “seldom-read” (1), ancient book, Abraham meets a high-ranking angel “in the likeness of a man” (Ehrman, 48 of 302) who has been sent to help him. The angel makes several extraordinary claims about himself and then is described in fantastic detail. Ehrman summarizes this passage like this: “Here then is a mighty angel, who temporarily becomes incarnate, in order to effect God’s will on earth…” Again, he’s making this point so he can later argue that Paul himself believed that Jesus himself was a mighty angel.

This book was written around 100 AD, according to several sources, including a lecturer in rabbinic Hebrew at King’s College, London (2). That would make it around 30-40 years later than Paul’s letter to the Philippians (3), which seems close enough to try to use it as a lens through which to understand Philippians.

The evidence that never showed up

But here’s the main problem as I see it…we have ZERO copies of this book surviving in the original langauge.

“The text of the Apocalypse of Abraham has been preserved only in Slavonic…The original language of this text was almost certainly Hebrew: it was translated into Slavonic either directly from Hebrew or from a lost intermediate Greek translation” (4). And to make matters worse, the oldest copy of that Slavonic translation has been dated to the first half of the fourteenth century.

Take note that I am not demanding the original autograph…just a copy thereof, or a copy of a copy of a copy, even if just a fragment, etc.

We don’t have it.

The evidence that never showed up…contextualized

By contrast, Paul’s letter to the Philippians (which epistle Ehrman is going to try to reinterpret for us partially based on an indirect appeal to the Apocalypse of Abraham and other extra-Biblical texts) boasts numerous ancient Greek copies. Here’s just one 3rd-century example from Britannica:

“P⁴⁶, Beatty Biblical Papyrus II (and Papyrus 222 at the University of Michigan), consists of 86 leaves of an early-3rd-century (c. 200) codex quire containing the Pauline Letters in the following order: Romans, Hebrews, I and II Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and I Thessalonians.” (5)

So, why am I making such a big deal out of this absence of ancient copies? Because said absence raises serious questions in my mind about:

• What the original text of this anonymous, non-canonical, seldom-read text actually said
• How popular/influential this anonymous, non-canonical, seldom-read text actually was
• Therefore, whether Ehrman should really be leveraging it when trying to understand Philippians

Wait, what about retweets?

References to the Apocalypse of Abraham appear much too late for what Ehrman is trying to do with it.

As I did in the last post about The Prayer of Joseph, I also looked for references to the Apocalypse of Abraham by other ancient writers. The more ancient references there are, the more influential we can say it was, and the more justification Ehrman would have to leverage it when interpreting Philippians.

For The Prayer of Joseph (which already seemed like a desperate move on Ehrman’s part), we had to fast forward to the 3rd century to get our first reference to it by another writer…kinda late, right? But the Apocalypse of Abraham fares even worse than The Prayer of Joseph. To wit:

• Implied reference to Apocalypse of Abraham in the Clementine Recognitions
  • 4th century document (6)
  • No mention of the “Apocalypse of Abraham”, just similar material (2)
  • And by the way, this work is itself almost entirely lost in its own original language…we rely almost entirely on a Latin translation (6)
• More direct reference in Epiphanius’s Against Heresies
  • 4th century document (2), (7), (8)
  • Mentions a heretical sect possessing a book written in the name of Abraham, which they declared to be an apocalypse (2)

By contrast, our earliest reference to Paul’s letter to the Philippians is from an early 2nd century letter to the Philippians written by Polycarp (9), (10).

Shaky sauce on a shady roll, with a side of flaky

In closing, I quote the same scholar, G. H. Box, who said the Clementine Recognitions refer to the Apocalypse of Abraham (2):

“The possibility remains to be considered that our Apocalypse may have assumed different forms (by enlargement or curtailment) and have been adapted at different times for different purposes.”

Taking his advice, we should consider that his claimed Clementine reference to the Apocalypse might be pointing to an edition of the Apocalypse far removed from the original (i.e. much later than 100 AD)!

The Apocalypse of Abraham is an anonymous, non-canonical, seldom-read text which exists only in translations and is referenced centuries after the composition of the letter (from Paul to the Philippians) it’s supposed to help us interpret.

I’ll pass, what about you? 

God bless,

TFOTF

Links:

1: Jewish literature between the Bible and the Mishnah : a historical and literary introduction (George Nickelsburg, 2005, page 285, available at Internet Archive)

2: Apocalypse of Abraham per G. H. Box

3: Philippians at Brittanica

4: Apocalypse of Abraham on Wikipedia

5: Minuscules on Britannica

6: Clementine Literature on Wikipedia

7: Epiphanius on Wikipedia

8. Epiphanius on Britannica

9. Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians

10. Wikipedia’s discussion of Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians