The Testament of Abraham

The patriarch did not write it. Beyond that, the honest answer to most questions about its composition is that scholars propose rather than know.

It is generally regarded as a Jewish work, probably composed in Egypt, and commonly placed around the end of the first century AD or early in the second — Cambridge's Outside the Old Testament, for example, describes it as probably Jewish and Egyptian and places it in the latter first century. The Greek is thought to be original rather than translated, and it is written in a register that deliberately recalls the Greek Old Testament, which is part of the argument for a Greek-speaking Jewish milieu.

Fr Stephen De Young describes it as a first-century AD text, written in Greek and consciously composed in a style resembling Greek Old Testament literature. That is consistent with the mainstream view rather than at odds with it.

What is disputed: the precise date, the firmness of the Egyptian provenance, how much Christian shaping the text underwent in transmission, and — most consequentially — which of the two surviving recensions stands closer to whatever was first written. Nothing on this page rests on a confident answer to any of those.

This is the first thing to know about the Testament of Abraham, and the thing most often ignored. Two substantially different Greek recensions survive, conventionally the Long (A) and the Short (B), and they are not two copies of one text. They differ in length, in order, in detail, and in some of what they say happens.

Which is earlier has been argued for well over a century, and the argument is not settled. M. R. James inclined one way, Francis Schmidt made the influential case for the shorter form standing closer to the original, and the modern consensus is mostly that neither recension can simply be called the original and that the earlier form cannot be reconstructed with certainty from either.

The practical consequence governs the whole page. Several of the most-quoted features — the named angels Dokiel and Puriel, the fullest form of the weighing, Abraham's intercession for the balanced soul — belong to the Long Recension. Combining details from both into one seamless account produces a text nobody ever wrote.

So any theological claim made from this book has to say which recension it is drawing on. Where this page describes something that belongs to one form only, it says so.

The work survives in Greek in both recensions, and in a spread of Eastern Christian translations — Slavonic, Romanian, Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic. That spread is the substance behind the observation that it was copied and translated across the Orthodox world, and it is real: this is not a text recovered by nineteenth-century antiquarians from a single codex.

M. R. James produced the first proper edition of the Greek in 1892; Francis Schmidt's critical edition of both recensions followed in 1986, and Dale Allison's commentary is the major modern treatment. E. P. Sanders' translation of both recensions in Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha is the standard English rendering.

Two cautions. First, the versions in other languages are not simply windows onto the Greek — they have their own histories and can differ. Second, the same distinction that applies everywhere in this section applies here with particular force: Eastern Christians preserved this text extensively, and preservation is not canonisation, liturgical use, or doctrinal authority. All four are separate questions, and only the first can be answered yes.

God decides that Abraham's life is complete and sends Michael to tell him to set his house in order. Michael comes, and Abraham — not knowing who he is — receives him with the hospitality he is famous for, washing his feet and preparing a meal.

Then Michael cannot say it. He goes back up to God for further instruction, and comes back, and still cannot. In the Long Recension a cypress tree speaks; Isaac has a dream that frightens the household; and Abraham begins to understand what is standing in his house.

He refuses to go. Instead he asks, before he dies, to be shown the whole inhabited world. God grants it, and Michael takes him up on a chariot of cherubim above the earth.

There Abraham looks down and sees people in the act of sin — and calls down destruction on them, which happens. God stops him, and the rebuke is the hinge of the book: Abraham has not sinned and so has no pity for sinners, whereas God delays judgment so that they may repent. Abraham is taken instead to the two gates, where Adam sits between the broad way and the narrow, weeping over the many and rejoicing over the few; and to the judgment, where deeds are recorded, weighed and tried by fire.

He is shown a soul whose good and evil are exactly equal, and prays for it; it is saved. He then repents of the sinners he destroyed and intercedes for them, and they are restored. Only now is he ready — and still he refuses.

Death is sent. He comes first in a beautiful form, and Abraham questions him; when Death shows what he really is, servants of the household die at the sight, and Abraham prays and they are restored. In the end Death deceives him into taking his hand, and his soul departs. Michael and the angels receive it; the body is buried at the oak of Mamre; the soul is carried up to Paradise.

Michael carries more of this book than any other figure, and the portrait is fuller than in most ancient literature. He is God's messenger to Abraham, and titled in the Greek as commander-in-chief of the heavenly host — the archistrategos, which is the title Orthodox tradition itself uses of him.

His characterisation is the surprise. He is reluctant. He cannot bring himself to deliver the message, weeps, and returns to heaven more than once for further instruction — an archangel visibly finding an errand difficult. In the Short Recension he also ascends to lead the worship of heaven, which places his obedience and his liturgical office side by side.

He is then Abraham's guide: he takes him above the earth on the chariot, restrains him when he starts destroying sinners, brings him to the two gates and the judgment, and explains what he is seeing — identifying Abel, and Enoch, and what the scales and the fire are for. At the end he is present at Abraham's death and among those who receive his soul.

Set against Scripture, this fits rather than stretches. Michael contends with hostile powers in Daniel 10 and stands for God's people in Daniel 12; he disputes with the devil over the body of Moses in Jude 9; he fights the dragon in Revelation 12. What belongs specifically to this book is the reluctance, the hospitality scene, the chariot, the role as interpreter of the judgment, and the tenderness — none of which is Scripture, and all of which is why the portrait is worth reading.

Michael receives Abraham's soul, and angels carry it to Paradise. Whether that makes him a psychopomp — a heavenly escort of souls — is a fair question and one worth answering carefully, because the modern label can import more than the text supports.

What the text shows is Michael escorting this soul, on this occasion, by God's command, alongside other angels. It does not present him as the universal conductor of every soul, and claims that it does go beyond it.

Orthodox tradition does independently know angels attending the departing — in the funeral and memorial services, in hagiography, in the lives of the saints. Those traditions have their own roots and are not derived from this book. The relationship is a broad thematic parallel, and this page classifies it as no more than that.

The personification of Death is the most striking thing in the book after Michael, and one of the fullest in ancient literature.

Death is sent by God and obeys God — which is the frame everything else sits in. He is not an independent power and not, in any straightforward sense, a demon; he is a servant with a commission, and he argues with Abraham rather than seizing him.

He appears first in a beautiful and radiant form, so that Abraham does not at first recoil, and converses with him. When Abraham presses him to show what he truly is, the second form is monstrous — in the Long Recension a horror of many faces and fiery aspects — and servants of the household die merely at the sight of it. Abraham prays, and they are restored.

The Long Recension also suggests that the two appearances are fitted to their audiences: Death comes to the righteous in one form and to the wicked in another. That is a literary and moral idea, not a doctrinal statement about how anyone dies.

In the end Death takes Abraham by deception rather than by force: he persuades him to take his hand, and the soul departs. Scripture has its own personifications and hostile figures around death — the destroyer of Exodus 12, the devil who holds the power of death in Hebrews 2.14, the rider of Revelation 6, Death and Hades cast into the lake of fire in Revelation 20 — and this figure belongs to the same broad imaginative world without being any of them. It is a literary personification, and Orthodox doctrinal statements about death should not be drawn from it.

Abraham is brought to a place where two gates stand, one broad and one narrow, and souls are driven through them. Between them, on a golden throne, sits a man of terrible and glorious appearance, who weeps and then rejoices and then weeps again.

It is Adam. He weeps when many souls pass through the broad gate, and rejoices when a few pass through the narrow — grieving and delighting over his own descendants as they go to destruction or to life. The scene belongs to the Long Recension in its fullest form.

The resemblance to Matthew 7.13–14, with its wide gate and broad way and the narrow gate that few find, is obvious and should be left as a resemblance. Whether the Testament knows the saying, or both draw on a common image, is not something this page will assert; scholars have not settled it, and a shared metaphor is weak evidence for dependence in either direction.

What the scene does contribute is the figure of Adam as representative of the race, watching what becomes of it — an idea that Christian tradition took up powerfully elsewhere, and that appears in this book without any Christian framing around it.

Beyond the gates Abraham is shown a judgment, and its machinery is described in unusual detail: a throne, a judge, books in which deeds are written, angels recording, a balance in which souls are weighed, and fire by which their works are tested.

Some of that is thoroughly scriptural in its elements. Books of deeds are opened before the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7.10; a book of remembrance is written in Malachi 3.16; names are written in heaven in Luke 10.20; the books are opened and the dead judged from what is written in them in Revelation 20.12. Heavenly record-keeping is an ordinary feature of Second Temple Judaism and of Scripture alike.

Other elements are distinctive to this book and should be labelled as such: the particular identity assigned to the judge, the named angels who hold the balance and apply the fire, the exact mechanics of the weighing, and the treatment of the case where the two sides come out equal.

The Long Recension also indicates a judgment in stages — this present judging, then a judgment by the twelve tribes of Israel, and finally by God Himself. That structure is peculiar to the work, and it should not be read as a description of the Orthodox teaching on judgment, which is not derived from it.

The judge on the throne is Abel — the son of Adam, and the first righteous man to die. Michael explains his presence to Abraham: he judges because he was the first to be murdered, and he will judge until the great judgment comes.

This is a genuinely surprising identification, and it belongs to this book. Scripture gives Abel his blood crying from the ground in Genesis 4, his testimony among the faithful in Hebrews 11.4, and his blood that speaks better things in Hebrews 12.24 — and nowhere gives him a judicial office. Nothing here supports presenting Abel as a judge of souls in Orthodox teaching, and the motif should be recorded as a feature of the Testament rather than as a doctrine of the particular judgment.

Beside the judgment stands Enoch, identified as the scribe of righteousness, writing down the sins and the righteous deeds of each soul. That role connects the book to the wider Enochic tradition — Enoch is a heavenly scribe in 1 Enoch and in 2 Enoch, and heavenly tablets are fundamental to Jubilees — without making this a work of that literature. Genesis says only that Enoch walked with God and was taken; everything else about him here is later development.

Michael also describes the records being brought and read, with cherubim associated with the books in the Long Recension. The distinction to hold throughout is between the biblical motif of heavenly record-keeping, which is well attested, and the specific personnel this book assigns to it, which is not.

Two angels are named at the judgment in the Long Recension, and they are the reason this page needs a warning.

Dokiel holds the balance and weighs the soul's righteous deeds against its sins — described as the sun-like angel, the righteous weigher. Puriel applies the fire that tests each person's works; the name is built on the Greek for fire, and he is described as showing no mercy in the testing.

Both belong to the Long Recension. Neither appears in the Short Recension, and the forms of the names vary between manuscripts.

Neither is a recognised angel of Orthodox tradition. No Orthodox liturgical text names them, no Council received them, and they belong to no order of the received hierarchy. This matters because modern lists circulating online routinely present Dokiel and Puriel as archangels alongside Michael and Gabriel, on no better authority than an appearance in one recension of one pseudepigraphon — which is precisely the error this section exists to prevent.

The motif they serve — weighing deeds, testing by fire — is much older and wider than either name, and scholars have compared it with judgment traditions across the ancient Mediterranean. The motif is worth knowing. The names are two words in a Greek manuscript.

The most theologically loaded episode in the book is a single hard case. A soul is weighed and its sins and its righteous deeds come out exactly equal, so that it can be assigned to neither side and is set in the middle, unresolved.

Abraham asks Michael what can be done, and they pray for it together — and it is saved. In the Long Recension this is immediately followed by Abraham's repentance for the sinners he had destroyed from the chariot, his intercession for them, and their restoration.

The narrative logic is exact and is the point of the whole work. The man who began by calling down destruction because he had never sinned is shown the judgment, meets one soul caught in the balance, and learns to pray instead. Abraham the intercessor of Genesis 18, bargaining for Sodom, has been rediscovered — and the book then requires him to submit to death himself, which he has been refusing all along.

Two cautions, and they matter. This scene is not evidence that Orthodox Christianity teaches a mathematical accounting of merits; it is ancient judgment imagery, and reading a merit system out of it misunderstands the genre. And while intercession for the dead is genuinely Orthodox practice with its own liturgical and patristic grounding, this book is not its source and should not be used to prove it.

Modern scholars regularly note that the tone of this book is unlike its neighbours, and some — Jared Ludlow's study most directly — read it as substantially comic.

The evidence is not subtle. An archangel is dispatched with a simple message and cannot deliver it, and has to go back to heaven for help. The greatest of the patriarchs simply declines to die, repeatedly, and negotiates. He asks for a sightseeing tour as a delaying tactic. Death has to put on a disguise, and is then talked at. The righteous man turns out to be merciless and has to be corrected by God.

How seriously to take the humour is disputed, and the disagreement is worth stating rather than resolving. But it bears directly on how the book should be used: this is a work of narrative art with a moral point, not a cosmological manual, and treating every scene as a literal description of the mechanics of the afterlife misreads what kind of writing it is.

The Testament of Abraham is not in any Orthodox biblical canon. No council received it. No Father is demonstrably shown to quote it, and generic Abraham traditions in patristic writing are not evidence that a writer knew this particular work. It was, however, copied and translated widely across the Eastern Christian world, which is why Fr Stephen De Young uses it as an example of noncanonical literature preserved in Orthodox culture — a statement about transmission, which the versions bear out.

The four questions stay separate: preserved, yes, extensively; received as Scripture, no; used liturgically, no evidence; doctrinally authoritative, no.

Orthodox readers will notice a resemblance to later Orthodox accounts of the soul's departure, and to the aerial toll-house literature in particular — angels attending death, the soul escorted, deeds recorded and read out, testing, and a passage that must be got through. The resemblance is real and should be named rather than avoided.

It should also be classified honestly, and this page classifies it as a broad thematic parallel. No demonstrated historical line runs from this book to the toll-house narratives; the later material has its own sources, and similarity alone does not establish descent. The same applies to the weighing of souls in Last Judgment iconography, which belongs to a wide Christian visual tradition rather than to this text.

One further note on sourcing, in the spirit of the rest of this section. This page was written from a research brief rather than from a completed source dossier, and several bibliographic particulars — edition details, page references, and the precise attribution of some scholarly positions — have not yet been checked against the primary sources. The narrative substance and the recension distinctions are reliable; the apparatus should be verified before this profile is promoted.

It can illuminate ancient Jewish belief about angels; the developing portrait of Michael and his title as commander of the host; ancient ideas of heavenly judgment, books and record-keeping; the personification of Death; the weighing of deeds; postmortem destiny and the two ways; intercession and mercy; and the conceptual environment in which early Christianity took shape. It is also a good example of a text Eastern Christians preserved without receiving.

It cannot establish Orthodox doctrine concerning the afterlife; the process undergone by any soul after death; the existence of angels named only here; the toll-house teaching; a merit-based accounting of salvation; the canonical status of extra-biblical literature; or any historical influence on later Orthodox tradition that has not been separately demonstrated.