Tannaitic rabbinic literature
Abraham as a seer
Several rabbinic texts extrapolate upon Abraham’s ability
to ‘see’ the future prospects of his descendants. The Aramaic Targums
illustrate this tradition, notably when expanding upon two of the chief
biblical texts presented earlier in this chapter: Gen. 15.12 (Abraham’s dream
vision and subsequent animal sacrifice) and Gen. 17.17 (Abraham’s ‘laughter’
upon hearing of Isaac’s conception).
In the Palestinian Targum to Genesis 15, when Abraham
falls into sleep (which the Targum interprets as a ‘dreaded darkness’), he is
given a portentous vision of the long-suffering history of his descendants, and
their final victory. Expanding upon the Hebrew of Gen. 15.12 (lit. ‘dread
darkness great falling upon him’), the Targumist parses the text as follows:
And when the sun was about to set, a deep sleep was cast
upon Abram, and behold four kingdoms were rising to enslave his children: Dread
– that is, Babylon; Darkness – that is, Media; Great – that is, Greece; Fell
– that is, Edom, which is to fall and shall never rise again, and from there
the people of the house of Israel is to come forth.
The Targum allusively gestures to the apocalyptic vision
found in Dan. 7.1-14. In that text, Daniel experiences ‘dreams and visions’
while lying in bed (7.1). He arises, and writes down what he saw: ‘the four
winds of heaven, stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts’ coming up
out of the sea, ‘different from one another’ (7.2-3). Each hybrid beast is
violent and destructive, the final beast more so than its predecessors (7.4-8).
A great figure on a throne (‘One like a son of man’) arises to pass judgement
upon the beasts; he kills the fourth beast, and takes away the dominion of the
previous three (7.11-14). Terrified and troubled, Daniel seeks out a dream
interpreter, an angel who tells him that the four beasts represent four
kingdoms of the earth (7.15-17). The angel tells Daniel that the fourth beast
represents the most horrific kingdom to come, that will ‘devour the whole
earth’ (7.23b), persecute God’s ‘holy ones’ and blaspheme against God and his
Law (7.25). But in time, ‘the court shall sit in judgment’ and the fourth
kingdom’s dominion will be taken away and destroyed (7.26). Then, ‘the
greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people
of the holy ones of the Most High’ as an ‘everlasting kingdom’ (7.27).
That the Targum to Genesis 15 evokes the ‘throne vision’
in Daniel 7 is not surprising given the notable parallels between Daniel’s
vision and texts such as 1 Enoch, as well as extant Canaanite mythologies. If
we grant Boyarin’s reading of Dan. 7.2-14 that, if not ‘messianic’ in focus,
then at least the text showcases ‘the notion of a divinely appointed king over
earth’ – which ‘has great potential for understanding the development of the
messiah notion in later Judaism (including Christianity)’ – then, the Targum’s
creative substitution of Abraham as the apocalyptic visionary can be read in a
new light. On Boyarin’s reading, the ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel 7 is a
‘divine figure’, an ‘explicitly anthropomorphic divine figure as in Ezekiel’.
Therefore, there are ‘two such divine figures in heaven, an old God, the
Ancient of Days, and a young God, the One like a Son of Man’. Boyarin finds
this ‘mythic pattern of second god as redeemer’ ‘crucial ... in interpreting
the Gospels’. If the Targumist subscribed to this ditheistic reading, then we
would not be wrong to claim that Abraham is ‘seeing’ the emergence of ‘the
people of the house of Israel’ in the future time of redemption, aided,
implicitly, by the presence of the ‘son of Man’ figure. The Palestinian Targum
to Gen. 15.17 expounds upon Abraham’s visions of the fate of humankind, in a
courtroom style of judgement also similar to Daniel 7. Much like the Testament
of Abraham, and some of the Testaments, Abraham is able to see the fate
awaiting the wicked (i.e. ‘Gehenna’).
Another intertextual strand shaping the Targum’s
presentation of Abraham in Genesis 15 can be drawn through Targum Isaiah
(43.10-12). This text expands upon MT Isa. 43.10, where the ‘Servant’ of the
Lord becomes ‘My servant the messiah with whom I am well pleased’.
When the MT has the Lord speak: ‘I declared and saved and proclaimed’ (43.12),
the Targum interpolates, somewhat randomly, ‘I declared to your father
Abraham what was about to come... I saved you from Egypt just as I swore to him
between the pieces’. The Isaian Targum shows familiarity with the Targumic interpretation
of Genesis 15, and the interpolation of God’s ‘servant’ as ‘messiah’ in Tg.
Isa. 43.10 brings an important element into the intertextual conversation,
as it lends credence to the idea that Abraham’s vision of the four kingdoms at
the covenant ‘between the pieces’ resonates with Danielic ditheistic/messianic
echoes. God’s ‘servant messiah’ in Tg. Isa. 43.10 is, in the network of
associations between Daniel 7, Genesis 15 and Isaiah 43, configured as a
‘second god’ persona, and brought into the future visions granted to Abraham as
he slept. (Ruth Sheridan, The Figure of Abraham in John 8: Text and
Intertext [Library of New Testament Studies 619; T&T Clark, 2020], 343-45)
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