Extra-Biblical
Traditions
It is well to remind
ourselves that the New Testament supplies information supplementary to the Old
Testament at a number of places. For example, the hope which sustained Abraham
when offering Isaac (Heb. 11:19); Moses’ education and greatness in deed (Acts
7:22); his motives in leaving Pharaoh’s court (Heb. 11:24~27); the names of the
Egyptian magicians (2 Tim. 3:8); the terror of Moses at Sinai: ‘I tremble with
fear’ (Heb. 12:21); Elijah’s prayer and the three and a half year drought (Jas.
5:17); ‘others ... were sawn in two’ (Heb. 11:37). Josephus, too, adds many
items of tradition to the scriptural account, some fanciful, some evidently
traditional (and not improbable) inferences from the Old Testament text, and
some quite independent material. What has survived in writing must be only a
fraction of the tradition that was current at any one time. There were
doubtless traditions in circulation concerning all periods of Old Testament
history — and not all of them were untrue.
It is possible that such a
tradition may explain not only ‘Zechariah the son of Barachiah’, but also a
well-known crux in the speech of Stephen. Stephen says (Acts 7:14ff.): ‘Joseph
sent and called to him Jacob ... and Jacob went down into Egypt. And he died,
himself and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the
tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor.’ This
is held to be a confusing (or at best a telescoping) of two Old Testament
stories: Abraham’s purchase of a burial-cave at Mach-pelah in Hebron for 400
silver shekels from Ephron the Hittite (Gn. 23:16; 49:20ff.), and Joseph’s
burial at Shechem in a piece of ground which Jacob had bought for 100 pieces of
silver from the sons of Hamor (Gn. 33:19; Jos. 24:32).
Clearly, Stephen’s account
has much more in common with the latter than the former, but is itself somewhat
ambiguous. Who died? Jacob or Joseph? Jacob does not readily fit the story
since he was buried with great ceremony at Hebron (Gn. 50:13), whereas the
bodies of Joseph and his brothers were apparently left in Egypt till the Exodus
(Ex. 13:19), afterwards to be buried at Shechem. Josephus, Antiquities
ii.8.2, it is true, says that Joseph’s brothers were buried at Hebron, but
there appears to be no strong tradition associating the sons of Jacob with the
burial-place there. Jerome (who also lived in South Palestine) says
specifically that they were not buried in (Kiriath-)Arba (= Hebron), but in
Sychem (Letter 57:10).) If it is accepted that Joseph’s death and burial
are referred to, all is plain sailing, except that Abraham is said to have
bought the tomb, not (as the Old Testament states) Jacob.
There are at least four
possible explanations. 1. It could have been a crass mistake by Stephen, the
hero of the story. But that this was passed on and not corrected for thirty
years in a community which knew Genesis very well seems unlikely. 2. ‘Abraham’
could have been an early interpolation into Acts, which similarly went
uncorrected, or 3. a writing-out of a misread abbreviation, say A(BRAAM) for
IA(KOBOS). 4. It could have been a fragment of tradition (otherwise
unpreserved) to the effect that Jacob in returning to Shechem from his long
exile in Haran was in fact re-staking a claim (which had long since lapsed) to
a piece of land previously bought by his grandfather when he first came to
Canaan (Gn. 12:6). He re-lived his grandfather’s entry into the Promised Land,
and re-affirmed his belief in the covenant promise by repeating his act of
faith. It is perhaps significant that Jacob afterwards continues to retrace the
steps of Abraham by going on to Bethel (12:8; 35 :1-6) and Hebron (35:27). In
view of the continuing importance of Shechem in the Old Testament, there is no
intrinsic improbability in the view that Abraham’s visit had greater
significance than the brief report in Genesis 12:6, 7 might suggest. That is to
say, that Abraham not only received his first vision there and a confirmation
of the gift of the Promised Land to his descendants, but that he also staked
out his claim in faith by buying for himself a token piece of land. On the
whole this seems the most likely explanation of Stephen’s form of words. (John Wenham,
Christ and the Bible [The Christian View of the Bible 1; Surrey: Eagle,
1993], 88-90)
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