Joseph A. Fitzmyer, «The sacrifice of Isaac in Qumran literature», Vol. 83 (2002) 211-229

Gen 22,1-19 the account of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, is discussed first in its Hebrew and Old Greek form; then as it was developed in the Book of Jubilees 17,15–18,16, and especially in the form of Pseudo-Jubilees, as it is preserved in 4Q225 2 i and ii (4QPs-Jub^a 2 i 7-14, 2 ii 1-14), in order to ascertain how much of the development of the account can be traced to pre-Christian Palestinian Jewish tradition prior to the New Testament. Finally, building on such evidence, the article traces the development in other texts of the first Christian century and in the later targumic and rabbinic tradition about the Aqedah.

        The striking details in the Genesis account are the age of Isaac, who is no longer a mere infant but a youth who understands what sacrifice is and can carry wood, and the place from which Abraham starts and to which he returns, viz. Beer-sheba. Only two noteworthy differences are found in the Septuagint version of this account. First, the way it translates Hebrew hyrmh as ei)j th_n gh=n th_n u(yhlh/n, ‘to the high land’, in v. 2; and second, how dyxiyF, ‘only’, the description of Abraham’s son, as a)gaphto/j, ‘beloved’, in vv. 2, 12, 16. Elsewhere in the Septuagint dyxiyF is sometimes rendered as monogenh/j (Judg 11,34 in MS B ²; also Ps 22,21). Although ‘Moriah’ turns up again only in 2 Chr 3,1, as the place where Solomon built the Temple, the site in Genesis is usually regarded as otherwise unknown. Moreover, this narrative emphasizes that Isaac is Abraham’s ‘only’ son (MT) or ‘beloved’ son (LXX), because Abraham has already abandoned and sent off to the wilderness of Beer-sheba both Ishmael and his mother Hagar (Gen 21,8-21), so that Ishmael no longer counts as a son. In Genesis itself, one eventually learns that Abraham had six other children by Keturah (25,2), but they play no role in this narrative about Isaac, who is Abraham’s ‘only’ son and heir ³. The test to which Abraham is subjected: the child born to him after a long delay, who is to be the link to the promised numerous progeny (Gen 15,4-6), is now to be given up at God’s request as a sacrifice.

II. The Understanding of the Account in the Book of Jubilees

        The narrative of the sacrifice of Isaac was reproduced in the Book of Jubilees, and it reveals how the Genesis story was being understood in the second pre-Christian century in Palestinian Judaism. Although the details of the narrative remain basically the same, five important