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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-Juba 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.
meaning ‘opposition’. It is difficult to determine whether one should translate hm+#mh r# as ‘the Prince of the Mastemah’, as VanderKam and Milik take it in the editio princeps, or as a name, ‘Prince Mastemah’, as it often appears in Jubilees (e.g., 17,16; 18,9). The name denotes ‘opposition’ of a legal or judicial nature, and the verb M+# is used in the juridical sense of lodging a complaint with a higher authority or in a court of law. Hence just as N+#&, ‘Satan’, in Job 1,6 comes into God’s heavenly court and lives up to his name, ‘Adversary’, as he lodges a complaint against ‘blameless and righteous Job’ (1,1), so too hm+#m, ‘(judicial) Opposition’, is depicted as Abraham’s court-room rival or prosecutor14. Whereas the only angelic figure that appears in Gen 22 is hwhy K)lm, ‘the angel of the Lord’ (vv. 11, 15), who at times cannot be distinguished from God Himself, this Qumran rewriting of the biblical account has introduced a further heavenly figure, as did Jubilees.
(2) In 2 ii 1, Abraham ‘raised his eyes, and there was a fire’. This detail about the fire remains unexplained in the Qumran text, but it is probably meant to mark the high mountain to which Abraham was proceeding15.
(3) In 2 ii 4, in a saying that has no counterpart in either Gen 22 or Jub 18, Isaac surprisingly begs his father, ‘B[ind me fast]’. That might seem like a gratuitous reconstruction of the fragmentary text, but VanderKam and Milik note that the words that precede the initial kaph of the last extant word of the line match the developed paraphrase of Gen 22,10 in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, which reads:
ywb)l qxcy rm)w
Knbrqb )lwsp xkt#yw )lbxd )bwgl yxdnw y#pnd )r(c Nm skrpn )ld tw)y yty tpkAnd Isaac said to his father, ‘Bind me well that I may not struggle in the agony of my soul and be pitched into the pit of destruction and a blemish be found in your offering’16.
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