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.

        To be noted in this Table, first of all, is the question mark that Vermes adds to 4Q225 on three elements: 4, 5, 8. If one looks again at col. ii of the Qumran fragment, there is not the least trace of a word or phrase about Isaac’s consent (element 4), which Vermes separates from Isaac’s request to be bound. That is, there is nothing in the Qumran text similar to what one finds, for instance, in Josephus, Ant. 1.232: ‘Isaac... received these words [of his father] with joy, declaring that he was not worthy to be born at all if he were to reject the decision of God and of his father’; or even as implied in 4 Macc 16,20; 13,12; 7,14; or in Pseudo-Philo, LAB 32,2-4²⁹. That ‘consent’ might be implied in Isaac’s asking to be bound (element 5), which is found in 4Q225 2 ii 4 (as correctly reconstructed by the editors); but then why make a distinct element of it in this Qumran text? Here Vermes is reading into the Qumran text a notion found in other texts coming from the first Christian century at the earliest, but how does he know that the ‘consent of Isaac’ was already part of ‘the pre-Christian skeleton’?

        Second, there is not a trace of the ‘merit of Isaac’ in the Qumran fragment (element 8). Not even the words, ‘his sons from the earth’ (line 6) can be said to refer to such an idea, because the fragmentary text does not tell us whose ‘sons’ are meant. Being plural, the word most likely does refer to Isaac, since this embellishment of the Abraham story in Gen 22 knows nothing as yet of the children born to Abraham from Keturah (25,2). Yet even if they are Isaac’s sons, the phrase ‘from the earth’ is quite different from any of the phraseology of the later tradition about Isaac’s merit. So that fragmentary line 6 can hardly refer to such a topic.

        Third, why should elements 1 (Isaac’s adult age), 9 (relation to the Temple Mount), 11 (Lamb sacrifice), and 12 (Isaac’s blood/ashes) even be listed in the Table? They do not appear in 4Q225, and even if they are attested in first-century A.D. writings (such as Josephus or Pseudo-Philo, LAB), they are not part of the ‘pre-Christian skeleton’. They appear for the first time in the Christian era.

        Fourth, even if 2 Chr 3,1 mentions Solomon’s building of the house of the Lord on ‘Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David’, there is not the slightest connection in that passage of that mount with the sacrifice of Isaac³⁰. Why is it, then, given as evidence for the ‘pre-Christian skeleton’?