Abstract: During the Second-Temple Period, Jews remembered and reimagined the story of Abraham to address their own immediate historical and cultural concerns. By exploring these reimaginations, we learn more about the faith and interests of later Jews who looked to their forefather for inspiration and guidance on how to live in a world of change, opportunity, and challenge. Second Temple Jewish writers included in this article are Artapanus, the author of Jubilees; Pseudo-Eupolemus, the author of Genesis Apocryphon; Philo, and Josephus. Abraham was resurrected in these texts, but with the body and soul of the later author, Josephus; these authors live on in the guise of Abraham.

Abraham is one of the prime characters in the book of Genesis. His faith, piety, righteousness, and hospitality are well known. But he was of course a multifaceted character, as attested by episodes of duplicity, military fortitude, and familial concessions. Centuries later, the character of Abraham gained new life during the Hellenistic/Roman age1 as the Jewish and Greek worlds came into greater contact with each other.

Methodology

This paper highlights samples of the diversity of Jewish thought and cultural experience throughout the Hellenistic/Roman age by following several “lives of Abraham” over the course of three hundred years, while I explore the manifestations of the figure of Abraham in various texts, [Page 254]geographical locales, and at various times.2 Each group infused new life into Abraham as they manipulated his character to suit their own purposes, thus telling us more about the creators of this new life than truly representing the historical Abraham. This methodological approach is inspired by the book Lives of Indian Images by Richard Davis.3 In his work he argues that cultural contours of Indian history and experience could be accessed by examining the lives of cult images across time and space. What is the rationale for using a methodology originally applied to immutable cult images and statues of India to investigate the complex world of Judaism in the Hellenistic/Roman period through the figure of Abraham? Like sacred images set in stone that are not easily defaced or changed without a necessary change that affects the significance of that image, the figure of Abraham was laid down near immutably in the biblical text. Thus the stories of Abraham in the Bible share many of the features and characteristics of sacred images. It was fashioned by an original sculptor and endued with meaning by the originators or the receivers of the image. However, the original is not to be tampered with, amended, diminished, or changed, even though new images based on the original can be produced, and they in turn can be endued with meaning, thus reinvigorating the original cycle. The original image is not easily defaced or changed without seriously undermining its significance or authority. Hence the best option for adapting the original image is to create new images or to reinterpret the meaning of the original image, in either case on the basis of present circumstances.

By analogy, the Abraham stories as found in Genesis 12‒25 play t...