Home / Related Ancient Texts
Apocalypse of Abraham Pseudepigrapha — not canonical
Preserved only in Old Church Slavonic, translated from a Greek (and ultimately Hebrew or Aramaic) original composed probably in the late first century AD. The narrative falls cleanly into two halves: chapters 1–8, the haggadic account of young Abram destroying the idols of his father Terah and being delivered from the fire; and chapters 9–32, the apocalyptic ascent — Abraham, accompanied by the angel Yaho'el, is taken up to the throne of God, shown the cosmos in its layered structure, sees the elect, and is given the history of the world from the Fall to the eschaton. For LDS readers, the parallels to Abraham 1 (the rescue from Pharaoh-Terah's altar) and Abraham 3 (the cosmological vision and the council of the noble and great ones) are striking enough that Hugh Nibley devoted multiple chapters to the comparison. Chapter 17 contains the famous theophanic 'Yaho'el' hymn — one of the most important Second Temple texts on the divine Name. 32 chapters · G.H. Box, 1918 (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)
Where chapter text has not yet been imported, the chapter page shows a placeholder with a pointer to the importer script. Run python3 scripts/import_pseudepigrapha.py from the project root to populate.
