Aphrahat and the Jacob Tradition

Description

Aphrahat is one of earliest Syriac writers. He wrote Demonstrations between 338-345 CE in the Sassanid Persia. Demonstrations are full of quotations from the Syriac Old Testament. Aphrahat often refers to the patriarchal stories in Genesis and explicates them. Previous scholarship has investigated Aphrahat’s interpretation and sought after parallels with Jewish reception history in almost parallelomaniac way without much care. Also Aphrahat’s relationship with Judaism has been focus in many studies. A thorough investigation of Aphrahat’s interpretaiton of patriarchal stories is lacking.

In my paper, I discuss the patriarch Jacob, who is referred to as often as Abraham in Demonstrations. In early Judaism, Jacob rose to importance even over and against Abraham. The Jacob Story is often related to such concepts as exclusivism, covenant, and law. I will also relate Aphrahat’s interpretation to early Jewish reception of the Jacob tradition.

Period	26 Jun 2025
Event title	EABS/ISBL Meeting 2025
Event type	Conference
Location	Uppsala, SwedenShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International