Manuscript Tradition
The text of the Ladder of Jacob has been preserved only in Old Church Slavonic; it occurs in the Tolkovaja Paleja, a compendium of various Old Testament texts and comments which preserved also the Apocalypse of Abraham. The Tolkovaja Paleja is a compilation of texts assembled in the 8th or 9th century in Greek and later translated in Slavonic, the only translation that is survived. Some plays on words in the Ladder of Jacob suggest an original Hebrew text or a Greek text intended for readers with at least some knowledge of Hebrew.
Two recensions of the Ladder of Jacob have been identified: a longer one, usually denoted A, which survives in three manuscripts, and a shorter one, usually called B, which is represented by the majority of the manuscript tradition. The chief difference between these is that the shorter recension reduces drastically the prayer of Jacob and omits the name of the angel Sariel (2:2-5:1).
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