Testament of Abraham - Manuscript Tradition

Manuscript Tradition

The Greek text of the Testament of Abraham is preserved in two quite different recensions:

• the long recension, which has a more developed, detailed and linear story, survives in about thirty manuscripts, among which the more important are A, E and B.
• the short recension, where the episodes are sometime abrupt and not logically connected but with probably an earlier wording, has survived in about nine manuscripts, among which the more important are A and E (manuscript E of the short recension is notable because of the presence of many semitisms).

There is no consensus among scholars as to which recension is nearer the original, or whether we shall suppose one or more original texts. The early scholars, as James, but also recently Ludlow, working mainly on the narrative viewpoint, support the priority of the long recension. This view has been challenged for example by Turner, who studied the text from a linguistic point of view, and mainly by Schmidt, who worked deeply on manuscript E of the short recension, which was not available to the early editors.

The text is preserved also in Slavonic, Romanian, Ethiopic (Falasha), Coptic Bohairic and Arabic. These versions, apart one Romanian recension, follow the content of the Greek short recension. The Greek Text was first edited, with an English translation and introduction, by M. R. James in 1892. The Greek text was also early edited by Vassiliev in 1893.