chapter 9 Did the Gentiles Know Who Abraham Was?

Introduction

Sometime in the second half of the second century ce, the Platonist philos- opher Celsus published his Alêthês Logos (True Doctrine). In this attack on Christianity, he also dealt very critically with the Greek Bible, including the Jewish part of it, the Septuagint. In one of his critical passages, he remarks that circumcision did not originate with the Jews because this custom had been taken over by them from the Egyptians. In his refutation, written not long before 250 ce, the formidable Christian scholar Origen states that it is bet- ter to believe Moses “who says that Abraham was first among men to be cir- cumcised” (Contra Celsum [henceforth: CC] 1.22).1 The mention of the name of Abraham then induces Origen to make a brief excursus in which he adds the following words:

Many also of those who chant incantations for demons use among their formula’s ‘the God of Abraham’; they do this on account of the name and the familiarity between God and this righteous man. It is for this reason that they employ the expression ‘the God of Abraham’ although they do not know who Abraham is (CC 1.22).2

This is an instructive passage in that we learn from it (1) that the expression ‘the God of Abraham’ (or, more probably, in its more extended form, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’)3 was used in exorcisms

1 The translation is by H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965 (2nd ed.), 22. The Greek text I used is the Sources Chrétiennes edition by M. Borret, Origène: Contre Celse, 5 vols., Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967–1976. On this passage see J.G. Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (STAC 23), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, 102–103. 2 In his Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo 85.3, Justin Martyr says that demons cannot be exor- cised in the name of kings or prophets or patriarchs but only in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 3 This biblical formula plays a prominent role in the theophany to Moses at the burning bush: see Exod. 3:6, 15, 16; 4:5; it is found in the form ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel’ in 1 Kings 18:36; 1 Chron. 29:18; 2 Chron. 30:6. It is often found in post-biblical Jewish prayers of which the best known instance is the berakhah Avoth of the Shemoneh Esreh; see M. Rist,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004271111_010 did the gentiles know who abraham was? 81 by non-Jews and non-Christians in Origen’s lifetime, and (2) that Origen thinks that the exorcists who do so have no idea who Abraham was. As to the first point, later on Origen says that the Israelites trace their genealogy back to the three fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he continues:

Their names are so powerful when linked with the name of God that the formula ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ is used not only by members of the Jewish nation in their prayers to God and when they exorcise demons, but also by almost all others who deal in magic and spells. For in magical treatises it is often to be found that God is invoked by this formula, and that in spells against demons His name is used in close connexion with the names of these men (CC 4.33).4

And as to the second point, after the passage just quoted Origen continues:

We ask all those who use such invocations of God: Tell us, sirs, who Abraham was, and how great a man was Isaac, and what power was pos- sessed by Jacob, that the name ‘God’ when attached to their names per- forms such miracles? . . . [But] in answer to our question no one can show any history as the source of the stories about these men (CC 4.34).5

And, finally, in yet another passage (CC 5.45), Origen stresses that it would make a spell useless and ineffective if one were to change the names of the three patriarchs into their supposed Greek translations resulting in the formula ‘the God of the chosen father of the echo, the God of laughter, and the God of the man who strikes with the heel’ (etymologies of the names that Origen found

‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: A Liturgical and Magical Formula,’ JBL 57 (1938) 289–303 (ibid. 293–295 on Samaritan use of the formula). Cf. also Philo, Abr. 50–1. For a NT occurrence see Acts 3:13. 4 See M. Smith, Jesus the Magician, London: Victor Gollancz, 1978, 73. 5 In this very same passage Origen also says that the formula ‘the God who drowned the king of Egypt and the Egyptians in the Red Sea’ was also widely used by pagans to overcome demons; see P.W. van der Horst, ‘‘The God Who Drowned the King of Egypt.” A Short Note on an Exorcistic Formula, in: A. Hilhorst & G.H. van Kooten (eds.), The Wisdom of Egypt. Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Studies in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, Leiden: Brill, 2005, 135–140, reprinted in my Jews and Christians in Their Graeco-Roman Context. Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity (WUNT 196), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006, 280–284.