The University of Chicago Press

The Genealogy of Abraham: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism beyond Jewish Literature
Author(s): Samuel Thrope

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 54, No. 3 (February 2015), pp. 318-345
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Samuel Thrope THE GENEALOGY OF
ABRAHAM: THE
ZOROASTRIAN
CRITIQUE OF JUDAISM
BEYOND JEWISH
LITERATURE

The Skand Gum anı̄g Wiz
ar (Doubt destroying treatise; henceforth, SGW),
the ninth-century theological and polemical treatise written by the otherwise
unknown author Mardanfarrox ı̄ Ohrmazddadan,1 contains Zoroastrian litera-
I would like to thank the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Lady Davis Fellow-
ship Trust, which supported the research on which this essay is based, and Martin Schwartz, Daniel
Boyarin, Deena Aranoff, and Wali Ahmadi, who commented on earlier versions of this essay. This
essay was first presented at the ARAM Society conference on Zoroastrianism in the Levant, held
at Oxford University in 2010, and I would like to thank the conference participants for their com-
ments, especially Yaakov Elman, Geoffrey Herman, and Dan Shapira. Thanks are also due to the
anonymous readers, whose insightful comments and questions have vastly improved this essay.
All errors, of course, remain my own.
1
Most scholars have dated the SGW to the second half of the ninth century. Edward William

West first proposed this date for the composition of the SGW in the introduction to his critical edi-
tion of the text (Hoshang Dastur Jamaspji Jamasp-Asana and Edward William West, eds., Shikand-
Gum anı̄k Vijar [Bombay: Government Central Book Depot, 1887], xvii–xviii). West bases his

argument on the date of the editor of the SGW’s most important acknowledged source, the Middle
Persian Zoroastrian theological and philosophical compendium known as the D enkard. However,
since he only refers to the first compiler of the D
enkard, Adurfarnbag ı̄ Farroxzadan, and not the

later editor Adurb ad ı̄ Emedan, West concluded that Mardanfarrox must have lived and written
after
the first authority )but before the second. As Adurfarnbag is often dated to the reign of the
(
Abbasid Caliph al-Ma mun (r. 813–33), West dated the SGW near the end of the ninth century.
Jean de Menasce, the editor and translator of the now standard edition of the SGW, rejects West’s
argument concerning the date of the D enkard’s composition and thereby his proof of the SGW’s
ninth-century provenance. However, on linguistic grounds de Menasce ascribes the text a similar
date. See further Jean de Menasce, Une apolog etique mazd
eenne du IXe sie`cle: Skand-Gum anı̄k
Vicar; La solution d ecisive des doutes (Fribourg en Suisse: Librarie de l’Universite, 1945), 12.
Ó 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/2015/5403-0004$10.00

History of Religions 319
ture’s most extensive polemic against Judaism.2 Alongside chapters attacking

Islam, Christianity, and Manichaeism, as well as a rationalist apology for

Zoroastrianism that makes up the first half of the work, the SGW devotes two
chapters to demonstrating Judaism’s contradictions. These two chapters are
composed of extensive citations from what the author claims is a Jewish text,
referred to as the naxustı̄n niβ ¯, meaning “First Scripture,”3 and Mardanfar-
e

rox’s rationalist critique of those citations. SGW chapter 13 cites an account
of the creation of the world and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent parallel to the
opening chapters of Genesis, while chapter 14 includes citations similar, in
varying degrees, to passages from the Pentateuch, Prophets and Psalms, and
rabbinic Midrash.
Confronted with citations claiming to be from a Jewish text—citations
that, moreover, do resemble, to greater or lesser degrees, passages familiar
from biblical and rabbinic literature—scholars have set themselves the task of
identifying the citations’ Jewish sources.4 If Mardanfarrox is critiquing a Jew-
Recently, however, Mihaela Timuş has argued for a reevaluation of this consensus and proposed

dating the SGW
to the tenth century. She bases her argument on the fact that in the SGW’s most
extended reference to the D enkard, it refers to the latter as the D
enkard “of one thousand chapters,”
the same name given to a later redaction of the text. See Mihaela Timus,, “Humour, Tens(i)on and
Religion: When a Layman Defends the Priests” (unpublished manuscript, École Pratique, February
2011). My thanks to Dr. Timus, for sharing her work with me.
2
While Judaism is never referred to in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred scriptures, Jews and
Judaism are mentioned in several places in Middle Persian—also known as Pahlavi—literature,
the body of legal, exegetical, theological, and literary texts composed in the late Sasanian and early
Islamic periods. The D enkard, mentioned in the previous note, includes a number of polemics
against Judaism; these have been studied by Shaul Shaked, “Zoroastrian Polemics against Jews in
the Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods,” in Irano-Judaica II, ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer
(Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1990), 85–104. On further references to Jews in Pahlavi literature,
see James Darmesteter, “Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,” Revue des E´tudes Juives 19 (1889):
1–15, 41–56; Louis H. Gray, “The Jews in Pahlavi Literature,” in Actes du XIVe Congre`s Interna-
tionale des Orientalistes (Paris: Leroux, 1906), 1:177–92; Geo Widengren, “The Status of the
Jews in the Sasanian Empire,” Iranica Antiqua 1 (1961): 117–62; and, for a recent comprehensive
survey of the literature, Geoffrey Herman, “Ahasuerus, the Former Stable-Master of Belshazzar,
and the Wicked Alexander of Macedon: Two Parallels between the Babylonian Talmud and Per-
sian Sources,” AJS Review 29 (2005): 285 n. 11.
3
This name has been variously interpreted. Darmesteter (“Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,”
5) and Jacob Neusner (A History of the Jews in Babylonia [Leiden: Brill, 1969], 4:406) take
naxustı̄n niβ ¯ to refer only to the biblical book of Genesis and not the entire Bible. Dan Shapira
e
(“On Biblical Quotations in Pahlavi,” Henoch 23 [2001]: 117) notes a Judaeo-Arabic ) parallel in
Sa’adia Gaon’s reference to the Pentateuch as “the first prophecy (an-nubuwwah al- ul a ), I mean
Moses’ Torah.” See further discussion in Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Saadya’s Introduction to Isaiah
as an Introduction to the Book of Prophets,” Tarbiz 60 (1991): 371–404 [in Hebrew].
4
The most important prior translations and studies of the SGW’s critique of Judaism are
Edward William West, Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, Sikand-Gûmânîk Vigâr, Sad Dar Pahlavi, pt. 3
of Pahlavi Texts, vol. 24 of Sacred Books of the East, ed. Max M€uller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1884);
Darmesteter, “Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,” 1–15; Gray, “Jews”; de Menasce, “Apologe-
tique,” 175–203; Judah Rosenthal, “Ḥiwi al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study,” Jewish Quarterly
Review 38 (1948): 317–42; Jacob Neusner, “A Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism,” Journal of the

320 Genealogy of Abraham
ish text, then it would seem obvious to assume that he somehow had access to
Jewish texts; uncovering his sources would then be a task of perusing the
Bible and rabbinic literature to find the similar, original passages Mardanfar-
rox must have read or heard. In previous studies of the SGW’s critique of
Judaism, most effort and ingenuity has been put into a secondary and subse-
quent project, namely, speculating how the stories and maxims (once identi-
fied) traveled from their Jewish origins to the Zoroastrian polemic. Scholars
have postulated, for example, the existence of Sasanian Judeo-Persian or Pah-
lavi Bible translations and the preservation of Sasanian era court polemics
against Judaism.5
However, the aspect of the citations that this approach takes to be the sim-
plest—their Jewish origin—is, actually, the most complex. The citations from
the text the SGW calls the “First Scripture,” both those that parallel biblical
passages and those similar to texts from rabbinic literature, need not necessar-
ily relate—directly, ultimately, or through some intermediary—to either of
these canonical Jewish works. As I attempt to demonstrate in this essay, the
scholarly presumption of the citations’ dependence on or influence by these
Jewish works is, at best, inconclusive. I hope to prove this point through a
o’s hospitable visit to
reading of one of the longer citations, the story of Adı̄n
6
Abrahı̄m from SGW 14:40–50. In my examination of the passage, I identify
some of the alternate traditions with which this story might be in conversa-
tion.
My point here is not to deny that the SGW could or might be related to the
biblical and rabbinic sources that have come down to us. Furthermore, I am not
interested in replacing one textual origin with another, for instance, the Babylo-
nian Talmud with Tabari’s Tafsir. My argument is that the search for origins

itself is, in the case of the SGW’s critique of Judaism, a fraught endeavor. The
Bible and Midrash make up two of the many potential sources—both oral and
written, known and unknown—of the stories and statements in the SGW’s cri-
tique. In light of this diversity of sources, a diversity that I explore in detail in
what follows, scholars of the SGW must nuance their approach and acknowl-
edge the complicated and nonlinear way that texts related in late antiquity and
American Oriental Society 83 (1963): 283–94, and “Skand Miscellanies,” Journal of the Ameri-
can Oriental Society 86 (1966): 414–16 (both of these articles were combined and reprinted as an
appendix to Neusner, History, 4:403–23); David
( J. Halperin and Gordon D. Newby, “Two Cas-
trated Bulls: A Study in the Haggadah of Ka b al-Aḥbar,” Journal of the American Oriental Soci-
ety 102 (1982): 631–38; Shaked, “Zoroastrian Polemics,” 87; and Shapira, “Biblical Quotations.”
5
On Bible translations, see Shapira, “Biblical Quotations.” On polemics against Judaism, see
Neusner, History, 4:403.
6
In what follows I distinguish between the citation from the SGW and parallel versions of this

narrative through the use of different names. Abrahı̄m, as the name appears in the SGW, will be

used in reference to the SGW’s account, while Abraham will be used in reference to Jewish and
Islamic parallels.

early medieval times. While this does not mean abandoning the search for ori-
gins entirely, it does entail casting a far wider net and recognizing that stories
cross boundaries in ways that are surprising and, sometimes, unrecoverable. In

the context of the SGW’s critique of Judaism, this means that “Jewish” cita-
tions need not have been borrowed from a “Jewish” book; they could have
been read in another religion’s scripture or heard in a version that was recorded
in no book at all. Ultimately, de-emphasizing the search for the origins of the
citations opens up space for other just as crucial questions—which, unfortu-
nately, lie outside the scope of this essay7—namely, how the SGW’s critique
of Judaism functions within the literary and theological circumference of
Mardanfarrox’s work as a whole.8
As mentioned above, this essay focuses on a close reading of the story of
Abrahı̄m’s hospitality. After first considering the biblical and rabbinic pas-
sages scholars have identified as the sources of the citation, I compare the cita-
tion with four parallels found outside Jewish literature. Motifs and characters
central to the story of Abrahı̄m’s hospitality can also be found in Islamic,
Manichaean, Mandaic, and Armenian texts. I consider each of these alterna-
tive sources in turn and, finally, return to the question of the inconclusiveness
of the critique of Judaism’ origins.
was hat marda nfarrox aus dem judenthume aufgenommen?

Before turning to the citation itself, however, I want to take up a parallel and
better explored problem that can serve as a methodological guide. For the prob-

lem of the relationship between the SGW’s critique of Judaism and Jewish lit-
erature can be profitably compared to the connected
) issue
) of the supposed Jew-
ish origins of certain sections of the Qur an. The Qur an contains
) numerous
passages, often referred to in current scholarly discourse as Isra ı̄lliyat,9 which
have parallels in Jewish, especially rabbinic texts. As has been widely dis-
cussed and critiqued, the regnant model for most of the history of the academic
study of Islam in Europe and the Americas was one of influence. As is the case )

with the SGW, scholars were concerned with tracing passages from the Qur an
and other literature to their Jewish sources, even when those connections were
7
See further discussion in Samuel Thrope, “Contradictions and Vile Utterances: The Zoroas-

trian Critique of Judaism in the Skand Gumanı̄g Wizar” (PhD diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 2012).
8
My thanks to the anonymous
) reader whose perceptive comments helped sharpen ( this point.
9
On the genre of Isr
a ı̄lliy
at and its place within Islam, see S. D. Goitein,( “Isra ı̄liyyat,”) Tarbiz
6 (1934): 89–101 and 510–22 [in Hebrew]; Meir J. Kister, “Ḥaddith u an banı̄ isr a ı̄la wa-
a ḥaraja: A Study of an Early Tradition,”) Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): 215–39; and Roberto
l
Tottoli, “Origin and Use of the Term Isr a ı̄liyy
at in Muslim Literature,” Arabica 46 (1999): 193–
210, on the changing usage and definition of the term.

less than self-evident.10 This singular focus on influence vastly underestimated

the wealth of biblical traditions in late antiquity. As Michael Pregill artfully
describes the situation in the context of Islam,
the biblical tradition was not primarily manifest as a single work, the “Hebrew Bible”
or “Old Testament” in the sense of a closed and stable canon of written texts
(although it was also sometimes this). Rather, when we speak of Late Antiquity, the
period in which Islam emerged, “Bible” should evoke the image of a plurality of rich
traditions, in multiple languages, oral and written, centering on documents transmit-
ted over the course of a millennium that conveyed the authentic cultural and religious
inheritance of ancient Israel, its legacy of monotheism, covenantalism, and prophecy,
but that also included a dazzling variety of exegetical traditions that supplemented,
supported, amended, and even perhaps at times subverted that legacy. The Torah
could certainly be identified as a book per se, but it was much more frequently experi-
enced as a practically fathomless sea of stories by Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians,
Manichaeans, and a host of other—sometimes nameless—scriptuaries.11
Rephrasing Pregill’s statement, we can say that this passage rejects the search
for origins. As he rightly notes, there was no single stable text, no Hebrew
Bible, which lay at the root of the tree of interpretation and diffusion. Rather
than using an image, such as that of a tree, that implies organized, linear, and
measurable growth and change, Pregill uses the metaphor of a sea, which is to
say a fluid expanse—flowing, vast, and dynamic. Who can say where the sea
begins and ends? The boundaries between stories are fluid, which is to say that
“the authentic cultural and religious inheritance of Ancient Israel” has no pride
of place over the various other expansions and subversions. At the same time,
the boundary between “scriptuaries” is just as permeable. Pregill implies that
there are no “authentic” peoples just as there are no “authentic” traditions.12
10
The scholarly literature discussing and critiquing this methodology is considerable. Recent
surveys can be found in Shari L. Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and
Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 27–38, and a wider analysis of the scholarly
project of the “unearthing” of Islamic origins in Chase Robinson, “Reconstructing Early Islam:
Truth and Consequences,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. ) Herbert Berg
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 101–34. An exemplary study of the background of one Qur anic narrative,
Abraham and Ishmael’s building of the Kaaba at Q 2:127, can be found in Joseph Witztum, “The
Foundations of the House (Q 2:127),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 72
(2009): 41–62.
11
Michael E. Pregill, “The Hebrew Bible and the Quran: The Problem of Jewish ‘Influence’ on
Islam,” Religion Compass 1 (2007): 646.
12
The same point is made explicitly in the context of the historiography of ancient Judaism in
Michael Satlow, “Beyond Influence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm,” in Jewish Litera-
tures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, ed. Yaron Eliav and Anita Norwich (Atlanta: Society
of Biblical Literature, 2008), 37–53; see further Edouard Will, “‘Influence’: Note sur un pseudo-
concept,” in Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage à Valentin Nikiprowerzky, ed. Andre Caquot, Mir-
eille Hadas-Lebel, and J. Riaud (Leuven: Peeters, 1986), 499–505.

Pregill’s approach—and the methodological perspective that underlies this

chapter—can be understood in terms of Michel Foucault’s discussion of gene-
alogy. As Foucault argued, the practice of genealogy is to be distinguished by
its opposition to the search for origins.13 The search for the origin assumes the
existence of eternal, immobile entities, a primordial and unchanging truth.
The scholar’s task, in this model, is to peel back the layers concealing this
metaphysical kernel. However, for the genealogist, there is no essence and
what one might perceive as essential “was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion
from alien forms.”14 Foucault argues that genealogy ruptures the myth of pris-
tine origins, replacing it with lowly and derisive historical beginnings, with
accidents, petty rivalries, and contradictory failures from which values, moral-
ity, sexuality, and truths ultimately derive. As he writes, “Let us say, roughly,
that as opposed to a genesis oriented towards the unity of some principal cause
burdened with multiple descendants, what is proposed here is a genealogy, that
is, something that attempts to restore the conditions for the appearance of a
singularity born out of multiple determining elements of which it is not the
product, but rather the effect. A process of making it intelligible but with the
clear understanding that this does not function according to any principle of
closure.”15 Foucault’s definition of genealogy in the final sentence of the pre-
ceding quotation is a concise statement of the most fruitful method for situat-

ing the citations in the SGW’s critique of Judaism, the method I have
attempted to model in this essay. This investigation of the various contexts
and parallel traditions, including but by no means limited to the biblical and
rabbinic sources previous scholars have championed, should be understood as
an attempt to make the conditions of the appearance of the SGW’s story of
Abrahı̄m’s hospitality intelligible but without claiming exhaustiveness or clo-
sure. As Foucault says, to a genealogist such a claim would be meaningless.
I find a genealogical approach, explicitly defined in those terms or not,
conducive to the understanding of the critique of Judaism for its methodologi-

cal sophistication and its fit to the historical context of the SGW. The sea of
stories Pregill mentions did not dry up with the coming of Islam. On the con-
trary, by Mardanfarrox’s time—as mentioned above, scholars have dated him
to the ninth century—the mixture had become considerably richer. ) To the fac-
tions and traditions Pregill mentions should be added the Qur anic narratives
in their canonical forms and the various expansions of and deviations from
13
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Prac-
tice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D. F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1977), 139–64.
14
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 142.
15
Michel Foucault, “What Is Critique?,” in The Politics of Truth, ed. Sylvère Lotringer and
trans. Lica Hochroth (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007), 64.

those stories. Moreover, orality remained the dominant vehicle for the trans-
mission of tradition. In addition to the research demonstrating the continuity
of and esteem for orality within scholastic circles in the early Islamic period in
Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, the fluidity of traditions has been well
documented.16 In the case of Islam and Judaism, for instance, alongside the
“expected” flow of tradition from the older Judaism to the younger Islam, it
has also been shown that expansions of narratives about the Patriarchs and the
Children of Israel that appeared first within an Islamic context traveled to Jew-

ish Midrash.17 A particularly enlightening parallel to the SGW’s critique of
18
Judaism comes from Islamic critiques of the Bible. The goal of these Islamic
16
On the preference for oral transmission and instruction in the Geonic academies, see the dis-
cussions in Yaakov Elman, “Orality and the Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud,” Oral Tradition
14 (1999): 52–99; Robert Brody, “Geonic Literature and the Talmudic Text,” in Meḥqerei Talmud
1, ed. Yaakov Sussman and David Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 237–303 [in Hebrew];
and, specifically pertaining to the possibility of the oral transmission of nonlegal narrative tradi-
tions, Paul D. Mandel, “Between Byzantium and Islam: The Transmission of a Jewish Book in the
Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality and
Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2000), 74–106. For a general survey on rabbinic orality, see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander,
“The Orality of Rabbinic Writing,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic
Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2007), 38–57. On Islam, see Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and Written in Early Islam,
trans. Uwe Vagelpohl (London: Routledge, 2006). On the oral transmission of the Zoroastrian
interpretive tradition, see Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, “Studies in Zoroastrian Exegesis and
Hermeneutics with a Critical Edition of the Sudgar Nask of Denkard Book 9” (PhD diss., Harvard
University, 2007), esp. 4–7 and 18–23; Philip G. Kreyenbroek, “The Zoroastrian Tradition from
an Oralist’s Point of View,” in K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 2nd International Congress Proceed-
ings (5th to 8th January, 1995), ed. H. J. Desai and H. N. Modi (Bombay: Cama Oriental Institute,
1996), 221–37; Michael Stausberg, “The Invention of a Canon: The Case of Zoroastrianism,” in
Canonization and Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International Conference of the Lei-
den Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), Held at Leiden 9–10 January 1997, ed. Arie van
der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 257–77; Philip Huyse, “Late Sasanian
Society between Orality and Literacy,” in The Idea of Iran, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah
Stewart (London: Tauris, 2008), 140–55; Shai Secunda, “The Sasanian Stam: Orality and the
Composition of Babylonian Rabbinic and Zoroastrian Legal Literature,” in The Talmud in Its Ira-
nian Context, ed. Carol Bakhos and M. Rahim Shayegan (T€ ubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 140–
60; and Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “The Zoroastrian Oral Tradition as Reflected in the Texts,” in The
Transmission of the Avesta, ed. Alberto Cantera (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 3–48. My
thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this final reference.
17
See, again, Pregill, “Hebrew Bible and the) Quran,” 655: “At least in some cases, the seeming
affinities between Jewish Midrash and the Qur an may be due to an ongoing dialogue over scrip-
tural matters that took place in both communities in the medieval period, and not to Muhammad’s
unequivocal ‘debt’ to Jewish informants.” The late rabbinic Midrash Pirke d’Rabbi Eliezer, for
instance, includes references to members of the prophet Muhammad’s family and a number of
stories unknown from earlier midrashic collections. See Dina Stein, Maxims, Magic, Myth: A
Folkloristic Perspective on Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004), 5–8 and 167–68
[in Hebrew]; and Carol Bakhos, Ishmael on the Border: Rabbinic Portrayals of the First Arab
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006).
18
On Islamic critiques of Judaism, see Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the
Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (Leiden: Brill, 1996).


critiques is different from Mardanfarrox’s in the SGW, as these texts seek, on
the one hand, to demonstrate the corrupted—and, thus, delegitimized—trans-
mission of a once pure scripture and, on the other, to show that the Jewish
Bible itself prefigures Muhammad’s revelation. However, as Lazarus-Yafeh
has shown, up until the thirteenth century it seems that Muslim authors—with
the notable exception of converts from Judaism and Christianity—did not
have access to the original biblical text or its Arabic translation.19 Rather,
)
in the Islamic literature of Tales of the Prophets (qiṣaṣ
) al- anbiy
a ), which used most
extensively biblical and midrashic materials (Isr a ı̄liyy
at), exact literal biblical quo-
tations are extremely
) rare. Free and inexact paraphrases usually transmit in this litera-
ture (as in the Qur an and early Ḥadı̄th literature) the biblical, midrashic, and other
material mixed up together without distinction, perhaps partially following an ancient
Targum-like (oral?) source. . . . Most Muslim authors seem to have relied mainly on
oral transmission, and constantly quote as their sources of (biblical information Jews
or early Jewish and Christian converts to Islam, like Ka b al-Aḥbar and Wahb b.
Munabbih. Many Muslim scholars readily ) admitted to such contact with Jews and
Christians in order to elucidate Qur anic passages touching on biblical material, a
procedure that was condemned by others. The fact that Jews usually felt no need to
differentiate between the biblical text and later midrashic elaborations on it, and
would have found it almost impossible to translate literally the biblical text alone for
their Muslim neighbors, may help to explain the combined material “quoted” by
Muslim medieval authors.20
Whether or not the conversations between Jews and Muslim scholars depicted
in this literature reflect more than the rehashing of a trope of the native infor-
mant21—which, it should be said, appears in the SGW as well22—it is clear
that Mardanfarrox’s critique is of the same type as these Muslim texts. There,
as here, from the perspective of the now closed and mutually distinct canons

of Bible and Midrash, the “First Scripture” in the SGW’s critique of Judaism
appears to be a hybrid. By hybrid, I mean that citations that seem to be close
parallels of well-known biblical verses sit alongside, and are not distinguished
from, passages resembling texts known from rabbinic literature. In the same
time and in the same place, the SGW and texts within Islamic literature are
constructing “Jewish” traditions. Without concluding, thereby, that Mardan-
19
Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 112–13.
20
Ibid., 113–14.
21
Lazarus-Yafeh allows the possibility that at least some of the conversations with Jewish
sources depicted in the literature are “imaginary.” This possibility softens her problematic extrapo-
lation from Muslim authors’ reports to what their Jewish informants might have believed or said.
See ibid., 82.
22
See SGW 10:43–44.

farrox borrowed directly from these (or other) Islamic sources—an argument
that, again, would be simply repeating the standard scholarly model seeking
the origins of the critique of Judaism’s citations—it seems fair to say that the
Muslim and Zoroastrian texts are likely drawing from the same shared oral
nexus.
abraham and the angels

The citation of the story of Abrahı̄m’s hospitality that is the focus of this essay

is found in SGW chapter 14. After presenting a translation of the text as it

appears in the SGW, I discuss the two midrashic traditions that scholars have
unanimously identified as the sources of the citation.
(40) It says this as well in that place, that when the aged Abrahı̄m,23 the friend of
o was pained in the eyes,24 then Adı̄n
Adı̄n o himself came to converse with him, (41)
and sat on a cushion and asked him about his health. (42) And Abrahı̄m, secretly, call-

ing his dearest son Ası̄naa said:25 (43) “Go to Heaven and bring light and pure wine.”
(44) He went and he brought it. (45) And Abrahı̄m made many requests of Adı̄n o
o said: “I will not
[saying]: (46) “Drink wine and eat bread in my house.”26 (47) Adı̄n
drink since it is not from Heaven nor is it pure.” (48) Then Abrahı̄m swore that “That

wine is pure from Heaven and my son Ası̄naa brought it.” (49) Then because of his
o consumed the
freedom from doubt in Ası̄naa and the testimony of Abrahı̄m, Adı̄n
wine and bread. (50) Then when he wanted to leave, he did not let him until they took
the great oath.27
Previous scholars were unanimous in reading this passage as a combination of

two different midrashic traditions.28 The first is an expansion of the biblical
23
As here, the forms of the name Abraham ) that appear in Pahlavi )literature (see de Menasce,
Apolog etique, 225) resemble Arabic Ibr ahı̄m rather than Hebrew Avraham. Josef Horovitz,
“Jewish Proper Names and ) Derivatives in the Koran,” Hebrew Union College Annual ( 2 (1925):
160, suggests that Arabic Ibr ahı̄m was formed on the basis of comparison with Ism a il.
24 o see below.
On the name Adı̄n
25
On the name Ası̄naa see below.
26
The exact meaning of Middle Persian se, translated here as “bread,” remains unclear. For fur-
ther discussion, see de Menasce, Apolog etique, 198.
27
“(40) han ja ı̄ṇca goeṯ, ku ka m hadar abrahı̄m i dost i adı̄no casm dardihast, a˛s x́aṯ adı̄no o
e
pursasni maṯ, (41) vas balı̄n nisast u druṯ pursı̄ṯ. (42) u abrahı̄m ası̄naa yas zosast pus pa niha˛ x́anı̄ṯ
guft (43) ku ‘ o vah st saβ mae i x́ar u pak aβar.’ (44) suṯ vas aβard. (45) u abrahı̄m vas x́ahisni o
e
adı̄no kard (46) ku ‘aṇdar ma˛n i m n mae se x́ar.’ (47) adı̄n
e o guft ku ‘n x́arom cu n ž vah st u
e ee e
n pak.’ (48) pas abrahı̄m guβaı̄ daṯ ku ‘pak a˛ mae ž vah st u ası̄naa yam pus aβard.’ (49) pas
e e e
adı̄no aβ guma˛nı̄ yas pa ası̄naa u guβaı̄ i pa abrahı̄m ra mae se x́ ard. (50) pas kas raftan kamast n
e e
hist aṇdas pa saβagaṇd i gara˛n yak i diṯ x́ard.”
28
Darmesteter, “Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,” 14; de Menasce, Apolog etique, 203;

account of Abraham’s hospitality and the annunciation of the birth of Isaac

that appears in Genesis 18. Since the Midrash itself is engaged in a close read-
ing of the biblical text, it is worth quoting the Genesis passage in full:
(1) And the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre when he was sitting by
the tent flap in the heat of the day. (2) And he raised his eyes and saw, and, look, three
men were standing before him. He saw, and he ran toward them from the tent flap and
bowed to the ground. (3) And he said, “My lord, if I find favor in your eyes, please do
not go on past your servant. (4) Let a little water be fetched and bathe your feet and
stretch out under the tree, (5) and let me fetch a morsel of bread, and refresh your-
selves. Then you may go on, for have you not come by your servant?” And they said,
“Do as you have spoken.” (6) And Abraham hurried to the tent to Sarah and said,
“Hurry! Knead three measures of choice flour and make loaves.” (7) And to the herd
Abraham ran and fetched a tender and goodly calf and gave it to the lad, who hurried
to prepare it. (8) And he fetched curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared
and he set these before them. He standing over them under the tree, and they ate. (9)
And they said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “There, in the tent.”
(10) And he said, “I will surely return to you at this very season, and, look, a son shall
Sarah your wife have,” and Sarah was listening at the tent flap, which was behind
him. (11) And Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age, Sarah no longer had
her woman’s flow. (12) And Sarah laughed inwardly, saying, “After I being shriv-
eled, shall I have pleasure, and my husband is old?” (13) And The Lord said to Abra-
ham, “Why is it that Sarah laughed, saying, ‘Shall I really give birth, old as I am?’
(14) Is anything beyond for the Lord? In due time I will return to you, at this very sea-
son, and Sarah shall have a son.” (15) And Sarah dissembled, saying, “I did not
laugh,” for she was afraid. And He said, “Yes, you did laugh.”29
The overall structure of the two passages is similar: visitor(s) arrive; the patri-
arch, with the aid of a boy, provides food and drink, which is described in
some detail; and there is a disagreement between the guest and the host that is
seemingly resolved at the end of the story. However, many of the significant

motifs in the SGW’s version cannot be found in the biblical account. These

include Abrahı̄m’s sickness, Ası̄naa’s o’s refusal to
journey to heaven, Adı̄n
eat, and the “great oath” at the end of the encounter.30 Conversely, the most
important element of the biblical version, the annunciation of the birth of
Abraham’s first son, is completely lacking in the SGW. Moreover, if, as

seems likely, we can identify the name Ası̄naa as a corrupted version of the
29
The translation follows Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York:
Norton, 1996), 77–79.
30
Many of these elements appear in the parallel story of the angelic annunciation of the birth of
Samson from Judges chap. 13. However, this story in Judges or other biblical parallels should be
seen not as replacements for the story in Genesis but as additional intertexts.

name Isaac,31 then the SGW citation not only lacks this detail but contradicts
biblical chronology.
Again, as noted by previous scholars of the SGW, the most extensive mid-
rashic expansions of this story are to be found in chapter 48 of Genesis Rab-
bah, the collection of expansions of and interpretations on the book of Gene-
sis edited in Palestine in the first half of the fifth century,32 and on folios 86b–
87a of tractate Bava Metsia of the Babylonian Talmud (BT). While I will be
primarily referring to these two texts, the story of Abraham’s hospitality is
expounded throughout the rabbinic corpus, and I draw on traditions from
numerous Midrashim.
Many of the motifs included in the SGW’s account that are missing from
the biblical version appear in these Midrashim. First of all, the divine identity
of Abraham’s guest or guests, which is ambiguous in the version in Genesis

but taken for granted in the SGW, is clarified in the Midrash. Genesis Rabbah
48:1 and BT Bava Metsia 86b both include a tradition that Abraham’s three
visitors were the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.33 According to the
Talmudic version: “Who are the three men? Michael, Gabriel and Raphael—
Michael who came to give the news to Sarah, Raphael who came to heal
Abraham, and Gabriel who went to overturn Sodom.” The BT also includes a

tradition that, as in the SGW, it was God himself who came to visit Abraham.
This detail arises in connection with the midrashic statement that, as in the

SGW, God’s visit to Abraham was prompted by the patriarch’s illness. Unlike

the SGW’s statement that Abrahı̄m was pained in his eyes, however, the mid-
rashic accounts state that Abraham was in recovery from his recent circumci-
sion, described in Genesis 17:24. As it states in BT Bava Metsia 86b:
“The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the entrance of his
tent in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1). What is [meant by] “the heat of the day”?
Rabbi Hama bar Hanina said: “That day was the third day after Abraham’s circumci-
sion and God came to ask after Abraham. God took the sun out of its envelope so that
31
Likely deformed by the process of transmission, the form Ası̄naa could derive from a mis-
reading by the author of the Pazand manuscript of the underlying Pahlavi form. Although the

Pazand version of the SGW is the oldest surviving layer of) the text, it is possible to reconstruct a
Pahlavi transcription of the Arabic form of the name Isaac, Isḥ aq, that, because of the ambiguities

of Pahlavi orthography, could be easily misinterpreted as Ası̄naa. See de Menasce, Apolog etique,
198.
32
H. L. Strack and G€unter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, ed. and trans.
Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 276–83.
33
On the explicit identification of the visitors as angels, see also Josephus’s Antiquities 1:196
(Flavius Josephus, Judean Antiquities 1–4, vol. 3 of Flavius Josephus Translation and Commen-
tary, ed. Louis H. Feldman [Leiden: Brill, 2000], 74); Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 18:2
(Michael Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis [Edinburgh: Clark, 1992], 66 [in Hebrew]);
and further sources noted in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publi-
cation Society, 1947), 1:240–42.

that righteous man would not be troubled with guests. He [Abraham] sent out Eliezer
[his servant] to find someone. He [Eliezer] went but did not find. He [Abraham] said
to him: ‘I don’t believe you.’ As it says there: there is no trust in servants. He [Abra-
ham] went out and saw the Lord God standing at the entrance. “As it says, Do not go
past your servant” (Genesis 18:3). When He [God] saw him [Abraham] wrapping and
unwrapping [his bandages], he said ‘It is not proper to stand this way.’ As it says: “He
lifted up his eyes and saw three men standing there and he saw and ran towards them”
(Genesis 18:2). From the outset they were themselves coming towards him for they
saw that he was in pain. They said: ‘It is not proper to stand this way.’”34
As much as this text from BT Bava Metsia states that God himself came to
see Abraham and is somehow to be identified with his three visitors, the
ambiguous status of the visitors is still maintained. When the text states that
Abraham saw God standing at the entrance, are we to understand that Abra-
ham actually saw God himself or that he saw God as he appeared in the shape
of one (or all three) of the visitors? This ambiguity is entirely absent from the

SGW’s o himself in physical form
version: there is no question that it is Adı̄n
who comes to pay a visit to Abrahı̄m.

The central concern of the SGW’s version, whether and what divine beings
can eat, is also at issue in the midrashic accounts. In a number of sources it is
debated whether Abraham’s visitors really ate Abraham’s food. BT Bava
Metsia 86b records the following tradition: “Rabbi Tanhum bar Hanilai said:
‘A man should never divert from the custom [in a certain place], for just as
Moses went up to heaven and did not eat bread, the ministering angels des-
cended below and ate bread.’ Do you think they ate? Rather, say: ‘It only
seemed as if they were eating and drinking.”35 Rav Tanhum bar Hanilai
argues that in deference to mundane practice, the angels ate while they were
Abraham’s guests. The response of the Talmud’s anonymous voice, the pres-
ence of which is signaled by both the lack of a named authority who makes
the statement and the switch in language from Hebrew to Aramaic, is that the
angels did not actually eat but only appeared to do so, thereby both respecting
Abraham’s hospitality and preserving their divine purity. The anonymous
comment puts the status of the eating and drinking in question and changes
the smooth reading to a contentious one.
34
The motif that the angels’ visit coincided with Abraham’s recovery from his circumcision
can be found in Genesis Rabbah 48:1 (Yehudah Theodor and Chanokh Albeck, Midrash Bereshit
Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, 3 vols. [Berlin: Bi-defus Ts. H. Itskoviski,
1903), 2:484–85 and the note to line 2 [in Hebrew]); Tanhuma Wayyera 4 and 42 (Solomon
Buber, Midrash Tanhuma [Vilnius: Romm, 1885], 84 and 108 [in Hebrew]); BT Sotah 14a; BT
Sanhedrin 59a; Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 29 (Dagmar B€orner-Klein, ed. and trans., Pirke de-Rabbi
Elieser [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004], 317).
35
The passages from the Talmud follow the standard Vilna edition.


As in the SGW, the rabbinic tradition also identifies the boy who aids
Abraham in preparing the feast. The biblical text at( Genesis 18:7 does not
name Abraham’s helper, referring to him only as a na ar, a youth or servant.36
In (both Genesis Rabbah and Avot de-Rabbi Nathan,37 however, the unnamed
na ar is identified as Ishmael, Abraham’s other son, born to Hagar, Sarah’s
maidservant.38 As the version in Genesis Rabbah states: “‘And he gave it
to the boy’—this is Ishmael, in order to encourage him in the command-
ments.”39 Genesis Rabbah’s solution to the gap in the biblical text is elegant.
An unnamed character is identified with one already known, limiting the cir-
cle of players in this family drama.40 Additionally, placing Ishmael in the role
of Abraham’s willing assistant highlights the dramatic irony. Ishmael readies
the meal for the strangers bearing the message that seals his fate: Isaac will be
Abraham’s chosen son and Ishmael cast out into the desert.41
the deceitful son

The second rabbinic tradition scholars have pointed to as the source of the

SGW’s version of the story of Abraham’s hospitality is an expansion of a dif-
ferent biblical narrative. This is the account of Jacob’s theft of the blessing
intended for his older brother Esau from their father, Isaac. This act of subter-
fuge, instigated by Jacob’s mother, Rebecca, culminates a history of sibling
rivalry that begins in the womb and has already entailed Jacob’s seizure of his
older brother’s birthright.42 In Genesis 27, Isaac, old and blind, asks his
favored son, Esau, to make him a dish of venison in exchange for his final
blessing. While Esau is out hunting, Rebecca instructs Jacob to disguise him-
self as Esau, bring Isaac his favorite dishes and receive his father’s blessing;
the ruse is successful, and Isaac does give Jacob the blessing intended for
Esau.
36
See Francis Brown et al., Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, rev. ed.
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), 654–55.
37
While much of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan consists of reworkings of earlier material, the final
redaction of the text is generally dated between the fifth century CE and the eighth or ninth centu-
ries. See Menahem Kister, Studies in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan: Text, Redaction and Interpretation
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998) [in Hebrew].
38
Genesis 17:1–11.
39
Genesis Rabbah 48:13 (Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 490). In addition to
Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, this same tradition is included in the late midrash Sekhel Tov (on which
see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 357). Interestingly, BT Bava Metsia does not include this
tradition and instead reads Abraham’s command at Genesis 18:7—“and he gave it to the boy and
he hurried to do it”—as referring not to one but to two separate youths.
40
On this function in the Midrash in general, see Isaac Heinemann, Darke Ha-Aggadah (Jeru-
salem: Magnes, 1970), 27–32, esp. 28 [in Hebrew].
41
Genesis 21:9–10.
42
Genesis 25:21–26, 29–34.

The motif of heavenly wine appears in the Midrash’s explication of Genesis

27:17. This section of the biblical narrative, beginning in verse 14, describes
how Jacob follows his mother’s instructions and his disguise:
(14) And he went and fetched [the two kids] and brought them to his mother; and his
mother made a dish of the kind his father loved. (15) And Rebekah took the garments
of Esau her elder son, the finery that was with her in the house, and put them on Jacob
her younger son, (16) and the skins of the kids she put on his hands and on the smooth
part of his neck. (17) And she placed the dish, and the bread she had made, in the hand
of Jacob her son.43
However, in Genesis 27:25, when Jacob presents the meal to his father, the
text adds that he also served him wine: “And he said, ‘Serve me, that I may
eat of the game of my son, so that I may solemnly bless you.’ And he served
him and he ate, and he brought him wine and he drank.” The Midrash con-
cludes that this wine was brought to Jacob by the angel Michael from the Gar-
den of Eden. As the Tanhuma states:44
Where did he get wine? For we know that his mother did not give him wine, but rather
“And she placed the dish [and the bread she had made, in the hand of Jacob her son].”
And who brought him wine? Michael brought him wine from the Garden of Eden.
Our rabbis said: One does not find wine of blessing but this and Abraham’s, as it is
said: “Melchizedek king of Shalem brought out bread and wine” [he was priest of
God Most High] (Genesis 14:18). And even this [wine], after he [Isaac] drank, he
[Abraham] blessed him.45
There is much to connect these midrashic expansions to the Jewish citation in

the SGW. First of all, the character of Isaac—as an old man, a youth, and a
divine promise—plays a central role in all three stories. There are also signifi-
cant structural similarities. All three tales revolve around the presentation of a
meal. In all three, a boy serves his father, either as an errand boy and sous-chef
43
The translation follows Alter, Genesis, 139.
44
While there are two standard recensions of the Tanhuma, both of which postdate the ninth
century (see Leopold Zunz, Ha-Drashot be-Israel, trans. M. A. Jacques [Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,
1974], 247 [in Hebrew]; and Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 305–6), most scholars now refer
to a genre of Tanhuma-yelammedenu literature. According to recent research by Marc Bregman,
on linguistic and literary grounds most of this material can be dated to the sixth and seventh centu-
ries CE, although development continued well into the Islamic period. See Marc Bregman, The
Tanhuma-Yelammedenu Literature: Studies in the Evolution of the Versions (Piscataway, NJ: Gor-
gias, 2003), esp. 173–88.
45
Tanhuma Toldot 16 and Buber, Tanhuma, 135. The same tradition appears in Yalkut Shimoni
Toldot (on Genesis 14:18, par. 115 (Arthur
( B. Hyman, D. N. Lerrer, and I. Shiloni, eds., Yalqut Shi-
m’oni al ha-Torah le Rabbenu Shim on ha-Darshan [Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1973],
2:554 [in Hebrew]), and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 27:25 (Maher, Targum, 96).


in the SGW and Genesis 18 or as a waiter in Genesis 27. Each narrative also
culminates in a blessing or oath. The father’s illness, whether as Isaac and
Abrahı̄m’s blindness or Abraham’s postcircumcision weakness, is also a cru-
cial element of all these stories. It is the connection between the two Mid-
rashim that prompted Darmesteter to suggest that the SGW’s description of
Abrahı̄m’s eye pain could have resulted from the transfer of an element
related to Isaac in Genesis 27 to his father in Genesis 18.46
However, relying on these two sources alone is unsatisfying on a number
of levels. First of all, the question can be raised of why and at what point the
Midrashim on Abraham and Isaac became connected. Are we to imagine that
Mardanfarrox combined the two Midrashim himself? This seems to be the
thrust of Jacob Neusner’s claim that “the author has obviously heard and
reshaped stories useful for his polemical purpose.”47 Alternatively, if the two
expanded biblical narratives were already “mixed” by the time that Mardan-
farrox heard them, since there is no rabbinic tradition that combines these
motifs in that way, this presumption itself points away from identifying the
Midrash as the source of this story. Even assuming that the SGW retains a lost
Midrash of some type, it would have to be a strange Midrash indeed that casts
Isaac as his father’s assistant in the scene that announces his birth.

Describing the citation in the SGW as the “combination” of two traditions
is itself not quite right. It would be more accurate to say that one or two motifs
from the expanded Genesis 27 narrative have been incorporated into the body
of the expanded Midrash on Genesis 18. There is a hierarchy of traditions: the
story of hospitality is the dominant narrative, and the motifs of wine from
heaven and, perhaps, Abrahı̄m’s eye pain have been drawn into its matrix.
Most significant, if the SGW was influenced directly, somehow, by the
Midrashim in BT Bava Metsia, Genesis Rabbah, the Tanhuma,48 and Avot de
Rabbi Nathan, we can ask why only some of the motifs found in those sources

are present in the SGW. For example, the long section devoted to Abraham in
BT Bava Metsia includes numerological speculations on which animals Abra-
ham prepared for his guests, the menu of the feast (tongues in mustard), how
Abraham’s hospitality prefigured God’s future care for the Children of Israel
in the desert, a comparison between Abraham’s hospitality and Lot’s inhospi-
tality in Sodom,49 and, of course, a great deal of discussion of the role and
character of Sarah, who does not appear in the SGW’s account at all. If
Mardanfarrox had access to this Midrash, why would he copy certain motifs
46
Darmesteter, “Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,” 14.
47
48
On the late dating of the Tanhuma, see n. 44 above.
49
The story of the destruction of the cities in the plain appears in Genesis 19, immediately after
the story of Abraham’s hospitality.

and not others? There seems to be no underlying principle dictating which

motifs move to the SGW and which do not; the selection process is random
and unmotivated.
In a certain sense, these questions are reductive and hyperliteral; it is
unlikely that Neusner and the other scholars, in pointing to these Midrashim,
imagined Mardanfarrox poring over the pages of BT Bava Metsia, for in-
stance, to find the juiciest and most damaging Jewish stories. However, nam-
ing these as the sole sources of the citation invites this kind of response, pre-
cisely owing to the undertheorized notions of “influence” and “sources” being
employed. If the SGW citation was “influenced” by these Midrashim, that
influence must be accounted for, in both the ways that the citation adheres to
its putative source and how it deviates from it.
On the whole, while it is undeniable that there is some relationship between
the citation and the Midrash, that relationship cannot be as binary and unidi-

rectional as previous scholars have thought. The SGW deviates too much from
the Midrashim as we have them; too much is unmotivated. It seems more

likely that the SGW is drawing from an oral nexus of traditions, the same kind
of nexus described in connection with Islam by Pregill and Lazarus-Yaffeh.
In what follows I outline some of the other possible elements in this oral

nexus that contributed to the citation as we find it in the SGW. This list is by
no means exhaustive or, to reiterate a point made above, meant to replace rab-
binic literature with some other tradition’s text or canon. Rather, I will point
to similar motifs found in a number of traditions to highlight the difficulty of
determining clear lines of influence in this case.
angelic abstinence

The SGW unquestionably engages with Islamic literature and sources. This is
evident from not only the extended critique of Islam in SGW chapter 11 but
the generic conventions and theological concerns) of the text as a whole. With
this fact in mind, it is not surprising that the Qur anic accounts of Abraham’s

hospitality are, in a number of ways, closer to the SGW’s version than the bib-
lical or midrashic traditions. The story
) of Abraham’s hospitality is repeated in
four separate locations in the Qur an, testifying to its importance.50 Two of
these passages in particular bear a striking resemblance to the version on the

SGW: 11:69–73 and 51:24–30. The former passage reads:
Our messengers came to Abraham with the good tidings; they said, “Peace!” “Peace,”
he said; and presently he brought a roasted calf. And when he saw their hands not
reaching towards it, he was suspicious of them and conceived a fear of them. They
50 )
Qur an 11:69–76, 15:51–59, 29:31, and 51:24–30.

said, “Fear not; we have been sent to the people of Lot.” And his wife was standing
by; she laughed, therefore We gave her the glad tidings of Isaac, and, after Isaac, of
Jacob. She said, “Woe is me! Shall I bear, being an old woman, and this my husband
is an old man? This assuredly is a strange thing.” They said, “What, dost thou marvel
at God’s command? The mercy of God and His blessings be upon you, O people of
the House! Surely He is All-laudable, All-glorious.”51
As in the account in Genesis, Abraham hastens to serve his guests a roasted

calf.52 However, the messengers do not touch the food,53 and, because of their
strange behavior, Abraham becomes afraid.54 It is at this point that the visitors
bring Abraham the good tidings of the birth of a son, identified as Isaac only
in 11:70, and, as in Genesis 19, news of God’s impending destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah. )
The significant difference between the SGW and the Qur an on the one
side and the midrashic expansions on the other is not whether the angels ate;
as discussed above, several midrashic texts preserve the opinion that they did
not do so. Rather, the difference ) lies in the patriarch’s perception of their

abstinence. In the SGW and Qur an, followed by the later Islamic commentar-
o and the angels do not eat and reacts accordingly;
ies, Abrahı̄m sees that Adı̄n
the motif is foregrounded and propels the narrative. In the Midrash, however,
whether or not the angels actually partook of Abraham’s food, they appeared
to him to do so. Since the knowledge that the angels abstained is revealed only
to the Midrash’s reader, and not the story’s characters, the narrative can pro-
ceed as in the Bible unaltered.)
The point of citing the Qur anic account is to offer a possible parallel gene-

alogy for the SGW’s citation of the story of Abrahı̄m’s hospitality. In particu-
lar, the similar foregrounding of the motif of the guest’s abstaining from eat-
ing points to the possibility that, rather than having been influenced solely by
the Bible and midrashic versions outlined above, this Islamic narrative could
also have been part of the oral nexus from which the SGW drew.
51
The translation follows Arthur John Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1964), 219–20. )
52
Genesis 18:7. The two Qur anic passages differ on the question of what Abraham served:
11:69 specifies a roasted (ḥanı̄dh) calf, while 51:26 specifies a fatted (samı̄n) calf. Tabari recon-
ciles this slight disparity by claiming that Abraham roasted the fatted calf. Cited and translated in
Reuven Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in
Islamic Exegesis (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 54–55.
53
Abraham’s visitors are referred to as rus ul (messengers) in 11:69 and 29:31 and ḍayif
(guests) in 15:51 and 51:24. They are( identified) as angels
) only in) the commentary literature, e.g.,
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Jami ( a) n an ta wı̄l al-Qur an (Cairo: Hajar,
( al-bay ) 2001), 12:465;
and Ahmad ibn Muhammad Tha labi, Ar a is al-Majalis f ı̄ Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiy
a ; or, Lives of the
Prophets, ed. and trans. William M. Brinner (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 138. See also Firestone, Jour-
neys in Holy
) Lands, 53–58. )
54
Qur an 11:70 and 51:28. Qur an 17:60–63 makes no reference to eating at all, while at 15:52
the text mentions Abraham’s fear but not its cause.

the name of god

One of the aspects of the SGW’s citation that seems to point most strongly
toward its Jewish origins is the name given to the Jewish God, Adı̄n o. This

name appears throughout the SGW’s critique of Judaism,55 and it is undoubt-
edly a version, likely deformed by)the process of transmission, of one of the
principal Jewish epithets for God. Ad onay, meaning “my Lord,” occurs fre-
quently as one of the divine names in the Bible.56 On the basis of the evidence
of the Septuagint, where the ineffable four-letter
) name of God is translated by
the Greek kurios, likewise meaning “Lord,” Ad on ay had replaced the pro-
nunciation of the tetragrammaton by the third century BCE.57 In rabbinic
texts, the proscription on pronouncing
) the divine name is mentioned already
in the Mishnah.58 Moreover, Ad onay is mentioned as the usual substitute in
BT Pesahim 50a: “Rav Nahman Bar Yitzhak said: ‘This world is not like the
) is written with yod he [the tetragram-
world to come. In this world, [the name]
maton] and spoken with alef daleth [ Ad onay]. The world to come: [it is] spo-
)
ken with yod he and written with yod he.’”59 However, Ad on
ay was known
as a name for God outside the Jewish context. In the form Adonaios and Ado-
nin, the name is given to various evil heavenly powers mentioned in the Nag
Hammadi documents.60 Ab u Rayḥan al-Birunı̄, the eleventh-century poly-
math, mentions the name in his work on India, noting, as in the Talmud, the
distinction between writing and pronunciation.61 Martin Schwartz has dis-
cussed the passage in Birunı̄ as well as the appearance of versions of the name
in a fifteenth-century Arabic magical compilation, the Kit ab ar-Raḥma f ı̄ aṭ-
ṭibb wa-l-ḥikma, ascribed to Jalal al-Dı̄n al-Suyutı̄.62
55
SGW 13:18, 31, 35,) 68, 82–83, 85, 87, 109; 14:5, 23, 53, 77, and 86.
56
The plural form of Ad on literally indicates “my Lords,”
) but
) most scholars
) understand this as
a pluralis majestatis. See further, K. Spronk, “Lord: Mara , Adonay, Adon,” in Dictionary of
Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der
Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 531–633.
57
Marguerite Harl, ed. and trans., La Gene`se, vol. 1 of La Bible d’Alexandrie (Paris: Cerf,
1986), 49–52.
58
Mishnah Sotah 7:6; Mishnah Tamid 7.2; and Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1.
59
The translation follows Munich, Staatsbibliotek, Heb. 6. For further discussion of rabbinic
sources, see Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “Substitutes for the Tetragrammaton,” Proceedings of the Ameri-
can Academy for Jewish Research 2 (1930): 39–67.
60
On these names, see the discussion in Tuomas Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic
Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Orphite Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 2010), esp.
103–28.
61
Abu Rayḥan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bı̄runı̄, Alberuni’s India, ed. and trans. Eduard C.
Sachau (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, T€ubner, 1910), 1:173.
62
Martin Schwartz, “Qumran, Turfan Arabic Magic and Noah’s Name,” Res Orientales 14
(2002): 231–38.

Schwartz argues persuasively that these magical names and formulas

passed into Arabic from a Manichaean Middle Persian translation of the Book
of the Giants, one of the canonical
) books authored by Mani himself.63 This is
not surprising, as the name Ad on
ay appears in other Manichaean texts. Espe-

cially interesting in light of the use of the name in the SGW is a Manichaean
polemical poem contained in a manuscript fragment known as M28.64 M28
contains three abacendarian poems, only the second of which is complete.
The fragment is missing the verses of the first poem before the letter resh—
the poems follow the order of the Aramaic alphabet—and the last only goes
from aleph to waw. It seems likely, on the basis of their similar content, that
these are not three separate poems but rather three successive cantos of a sin-
gle work.65
The polemic in the text is directed against various doctrines.66 While Oktor
Skjærvø understands the poem to be a Manichaean composition polemiciz-
ing, among others, against Marcionites,67 François de Blois has convincingly
argued otherwise. As the poem’s theology is somewhat at odds with Mani-
chaean doctrine and, furthermore, as the reference to Marcion is entirely posi-
tive,68 de Blois has proposed that M28 could be a Manichaean adoption of
an originally Marcionite work.69 In his analysis of the text, de Blois has
63
Ibid., 232. The Book of the Giants is a reinterpretation of the legend of the fallen angels who
copulated with the daughters of men, familiar from Enochic traditions. See Werner Sundermann,
“Manichaean Literature in Iranian Languages,” in The Literature of Pre-Islamic Iran, ed. Ronald
E. Emmerick and Maria Macuch (London: Tauris, 2009), 216–17; and, for a further discussion of
the relation between Mani’s work and Jewish Second Temple literature, John C. Reeves, Jewish
Lore in Manichaean Cosmology (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992).
64
The fragment is reproduced in Werner Sundermann, Iranian Manichaean Turfan Texts in
Early Publications (1904–1934): Photo Edition (London: School of Oriental and African Studies,
1996), plates 32–33. Portions have been translated and discussed in F. C. Andreas and Walter Bruno
Henning, eds., Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Turkestan (Berlin: Verlag der Akade-
mie der Wissenschaften, 1932–34), 1:20; Friedrich M€uller, “Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo-
Schrift aus Turfan, Chinesisch-Turkestan,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wis-
senschaften 9 (1940): 348–52; Walter Bruno Henning, Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-Doctor
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 50–51; and Mary Boyce, A Reader in Manichaean Mid-
dle Persian and Parthian (Leiden: Brill, 1975), text dg, 174–75. In their reviews of Sundermann’s
Iranian Manichaean Turfan Texts in Early Publications (1904–1913), both Oktor Skjærvø (Bulle-
tin of the Asia Institute 9 [1995]: 239–55) and François de Blois (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soci-
ety 8 [1998]: 481–85) have given new readings of the text.
65
Skjærvø, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 240.
66
On Manichaean polemics against Judaism in general, see Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism
in Mesopotamia and the Roman East (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 12–14.
67
Skjærvø, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 240.
68
M28 I, r. ii, lines 33–37. Transcription and translation in Skjærvø, review of Iranian Mani-
chaean Turfan, 246.
69
De Blois, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 482.

highlighted the correspondences between the poem’s polemic and what we

know of Marcionite
) doctrine from other sources. )
The name Ad on
ay, spelled as Manichaean Middle Persian dwny, appears
in two of the verses from the complete second canto. The first is in the second
stanza:70
I) made weary and ashamed
Ad
onay and his foul offspring
saying: “If there is [only] one God
who then deceived Gayomard?”71
)

As in the SGW, the polemic is directed against the idea that Ad on
ay is the
author of both good and evil. Specifically, the polemic refers to the Eden story

in Genesis; a version of this same story is discussed at length in SGW chapter
13. How, the polemicist asks, could the same God who created and put Adam
in the garden, as the sole author and sustainer of the universe, also be responsi-
ble for his deception and temptation? As de Blois notes, this polemic accords
well with Marcionite theology. In that theology, there is a radical division
between the true God and the lower creator of the world. Just as there is a con-
trast between the two deities, their two books, the law of the creator in the
Old Testament and the Gospel of the true God, are diametrically opposed.
This division, and Marcion’s literalist critique of the Hebrew scriptures that
accompanied it, was supported and articulated through a reading of Paul’s let-
ters.72 In addition to these two beings, later Marcionites identified matter
(called, as in Manichean tradition, hyle) as a third, evil deity: “In this view,
the just god made Adam, but Adam was seduced by the evil god and rebelled
against his maker, who repudiated him.”73
70
R i, lines 19–23. In the manuscript, the stanzas are in a single block of text; I have followed
de Blois in his division of the verse. Skjærvø, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 245; de Blois,
review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 482.
71
Gayomard (Avestan gaya mar tan) is the First Man. His creation by Ohrmazd is described
e
in Bundahi sn 1a:13. See the translation by Carlo G. Cereti and David Neil MacKenzie, “Except
by Battle: Zoroastrian Cosmology in the 1st Chapter of the Greater Bundahishn,” in Religious
Themes and Texts of Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia, ed. Carlo G. Cereti et al. (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2003), 44–45. Gayomard is often equated with Adam in Islamic syncretic historiog-
raphy. See, e.g., Tabari’s statements to that effect: Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, General Intro-
duction and From the Creation to the Flood, ed. and trans. Franz Rosenthal, vol. 1 of The History
of al-Tabari (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989), 185–86, 318, and 325.
72
Some scholars have suggested, in fact, that Marcion only “brought to its logical conclusion”
the tendency inherent in Paul’s writing to denigrate the Law; in Galatians 3:19, Paul even goes so
far as to raise the possibility that the Law was not authored by God at all but “ordained through
angels by a mediator.” See the discussion in Heikki R€ais€anen, “Marcion,” in The Blackwell Com-
panion to Paul, ed. Stephen Westerholm (London: Blackwell, 2011), 301–15.
73

While subsequent stanzas contain interesting attacks against the Sabbath

smbyd) and circumcision ( )pwst brydg)74 and, perhaps, Adam as the son of
(
God,75 the next reference to Ad ay only occurs in stanza 11:76
on
77
They call Bar Maryam)
the seventh son of Adonay;
If he is the Lord of All,
who crucified his son?
Here too, the polemic centers on the contradiction between God’s omnipo-
tence and the suffering of his creations,) in this case his own son.78 The identi-
fication of Jesus as the seventh son of Ad onay could be related to Elchasaite
and Ebionite beliefs that the Christ appeared not once but in numerous forms
throughout history, first as Adam, later as the figure encountered by) Abraham
(in Genesis 18) and the other patriarchs, and finally as Jesus.79 Ad onay is
revealed to be, in this passage as the one before, the name by which the adher-
ents of the doctrines attacked know their one true deity. At the same time, it is
the appellation of the evil creator deity who produces foul offspring and is
ashamed ( srmzd) by the polemicist’s attack.
The importance of this text is twofold. First of all, it could help explain the
surprising spelling of the name of the Jewish God in the SGW. o results
Adı̄n
from the vowel metathesis of the “e” and “i,” either in an underlying
) Pahlavi
form written, presumably as in Manichaean Middle Persian, dwny, or at some
point during the transmission of the text. Darmesteter already suggested this

explanation of the form )as it appears in the SGW. 80
More important, the Ad onay in this poem need not be the deity of Jews at
all. The definition of Judaism and Jewish belief is, of course, a contentious
and slippery endeavor. At the )very least, however, those who believed that
Jesus was “the seventh son of Ad onay” were outside of the domain of rab-
binic Judaism in Mardanfarrox’s time; de Blois speculates that at least some
74
Staza 3, r i, lines 24–27. Literally, pwst brydg means “severed ( skin.”
)
75
R i, lines 28–32. De Blois raises the possibility that the pws y yzd n mentioned at the end of
this verse refers to Adam. De Blois, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 483.
76
R 11, lines 24–28; Skjærvø, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 246; de Blois, review of
Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 483.
77
According to de Blois, the retention of these words in Aramaic suggests that the translator
“did not know who the son of Mary is and consequently treated bar Maryam as a proper name”
(de Blois, review of Iranian Manichaean Turfan, 483).
78
A similar critique of the illogic of the story of the crucifixion is found in SGW chap. 15. See

SGW 15:31–35 and 59–62.
79
80
Darmesteter, “Textes pehlvis relatifs au Judaisme,” 6.

of the polemical stanzas might be directed

) against Jewish-Christians.81 What-
ever the identity of these adherents, Ad on
ay is not associated here specifi-
cally with Jewish scriptures. Of course, it is the God of the Old Testament
who is attacked, but it would be questionable to read these stanzas and others
in the poem
) as interpretations of specific passages in the Hebrew Bible.
Rather, Ad on
ay has become uncoupled from those texts and reassigned, as a
name and a character, to an entirely different context.
This is precisely the reason that I have devoted so much attention to this
o of the SGW
poem. The Adı̄n need not signal Mardanfarrox’s reading Jewish
)
texts at all. Ad
onay was a divine name that circulated widely, independently
of Jewish literature, and in polemical contexts quite similar to those that we

find in the SGW.
polluted wine
)
Ad on
ay also occurs as a divine name in the writings, polemical and otherwise,
of the Mandaeans. The Mandaean community, living in Khuzistan in what is
now the border region between Iraq and Iran, practices a dualistic, baptismal
faith.82 The community has preserved a significant religious literature—the
Ginza Rabb a (Great treasure; henceforth, GR) being a central work—includ-
ing polemical texts. GR I 23:17–24, for instance, describes how Adunai, as the
Jewish God is called there, “elected for himself a nation and a synagogue was
established for him. The walled town of Jerusalem, the city of the Jews, was
built, those who circumcise themselves with a sword and sprinkle (cast) their
blood unto their faces and (in this manner) they worship Adunai. The women
who are in their menstruation are lying in the lap of men. They turn aside from
the primal law (suta qadaita) and they make for themselves a book.”83 As in
the Manichaean text just discussed, circumcision is a prominent theme. The
accusation of the violation of menstrual purity is also especially serious, as rit-
ual cleanliness is a major Mandaean religious obligation.
In Mandaean writings, as Shapira notes, Adunai is more than just the name
of the Jewish God. Adunai is also the sun (GR I 23:19), the chief of the evil
81
82
The origin of the Mandaeans is highly contested in the scholarly literature. While many,
including Rudolf Macuch have supported the theory that the Mandaeans originated in Palestine
and only later migrated to the Persian Gulf region, recent reconsiderations of the evidence point to
a Mesopotamian origin for the group. See Edmondo F. Lupieri, “Mandaeans i. History,” in Ency-
clopaedia Iranica, online edition (2008), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mandaeans-1, and
sources quoted there. ) )
83
Text and translation in Dan Shapira, “ Ein Mazal le-Yisra el: Celestial Race, the Jews,” Kab-
balah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 5 (2000): 111–27, 112; the older German
translation can be found in Mark Lidzbarski, Ginza, der schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mand€ aer
(G€ottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925), 25.

archons who prevent the good souls from ascending to their celestial home.84
The Jews are, in fact, identical to these archons. Effectively, the Mandaeans
consider the Jews to be a species of demons; Shapira argues that this demoni-
zation of the Jews is inspired by Jewish lore, in particular the myth of the
fallen giants mentioned in the Manichaean context above.85
There is another Mandaean polemical passage that has a direct bearing on

the citation in the critique of Judaism. I discussed above the motif of Ası̄naa
bringing back wine from heaven and the parallel scholars have identified
between this motif and the angel Gabriel’s provision of wine for Jacob in the
midrashic expansions of Genesis 27. Adı̄n o’s refusal to consume the wine
Abrahı̄m offers him is also paralleled in Jewish and Islamic versions of the
o gives for refusing
story of Abraham’s hospitality. However, the reason Adı̄n
o’s state-
to consume Abrahı̄m’s offering is not found in either tradition. Adı̄n
ment that “I will not drink since it is not from heaven nor is it pure” would seem
to imply that if it were pure, he would drink. Indeed, once Abrahı̄m assures him
o happily receives the patriarch’s
that the wine is, in fact, from heaven, Adı̄n
gift. From the perspective of the Jewish and Muslim versions of this story, the
purity or impurity of the food Abraham offers to his visitors is not the issue at
all. Angels normally subsist on the glory of the divine presence,86 and, as is
spelled out in the midrashic sources mentioned above, even those rabbis who
believe that the angels did eat the meal Abraham prepared recognize this as a
deviation from normal practice. Of course, it could be argued that the emphasis
on the purity of Abrahı̄m’s wine reflects the purity regulations entailed in the
Jewish cult and offerings. However, since sacrifice, not to mention the Temple,

is never mentioned in the SGW, this seems an unlikely possibility.
Impure wine is a prominent feature, though, of certain polemical texts in
the Ginza Rabb a . The motif appears in the following passage, polemicizing
against the Manichaeans: “Again I will teach you, my disciples, that there is
another gate,87 which emerges from Jesus (Msiha), who are called Zandiqs
(zandiqia) and Manichaeans (*Marmania). They sow their seed secretly and
allot a portion of it to the gloom, women and men sleep with one another, they
take the seed and throw it into wine, and they offer it to the Souls [Mandaeans]
84
Shapira, “Celestial Race,” 118. See also J. J. Buckley, “Professional Fatigue: ‘Hibil’s Lament’
in the Mandean Book of John,” Le Mus eon 110 (1997): 367–81.
85
Shapira, “Celestial Race,” 119–22.
86
Tanhuma Pinhas 12 (Warsaw edition); Pesikta de Rav Kahana 6 (Bernard Mandelbaum,
ed., Pesikta de Rav Kahana: According to an Oxford Manuscript, with Variants from All Known
Manuscripts and Genizoth Fragments and Parallel Passages with Commentary and Introduction
[New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962], 110–11 [in Hebrew]); BT Yoma
75a–75b; BT Hagigah 16a; BT Kallah 60; Pesikta Rabbati 16 (Rivka Ulmer, ed., Pesiqta Rabbati:
A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Princeps
[Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997], 1:330–31 [in Hebrew]).
87
B
abba ; each of the various false doctrines is referred to by this term.

to drink, saying that it is pure.”88 In his analysis of Mandaean polemics, Sha-

pira has discussed the historical connections between Mandaeans and Mani-
chaeans that might underlie this passage, as well as the degree to which the
Mandaeans are “correct” in their representation of Manichaean belief and
practice. He argues that the connection in the passage between seed and food
relates to the Manichaean belief that certain foods contain greater amounts of
“the swallowed light ejaculated by the archons.”89 Without calling into ques-
tion Shapira’s argument, it is important to note that polluted wine is a motif that
reoccurs in other polemical passages.90 This is found particularly in the pas-
sage concerning Venus: “Behold, I told you about the gate of Libat [Venus]
and about the deeds that she performed in the world, and about the sacraments,
the Seven Primal Sacraments of Ruha,91 I am telling you: they kill a Jewish
boy and take some of his blood and bake it with bread and give them as a meal,
they mix in a goblet the menstrual blood of a whoring virgin-nun with wine
and let them drink, and the eyes of the people should not fall upon them.”92
Whatever the identity of this group—certainly Christians of some kind—the
text presents a warning for righteous believers. The passage allows two possi-
ble readings. On the one hand, it is possible that the followers of the sect are
the ones who prepare the defiled bread and wine for their own consumption.
They make sure only that outsiders not discover the devilish recipes they
employ to make the sacrament.
On the other hand, according to a second reading, this passage would
resemble the previous polemic. In other words, the nefarious sectarians would
deliberately defile unwitting Mandaeans through impure wine and bread; the
Mandaeans would be those to whom they give the bread “as a meal” and “let
them drink” the wine. According to this interpretation, the text reacts with
horror to the killing of a Jewish boy for his blood, not out of a sense of human-
itarianism but rather because the blood of Jews, identified with the archons, is
the most impure. The same can be said of the menstrual blood slipped into the
wine; it is the particularly tainted menstruation of a whoring nun. Just as in the
88
GR I 227:17–27. See Dan Shapira, “Manichaeans (Marmanaiia), Zoroastrians (Iazuqaiia),
Jews, Christians and Other Heretics: A Study of the Redaction of Mandaic Texts,” Le Mus eon 117
(2004): 270; Lidzbarski, Ginz a , 229.
89
Shapira, “Manichaeans,” 4. On the Manichaean myth of creation, see Martin Schwartz,
“From Healer to Hyle: Levantine Iconography as Manichaean Mythology,” Journal of Inner Asian
Art and Archaeology 1 (2006): 145–47.
90
I think that this motif should not be classed, as Shapira argues, under a general rubric of
“unusual sexual practices.” The distinction is a fine one, but it seems that pollution, rather than
sex, is at the heart of this practice.
91
Ruḥa, meaning “spirit,” is Adunai’s consort and generally characterized in the scholarly litera-
ture as an evil entity. Buckley, however, has argued that the Mandaean sources actually paint a more
nuanced and sometimes even positive portrayal of Ruḥa. See J. J. Buckley, “A Rehabilitation of
Spirit Ruha in Mandaean Religion,” History of Religions 22 (1982): 60–84.
92
GR I 225–26; Shapira, “Manichaeans,” 28; Lidzbarski, Ginz a , 227.

anti-Manichaean passage, the point here is the depiction of the deliberate

practice of ritual impurity rather than any sexual deviance.
While Mandaean polemics against Judaism do not include this motif of
polluted wine, the Ginza Rabb a does state that “from the circumcised, slothful
Jews all the nations and gates of darkness originated.”93 The Jews are the ori-
o’s hasty refusal of Abrahı̄m’s offer
gin of all sectarianism and heresy. Adı̄n
of a hospitable drink is precisely the reaction any good Mandaean should have
when confronted with Jewish wine.
The importance of this Mandaean polemic is that it presents a parallel with

a motif that is central to the citation in the SGW but lacking in both the bibli-
cal and the rabbinic passages scholars have identified and in the parallel
Islamic account. Again, without arguing that this particular Mandaean polem-

ical text is the source for the SGW’s citation, this text demonstrates that
polemics relating Jews and polluted wine were part of the wider cultural

matrix of the SGW.
the cushion

As the SGW o came to visit Abrahı̄m he “sat on a
states in 14:42, when Adı̄n
cushion and asked after his welfare.” This detail is not included in the mid-
rashic versions of the story. While the extended discussion in BT Bava Metsia
does mention Abraham’s standing up out of respect for his guests—and this
despite the pain of his recent circumcision—neither God’s sitting nor the
object on which he sat is mentioned. Edward William West, in his translation
of the passage, dismisses this description as “the usual Oriental salutation.”94
However, this detail is more significant than West allows.
Under the Sasanians and even earlier, royalty was associated with sitting
on a higher and more comfortable seat. More than just marking the status of
the king, the power of various court dignitaries was signified by the height
and proximity of their seats to that of the king. Thrones, of course, were
important marks of royalty, and special stools were reserved for highly placed
persons. This custom is reflected in reports of the Sasanian court transmitted
in Arabic as well as in the accounts of Achamenid practices. For instance, in
the book of Esther, Haman’s promotion at court is symbolized by his stool
being elevated above those of other dignitaries.95
Cushions, though, were just as much signifiers of status. Several Sasanian
engraved silver bowls and seals depict the king sitting and reclining on piles
93
GR I 224; Shapira, “Manichaeans,” 26; Lidzbarski, Ginz
a , 225.
94
West, Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, Sikand-Gûmânîk Vigâr, Sad Dar Pahlavi, 225.
95
Shaul Shaked, “From Iran to Islam: On Some Symbols of Royalty,” Jerusalem Studies in
Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 79–81.

of mats and cushions.96 One example is found in a Sasanian gold cup in the
collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The ruler, most often identi-
fied as Khosrow I Anoshirvan (r. 531–79), depicted in the central medallion
of the cup, sits facing the viewer on a cushion on an ornately carved divan;
next to him are piled six additional cushions, making a total of seven.97 Similar
depictions of Sasanian notables can be found in Arabic, Armenian, and Talmu-
dic texts, and various sources convey different numbers and heights of the
cushions. Tabari describes the Sasanian general Rustam sitting on a golden
throne piled with gold-embroidered cushions to impress a delegation of the
Muslim army,98 and elsewhere he depicts the Sasanian king Khosrow II Par-
wez (r. 590–628) reclining on three cushions.99 The Talmud, for its part, men-
tions a pile of seven cushions that are removed one by one to reflect a rabbi’s
lowered status.100
Even one cushion by itself can serve as a metonymy for kingship as a
whole. This is exemplified in (a crucial scene in the fifth-century Armenian
work The Epic Histories by P awstos Buzand.101 While Armenian literature
and culture in( general are strongly connected to that of Iran,102 scholars have
argued that P awstos’s work in particular is cast in the mold of Iranian epic
traditions.103 The Epic Histories provides an account of the wars between the
96
Roman Ghirshman, Persian Art: The Parthian and Sasanian Dynasties, trans. Stuart Gilbert
and James Emmons (New York: Golden, 1962), esp. the silver bowls discussed on 203–19.
97
Dorothy Shepherd, “Sasanian Art,” in The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed.
Ehsan Yarshater, vol. 3, pt. 2 of The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1983), 1097.
98
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The Battle of al-Q adisiyyah and the Conquest of Syria and
Palestine, ed. and trans. Yohanan Friedmann, vol. 12 of The History of al-Tabari (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1992), 65–67; Shaked, “From Iran to Islam,” 78.
99
Shaked, “From Iran to Islam,” 77. Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The S as
anids, the Byzan-
tines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, ed. and trans. C. E. Bosworth, vol. 5 of The History of al-Tabari
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), 385.
100
Daniel Sperber, “On the Unfortunate Adventures of Rav Kahana: A Passage of Saboraic
Polemic from Sasanian Persia,” in Irano-Judaica, ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer (Jerusa-
lem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1982), 83–100; Shaked, “From Iran to Islam”; Isaiah Gafni, The Jews of
Babylonia in the Talmudic Era (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1990), 194–97 [in Hebrew];
Geoffrey Herman, “The Story of Rav Kahana (BT Baba Qamma 117a–b) in Light of Armeno-
Persian Sources,” in Irano-Judaica VI, ed. Amnon Netzer and Shaul Shaked (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi
Institute, 2008), 53–86.
101
For a discussion of the author and his work, see James R. Russell, “Faustus,” in Encyclopae-
dia Iranica (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1999), 9:449–51; and, ( for a complete translation,
Nina N. Garsoian, ed. and trans., The Epic Histories Attributed to P awstos Buzand (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). The passage is discussed at length in the context of the rab-
binic story from BT Bava Qamma 117a–b in Herman, “Story of Rav Kahana.”
102
On Iran and Armenia, see David M. Lang, “Iran, Armenia and Georgia,” in The Seleucid,
Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, vol. 3, pt. 1 of The Cambridge History of
Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 505–36; and James R. Russell, Zoroastri-
anism in Armenia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
103
Russell, “Faustus”; Herman, “Story of Rav Kahana.”

Sasanians and the Armenians during the rule of Shapur II (r. 309–79); as will
become immediately clear, the fact that the Armenian kings were descended
from a branch of the Parthian royal family, the Iranian dynasty overthrown by
the Sasanians in their rise to power, is a significant element in this rivalry. The
episode of interest to us here describes the visit of the Armenian king Arsak II
(r. 350–67) to the camp of the Sasanian monarch Shapur. Despite the good
relations between the royal houses, Shapur, on the advice of various astrono-
mers, is suspicious of Arsak’s intentions. After seizing the king and his vassal
on their arrival at camp, Shapur unveils a ruse to reveal his rival’s true feel-
ings. He orders a tent prepared in which half the ground is covered with Arme-
nian soil and the other half with Iranian soil. Walking back and forth in the
tent, Shapur engages Arsak in conversation. As long as the Armenian king is
on Iranian soil, he is deferential to the Iranian ruler. However, when on his
native earth, Arsak cannot restrain his feelings; he is defiant and condescend-
ing. Upon reaching Armenian soil, the text describes Arsak unleashing the
following insult: “Away from me malignant servant, lording it over your
lords! I shall not spare you or your children from the vengeance due to my
ancestors, nor forgive the death of king Artewan. For you are but servants
who have now taken the cushion from us, your lords. But I shall not concede
this until that place of ours shall return to us!”104 Artewan is Artabanus IV (r.
213–24), the last Parthian king overthrown by Ardashir I (r. ca. 206–42), the
founder of the Sasanian dynasty. In denouncing the Sasanians as servants,
Arsak could be referring to the tradition that Pabag, the father of Ardashir,
was a local ruler in the province of Persia under Artabanus.105 The Sasanian’s
unjust usurpation of rule is symbolized by their taking of the cushion from the
rightful Arcasid line. However, Arsak vows that he will not concede to Sasa-
nian rule over Iran until Armenia is free.
As in this passage from the Epic Histories, in the SGW the single cushion

on which Adı̄n o sits is a sign of status and prestige. Whether the cushion is
meant to indicate royalty as such is not clear, although one would imagine that
such an association would not be inappropriate for a deity, even a false one.
o has a higher status than
At the very least, the cushion indicates that Adı̄n
Abrahı̄m and that the latter treats him as an honored guest. In the Talmudic
passage and elsewhere, more cushions in the pile seems to indicate a higher
o sitting on one cushion could
status. According to that logic, depicting Adı̄n
be seen as a kind of damning with faint praise; he gets only one, as opposed to
the six or seven of the Iranian king. However, as Arsak’s outburst shows, even
104
Garsoian, Epic Histories, 171; Herman, “Story of Rav Kahana,” 79.
105
See Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (London: Tauris,
2009), 3–4.

one cushion can stand metonymically for the whole complex of royalty and
honor.
This source demonstrates particularly well the possibility of multiple

determining elements intersecting in the citation in the SGW. This particu-
larly Iranian motif is included in no other version of the story of Abraham’s
hospitality. Like the Armenian history, this citation draws on the symbolic
value of the cushion as a marker of high status and kingship. The two texts are
not directly related to each other but, rather, both draw from a larger, shared
cultural framework.
conclusion
In this essay I have aimed to present theoretical justification and textual sup-

port for a new interpretation of the) sources of the SGW’s citation of the story
of Abraham’s hospitality. The Qur anic parallel, the Manichaean (or Marcion-
ite) hymn, the Mandaean polemic, and the Armenian epic history all share
motifs with the) citation, and each of these texts illustrates a different relation
to it. The Qur an’s versions of the Abraham story present an additional source
for the tale of Abraham’s angelic visitors. The Manichaean (or Marcionite)
and Mandaean texts share motifs and names with the SGW’s citation and are
used in a similar polemical context. The final Armenian text points to the
incorporation of a well-known Iranian motif. While I have devoted consider-
able space to discussing each of these texts, I want to reiterate that my goal in
this essay is not to replace the midrashic texts other scholars have identified as
the citation’s sources. Not only would I not discount the importance of tradi-
tions preserved in rabbinic literature in Mardanfarrox’s world, but none of the
texts I have discussed—a selection that is by no means exhaustive—repre-
sents a “smoking gun,” the source that must have directly influenced Mardan-

farrox in composing the SGW. Rather, as in Foucault’s definition of geneal-
ogy, I have attempted to show that in the case of the SGW’s critique of
Judaism, we are presented with “a singularity born out of multiple determin-
ing elements” the presentation of which “does not function according to any
principle of closure.”
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The Genealogy of Abraham: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism beyond Jewish Literature

Author(s): Samuel Thrope

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Ó 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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ture’s most extensive polemic against Judaism.2 Alongside chapters attacking

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was hat marda nfarrox aus dem judenthume aufgenommen?

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less than self-evident.10 This singular focus on influence vastly underestimated

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Pregill’s approach—and the methodological perspective that underlies this

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abraham and the angels

Previous scholars were unanimous in reading this passage as a combination of

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account of Abraham’s hospitality and the annunciation of the birth of Isaac

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the deceitful son

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The motif of heavenly wine appears in the Midrash’s explication of Genesis

There is much to connect these midrashic expansions to the Jewish citation in

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and not others? There seems to be no underlying principle dictating which

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As in the account in Genesis, Abraham hastens to serve his guests a roasted

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the name of god

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Schwartz argues persuasively that these magical names and formulas

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highlighted the correspondences between the poem’s polemic and what we

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While subsequent stanzas contain interesting attacks against the Sabbath

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of the polemical stanzas might be directed

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to drink, saying that it is pure.”88 In his analysis of Mandaean polemics, Sha-

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anti-Manichaean passage, the point here is the depiction of the deliberate

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Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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