The Aqedah at the End of the First Century of the Common Era: Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum,4 Maccabees,Josephus’ Antiquities,1 Clement *

Abstract

The history of the development of traditions of the Aqedah is contested. Most discussion has centered on rabbinic and targumic texts, which has led certain scholars to engage in significant anachronism and others to see the Aqedah as a late development. In either case, other pertinent texts often suffer substantial neglect and misinterpretation. This article examines significant aspects of the Aqedah in documents composed and received in the later first century CE, seeking to do interpretive justice to their particular presentations of the Aqedah and showing that all significant aspects of the Aqedah were established by the end of the first century CE.