This book explores the role of the Biblical patriarch Abraham in the formation and use of authoritative texts in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

In July 2009 two research programmes working within the European Association of Biblical Studies made a joint session on the theme Remembering Abraham in the Persian-Hellenistic Period. Its aim was to study Abraham as a figure of cultural memory in the literature of these periods. Cultural memory is the shared reproduction and recalling of what has been learned and retained. It also involves transformation and innovation. As a figure of memory, stories of Abraham served as guidelines for identity-formation and authoritative illustration of behaviour for the emerging Jewish communities.

The various contributions to this book demonstrate how the Persian and Hellenistic writers intended to socialize their readers by constructing shared images of Abraham as a figure of the past: He is variously presented as the proto-Moses; linked to Jerusalem; he is the founder of a non-exclusive Judaism in the 6th-4th centuries BCE; and he is also a figure prepared for martyrdom, thus reflecting the readiness for martyrdom that appeared in Hellenistic and Roman Judaism. The book also explores how allusions to the past function as a memory within the Abraham stories.

The contributors are significant scholars and contributors to the Persian and Hellenistic periods of the Old Testament and Jewish studies. The chapters of this book were originally presented at the EABS 2009 joint session of “Cultural Memory in Biblical Exegesis” and “Israel and the Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods” (in Lincoln, GB).