Echoes of Universalist testament literature in Christian and rabbinic texts

Abstract

The Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac represent a now lost larger body of literature that reflects a Universalist worldview that may have been held by a significant portion of the Egyptian Jewish . Christian. and even pagan populations in the first few centuries of the Common Era. This perspective did not stand the test of time. but the literature that it produced may have been an important source of influence for Christian and Jewish writers of the second to sixth centuries. The Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac appealed to both Christians and Jews because these texts responded to share.d questions concerning death and divine judgment. Still Christians and Jews synthesized their specific value systems with the traditions of this Universality literature before research remains to be done on the extent to which Jewish and Chritstian sources in the centuries following the composition of these texts reframed Universality literature to craft their own theodicies. (Conclusion)