DID PATRIARCH ABRAHAM FIGHT THE PERSIANS? NOTES ON JOHN CHRYSOSTOM’S INTERPRETATION OF GEN. 14:1–16

Abstract

The article discusses the interpretation by St. John Chrysostom of the Old Testament plot which is contained in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 14:1–16), namely Abraham's attack on the army of foreign kings, which invaded Canaan and defeated the coalition of Canaanite rulers in the battle of Siddim. The main problem lies in the fact that commenting on this plot John Chrysostom without any seemingly objective reason identified the opponents of Abraham as the Persians. In addition, the anachronism allowed here by John Chrysostom is obvious, since the Persians first appear in the Old Testament only from the moment of the death of the Babylonian kingdom, i.e. in a fairly late era, more than a millennium distant from events described in Gen. 14:1–16. Adjacent to these issues is the problem of designating the homeland of the Abraham as Persia and Patriarch himself as a Persian. An analysis of the sources taking into account the peculiarities of the worldview of John Chrysostom and the principles of Orthodox-Christian exegesis of the Holy Scriptures shows that St. John saw in (a) Patriarch Abraham and (b) the Jews the prototypes, respectively, of (1) our Lord, Jesus Christ (as a descendant of Abraham in the flesh) and (2) Christians (as descendants of Jews by faith, "New Israel" living in the new "Promised Land" i.e. the Christian Roman Empire). The foreign troops with whom the Patriarch Abraham fought, are metaphorically called by St. John Chrysostom the Persians for the reason that in the 4th century AD the embodiment of the Old Testament prefiguration of the enemy of the "people of God" was the Persian Sasanian empire as the most powerful and dangerous adversary of the Roman Empire on east. A certain role in this was played by the fact that the Persians invaded the Roman provinces from the territory of Mesopotamia, which in the John Chrysostom’s worldview was strongly associated with Persia.