The last time we heard from Isaac was in his ‘Testament of Isaac’ (c. first century CE). That letter showed how he had absorbed the cultural obsessions of Jewish Egyptian and, later, Christian Coptic communities. This latest missive comes after a time lapse of two thousand years. This Isaac – clearly a fraud – has absorbed the skeptical, over-complicating literature so typical of the modern world. Unlike his namesake in the ‘Testament of Isaac’, he now refuses to submit himself to the ‘holy height’ of God and become ‘like the silver that is burned, smelted, purified in the fre’ (cf. Testament of Isaac 6.1–5; 8.3,4). He represents the defiance of secular modernity, and the sad loss of the knowledge that God never actually allows the son to be harmed, and that the one who submits to God is saved.

In the interests of textual integrity we are publishing the letter in the form that it was passed to us. We are resisting the temptation to cut (sacrifice?) the more offensive parts to make it better. Readers are encouraged to consult our own careful annotations and footnotes. These are at least as important as the letter.