Abraham Topics

• servant hagar
• christians and muslims
• jewish tradition
• father god
• christian tradition
• harran
• son isaac
• handmaiden
• literal meaning
• goyim
• wife sarah
• hamon
• yhwh
• glosses
• sodom
• yahweh
• patri
• progeny
• canaan

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Abraham, Abraham

His father was Terah, and his brothers were Nahor and Haran. According to Genesis, Abraham was sent by God from his home in Ur Kasdim and Harran to Canaan, the land promised to his descendants by Yahweh. There Abraham entered into a covenant: in exchange for recognition of YHWH as his God, Abraham will be blessed with innumerable progeny and the land would belong to his descendants.

In the Jewish tradition, he is called Avraham Avinu or "Abraham, our Father". God promised Abraham that through his offspring, all the nations of the world will come to be blessed (), interpreted in Christian tradition as a reference particularly to Christ. Jews, Christians, and Muslims consider him father of the people of Israel through his son Isaac (cf. , ) by his wife Sarah. For Muslims, he is a prophet of Islam and the ancestor of Muhammad through his other son Ishmael - born to him by his servant, Hagar. (Jews and Christians refer to Hagar as Sarah's servant).

Later in Genesis he is called Abraham, which the text glosses as av hamon (goyim) "father of many (nations)" ; however the name does not have any literal meaning in Hebrew.

On both occasions the Lord and the ruler send Abraham away with great wealth...

The king of Sodom offers Abraham the rescued goods as reward, but Abraham refuses, so that the king of Sodom cannot say "I have made Abram rich." Genesis 14 During this period, Sarai, being barren, offers her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abram. Hagar soon conceives. Sarai, jealous of this, treats Hagar harshly, forcing her to flee. When in the desert, the Lord appears to Hagar, telling her to return, but promising that her son shall also be the father of a "multitude". Her son is called Ishmael.

A covenant is entered into: Sarai will give to birth to a son who will be called Isaac and Abram's house must from thenceforth be circumcised. It is promised that Ishmael will father twelve princes, who will become a great nation. Abram's name is changed to Abraham and Sarai's to Sarah.

The patriarch traveled three days until he came to the mount that God taught him. He commanded the servant to remain while he and Isaac proceeded alone to the mountain, Isaac carrying the wood upon which he would be sacrificed. Along the way, Isaac repeatedly asked Abraham where the animal for the burnt offering was. Abraham then replied that the Lord would provide one. Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, he was prevented by an angel, and given on that spot a ram which he sacrificed in place of his son. Thus it is said, "On the mountain the Lord provides." As a reward for his obedience he received another promise of a numerous seed and abundant prosperity. After this event, Abraham did not return to Hebron, Sarah's encampment, but instead went to Beersheba, Keturah's encampment, and it is to Beersheba that Abraham's servant brought Rebecca, Isaac's patrilineal parallel cousin who became his wife.

Abraham, being reminded by this occurrence, probably, of his own great age, and the consequent uncertainty of his life, became solicitous to secure an alliance between Isaac and a female branch of his own family.

Eliezer went on his commission with prudence, and returned with Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, granddaughter of Nahor, and, consequently, Abraham's grandniece and Isaac's first-cousin once removed. Many biblical commentators believe that Rebekah was still a child when she married Isaac, while Isaac was forty years of age.

Notwithstanding this, John the Baptist specifically taught that merely being of Abraham's seed was no guarantee of salvation. The promise in Genesis is considered to have been fulfilled through Abraham's seed, Jesus. It is also a consequence of this promise that Christianity is open to people of all races and not limited to Jews.

The other on the "Sunday of the Forefathers" (two Sundays before Christmas), where he is commemorated together with other ancestors of Jesus. Abraham is also mentioned in the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, just before the Anaphora. Abraham and Sarah are invoked in the prayers said by the priest over a newly married couple at the Sacred Mystery of Crowning (i.e., the Sacrament of Marriage).

Ishmael, his firstborn son, is considered the Father of the Arabised Arabs , and Isaac is considered the Father of the Hebrews . Islam teaches that Ishmael was the son Abraham nearly sacrificed on Moriah. To support this view Muslims use various proofs, including the belief that at the time Ishmael was his only son. Abraham is revered by Muslims as one of the Prophets in Islam, and is commonly termed Khalil Ullah , "Friend of God". Abraham is considered a Hanif, that is, a discoverer of monotheism.

The annual Hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam, follows Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael's journey to the sacred place of the Kaaba. Islamic tradition narrates that Abraham's subsequent visits to the Northern Arabian region, after leaving Ishmael and Hagar (in the area that would later become the Islamic holy city of Mecca), were not only to visit Ishmael but also to construct the first house of worship for God (that is, the monotheistic concept and model of God), the Kaaba -as per God's command.

In turn, God spared his son's life and instead substituted a sheep. This was Abraham's test of faith. On Eid ul-Adha, Muslims sacrifice a domestic animal a sheep, goat, cow, buffalo or camel as a symbol of Abraham's sacrifice, and divide the meat among the family members, friends, relatives, and most importantly, the poor.

From the character of the literary evidence and the locale of the stories it has been held that Abraham was originally associated with Hebron. The double name Abram/Abraham has even suggested that two personages have been combined in the Biblical narrative; although this does not explain the change from Sarai to Sarah.

The figures in the Book of Jubilees have Abraham born 1,876 years after creation, and 534 years before the Exodus; the ages provided in the Samaritan version of Genesis agree closely with those of Jubilees before the Deluge, but after the Deluge, they add roughly 100 years to each of the ages of the Patriarchs in the Masoretic Text, resulting in the figure of 2,247 years after creation for Abraham's birth. The Greek Septuagint version adds around 100 years to nearly all of the patriarchs' births, producing the even higher figure of 3,312 years after creation for Abraham's birth.

In Gen.12:4 we learn that at that time Abraham was 75 years old. In other words Abraham was born when his father Terah was 130 years old. (205-75 = 130). Therefore Abraham was born in year 2008 AM.

In particular, he believed he found in the Chedorlaomer Text , currently thought to have been written in the 6th to the 7th century BCE, the names of three of the kings of the Eastern coalition fighting against the five kings from the Vale of Siddim in Gen. 14:1. This is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in a context of wider political history, and the idea of many 19th/early 20th century exegetes and assyriologists was that it seemed to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.In 1887, Schrader then was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi (cf. the ISBE of 1915, s.v. "Hammurabi").

Since many confessional and evangelical theologians may feel disinclined to state that the dates of the Bible might be in error, some of these began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I (23rd century in the short chronology), and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favor with them. Later research into the culture of Mesoportamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE have seemed to undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century, and to treat him as a strictly historical figure.Little now remains of the attempts of scholars of previous generations to identify names such as Amraphel with major historical figures like Hammurabhi. The Encyclopedia Britannica article on "Amraphel" has: "Scholars of previous generations tried to identify these names with important historical figurese.g., Amraphel with Hammurabi of Babylonbut little remains today of these suppositions." While it is widely admitted that there is no archaeological evidence to prove the existence of Abraham, apparent parallels to Genesis in the archaeological record assure that speculations on the patriarch's historicity and on the period that would best fit the account in Genesis remain alive in religious circles.

Source: Wikipedia > Abraham