Why is Abraham important?
Abraham was the first of the Hebrew patriarchs and a figure revered by the three great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Acc...
Where was Abraham from?
The Bible states that Abraham was raised in “Ur of the Chaldeans” (Ur Kasdim). Most scholars agree that Ur Kasdim was the Sumerian city Ur, today T...
What was Abraham’s family like?
According to the Bible, when Abraham settled in Canaan with his wife, Sarah, he was 75 and childless, but God promised that Abraham’s “seed” would...
What is Abraham best known for?
Abraham is best known for the depth of his faith. In the book of Genesis he obeys unquestioningly the commands of God and is ready to follow God’s...
What did Abraham believe in?
In Mesopotamia Abraham’s family worshipped “other gods.” In Canaan they adopted the name of the Canaanites’ supreme god, El, for a god Abraham expe...
Overview
Religious traditions
Abraham is given a high position of respect in three major world faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the covenant, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God – leading to the belief that the Jews are the chosen people of God. In Christianity, Paul the Apostle taught that Abraham's faith in God – preceding the Mosaic law – made him the prototype of all believers, Jewish or gentile; and in Islam he is seen as a link in the chain …
The Abraham cycle
The Abraham cycle is not structured by a unified plot centred on a conflict and its resolution or a problem and its solution. The episodes are often only loosely linked, and the sequence is not always logical, but it is unified by the presence of Abraham himself, as either actor or witness, and by the themes of posterity and land. These themes form "narrative programs" set out in Genesis 11:27-31 con…
Historicity and origins of the narrative
In the early and middle 20th century, leading archaeologists such as William F. Albright and G. Ernest Wright and biblical scholars such as Albrecht Alt and John Bright believed that the patriarchs and matriarchs were either real individuals or believable composites of people who lived in the "patriarchal age", the 2nd millennium BCE. But, in the 1970s, new arguments concerning Israel's past an…
In the arts
Paintings on the life of Abraham tend to focus on only a few incidents: the sacrifice of Isaac; meeting Melchizedek; entertaining the three angels; Hagar in the desert; and a few others. Additionally, Martin O'Kane, a professor of Biblical Studies, writes that the parable of Lazarus resting in the "Bosom of Abraham", as described in the Gospel of Luke, became an iconic image in Christian works. According to O'Kane, artists often chose to divert from the common literary port…
See also
• Abraham I, II, III (disambiguations)
• Abraham and the Idol Shop
• Abraham Path
• Abraham's Gate at Tel Dan
Bibliography
• Andrews, Stephen J. (1990). "Abraham". In Mills, Watson E.; Bullard, Roger A. (eds.). Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Mercer University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-86554-373-7.
• Barr, James (2013). Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199692897.
External links
• "Abraham" at chabad.org.
• Abraham smashes the idols (accessed 24 March 2011).
• "Journey and Life of the Patriarch Abraham", a map dating back to 1590.
• Kitáb-i-Íqán