Introduction and Background
INTRODUCTION TO THE PATRIARCHS
1. FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL UR
- A SHORT SUMMARY OF GENESIS 1-11
2. THE PEOPLE AND GOD’S WITNESSES
3. GOD’S LOVED PEOPLE
BACKGROUND
1. WHY WAS ABRAM CALLED BY GOD?
2. WHERE DID ABRAM COME FROM?
3. WHAT ABOUT THE RECORDS?
4. ABRAM - REAL PERSON OR FICTION?
Historically,
Religiously,
Sociologically,
Ancestrally,
Culturally,
Objections,
Absence of Evidence,
Duplicate Narratives,
Conclusions
5. ABOUT UR ON THE EUPHRATES RIVER
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If we follow the journeys of Abraham and his family, in the Genesis account, from Ur through to their resting place in Egypt for centuries, we will come eventually to the point where God at last redeems them, and they return as far as the Promised Land. “Your ways, O God, are holy ... With your mighty arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph”, Psalm 77:13-15, NIV.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE PATRIARCHS
“In the beginning…”, Genesis 1-11:30.
FOCUS:
The Patriarchs did not appear in history until after the Babel story in Genesis 11, so this introduction will state the Genesis 1 to 11 basis for our story.
The story of Genesis begins with creation, where God made man and woman in His image, but where soon came rebellion and consequently God’s judgement. There may have been relief at the first gospel promise, that one day the woman’s seed would crush the offensive serpent. Unfortunately, it was not a cherished promise. That Promise, that Seed, that Idea, that Son of God, was in the plan of God, from before the foundation of the world, that is, before the creation, Ephesians 1:4, 5, John 1:1-5, Colossians 1.
The story moves quickly through world history, where the monotheism that God established, is replaced by polytheism, and soon there were only scattered God worshippers, who are briefly mentioned - like Enoch and Noah “who walked with God”.
1. FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL UR
- A SHORT SUMMARY OF GENESIS 1-11
In the first eleven chapters of Genesis we are told the moving story of the first 2,000 years (generally speaking) of history, then comes the next 2,000 years in the rest of the Old Testament. The next 2000 years brings us to our times. It is remarkable that we find ourselves now, as far away from the Son of God in the year 2000 AD, as that Patriarchal family was in 2000 BC. We are looking back, as they were looking forward, to the salvation point provided by God. The historian Usher proclaimed the formation of man to have occurred 4000 years before our Lord Jesus Christ. So this summary is meant to take us quickly through the first chapters of Genesis in order to meet Abram.
We read-
+ Of God’s presence in charge of the universe,
+ About the great lights that move around the heavens,
+ Of God’s creation of the planet earth on which we live,
+ Of the building of the sustaining plants and animals,
+ Of the preparation for His gift of man and woman
+ Of the creation of Adam and Eve, both in His image.
The matter created is made subject to laws and arranged in order, vegetable life is created, and animal life is created. To the highest form is given human reason, not predestined by God, but with free will. In this high form, and with the foreknowledge of God, all of this gift may be coupled with a spiritual nature, with the possibility of life with the Lord, on the inherited earth.
This is Purist Monotheism in the Garden of Eden.
God, with foreknowledge, superintended it all.
Next, there is -
After that, there is -
+ The sadness of the first sin, and so God’s first crisis,
+ The first murder, when Cain kills Abel,
+ The first family dysfunction,
+ Family dysfunction, where the murderer, probably repentant, and justly fearful, wanders away from Eden,
+ But with a warning sign from God, to keep Cain calm and safe.
+ The posterity of Adam and Eve, divided into two lines, Cain and Seth.
+ A later Cain son, Lamech, the first to practice polygamy.
+ This Cainite family marked by arrogance, lust, violence and cruelty.
+ Nothing more heard of the alienated Cain family.
+ A third son, Seth, born to Adam and Eve, 130 years after creation,
+ A “firstborn” and forebear of the Promised Seed,
And then there is -
+ Marriage of the sons of God (Seth) with the daughters of men (probably Cain).
+ Overall degeneration into great wickedness,
+ A time when “God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt”, Genesis 6:12.
Then God with a heavy heart -
+ Made a great flood that covered the sin and wickedness.
+ Saved only one man, Noah, who had been the ignored preacher of salvation, a descendant of Seth, and his family. This is the second crisis in God’s plan.
Next, Noah, and his family, built a new life. God gave this family -
+ Another covenant, Genesis 9:11-17,
+ A promise that He would never destroy the earth again.
The three sons of Noah spread to the corners of the world -
+ Shem, Ham and Japheth,
+ And became the forefathers of the three mighty racial strains that we know even today.
+ Shem’s five sons went to pasture their sheep, into what we call now the Middle East, the olive skinned race, the Arabians and the Hebrews and the Syrians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Ishmaelites, and the Midianites and the Edomites.
+ Ham’s four sons went south to where the black skinned peoples are today, becoming mighty builders, and founding empires. They were the Cushites, in Arabia and Ethiopia, (Asiatic and African Cush), the Egyptians, the Libyans of North Africa, the Philistines and the Canaanites, (who took the place of the Cainites),
+ Japheth’s seven sons, fair skinned, wandered in barbarous hordes over what we know as Europe, and the Celt countries, and went to Turkey, Greece, Italy, further north into Germany and far up into the northern Russian European continent and then east, as the Red Indians, Chinese and the Alaskans.
2. THE PEOPLE AS GOD’S WITNESS
By no stretch of the imagination can we divide the world in this way today, for races move, and intermingle, and intermarry, and are obliterated, but Genesis 10 gives us a good description of what happened to Shem, Ham and Japheth at the time of the repeopling of the earth.
Comment:
It is remarkable that in the 19th Century, so much was known about these peoples that inhabited the earth, just after the flood. The Speaker’s and Ellicott’s Commentaries explain the nations in astonishing detail. Breasted’s and Rollin’s Ancient Histories also were (and are) remarkable books, of those days. “Time-Life History of the World 3000-1500 BC. The Age of the God-Kings” is a worthwhile and readable, recently written history (1987) of the nations that had to do with Abram and his children. This text will hereafter be referred to as “Time-Life History”.
But now, as we move into the twenty first century, there is so much more knowledge about this age and area. For instance, it is remarkable that in a Sydney Botanical Garden, at Mount Tomah, we can view a rose plant that the Plant Archaeologists assure us, according to stone “pictures” now available, was grown in the Middle East in 1750 BC, at the time of these Biblical patriarchs.
It also appears that Biblical language and thought, and areas of consideration, have achieved enormous heights. There are agencies working to translate His Word into so many languages, like the great Wycliffe Mission, that there is little excuse for lack of knowledge of God’s way. Now less than 1500 languages, of the 6793 known languages, are yet to have a translated Testament (with 1229 in progress at the moment). This number diminishes year by year, with hopes that the job will be completed by 2020 - (statistics available Wycliffe Magazine, 10/98). This is a great memorial to Wycliffe who was burnt at the stake in 1394, for his efforts to make God’s word available to everyman. Ethel Wallis and Mary Bennett wrote, in 1960, “Two Thousand Tongues to Go”, the story of his life and mission. It seems that blessings abound for those who stimulate this explosion of knowledge about the Bible, and we owe a great debt to those who gave their lives for our privilege. Computers have now made an enormous difference to the ability to transcribe and translate languages, but Wycliffe set the stage for God to work to alleviate what is called the Babel influence of our time.
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It appears then, that God developed from the line of Shem, a people to be His witness, Genesis 11, because there was a need to save all the people of the earth. Ignoring the beautiful rainbow with its promise of God’s loving care, men built the Tower of Babel in an effort to equip themselves with the mind of God, a high tower to save themselves if He happened to send a flood again. So God shattered these plans by scattering men over the earth and confused them with different languages, a consequence that brought a confusion, which many people with language translations and education are now trying to heal. This was the third crisis in God’s plan.
3. GOD’S LOVED PEOPLE
Our story begins, in Genesis 11, where we meet a God loved family. The family was promised prosperity, land and generational blessings, - a wonderful answer to anyone’s prayer. That family story is the foundation for our hopes and aspirations, as Gentiles, if we wish to serve God in our families. Paul, in Romans 2, makes it quite clear that believers in God, whatever their race, will be beneficiaries of this promise, and will enjoy the blessings of salvation, for they are international and universal. He emphasises that Abraham was father of us all (circumcised or uncircumcised). That the first family did not have their promise fulfilled, but were content to see it far off, is a lesson to us to be content, as well. We can learn innumerable other lessons if we think about their lives, and as God was with them, through all their trials, He will be with us, if we invite Him, to be our constant guide and companion.
Yet Genesis times were culturally different from ours, and relationships that could have been strong and loving, and had begun with a great journey into the unknown, a leaving of “kith and kin”, and such great potential, ended, for some, in disappointment, trauma and jealousy. There are great stories of courage and enduring love, and those who stood firm for God, but woven into the strong fabric of greatness, are the threads of weakness that characterise all of us, as well. These are the stories that make the fabric of Genesis 11-50 so remarkable. They are known as “Patriarchal History” by the scholars, and are about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. These stories lead us into examinations that pitch our experiences against their experiences.
Consider:
* If they are God loved then who can say that we are not?
* When our family life is dysfunctional, for we all have dysfunction at some time or other, and everything is in shadow, and we try so desperately to hold the thread with God, who of us cannot say still, that we are God loved in spite of it all?
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There are some threads in this story that do not go in the direction that we would normally think. The woof has little knots and we cannot see how God is working, the weave often leaves holes where the thread does not catch properly, and we are left without any solution to the problems that arise.
However, in the entire pattern, we know -
That God is the architect and supervisor,
And that He,
In the end,
Creates this fabric
That bears the Glory of His Name,
And that from that thing of beauty,
There is an invitation to us,
To come into His Kingdom.
The narrative in these chapters, frequently concentrates on the life of a later son, not a firstborn, emphasising that,
DIVINELY CHOSEN MEN
is not the product of an hereditary line, a natural or worldly line, and sometimes behave in an unseemly fashion. This is a lesson to us that God may do as He pleases, Psalm 115:3, that He does not have to act in any arbitrary way, Romans 9:14, nor how we would expect Him to act. For He is the potter, and we the clay.
Divinely chosen men are -
A product of God’s grace,
A divine sovereign intervention into the affairs of men,
Missioners about God and His purpose,
Part of a consecrated thread of people,
Called to His kingdom,
Places where His glory shines,
Channelling His blessings on the whole of the earth,
A representation of what the whole will be,
When “all will be in all”.
CONCLUSION:
Genesis 3, and Genesis 6, and Genesis 11 contain the three records about man moving away from God, from the His salvation offer, to make a name for himself, at God’s expense. Each time God gave them up. Now, after the third crisis in God’s plan, we will examine the next phase, the life of the patriarchs, and what they did with that great commission. The children of these patriarchs, as well, eventually lost the Great Commission, that we hear about right through the Biblical texts, until it is recorded, hand in hand with the Great Commandment during the life of our Lord, Matthew 5:43, 44 and 28:19, 20. He then gave the commission and the commandment finally, once more, to those who will preach in His name, whether they would be teachers or supporters in this great effort.
BACKGROUND
“And Terah took Abram his son…”, Genesis 11:31.
FOCUS:
From this third crisis where the evil human community was shattered, (which we find in Genesis 11), we come to Genesis 12, and a wonderful hope for all mankind. God introduces us to Abram in Ur, and we hear about his family, Genesis 11:25-30.
1. WHY WAS ABRAM CALLED BY GOD?
It may not have seemed like a wonderful hope and blessing for all nations to begin with, but when we see Abram outreaching for God, and we see Joseph in Egypt, Moses with Jethro, the spies to Rahab, Naomi to Ruth, Esther, Daniel, and Ezekiel and Jonah, and Job, and many more, we realise that God has even created books of the Bible about people who recognised the desire of God for all nations, and their responsibility to mission them. Not only that, but Ruth and Job are books of the Bible whose main influencing characters are not directly biologically related to this special family by birth. For those (adopted by God, and so belonging to God), are called “Abraham’s seed and heirs”, Galatians 3:29, and are His people.
Comment:
After Babel there was a need for another way -
# To bring men to God,
# To show them His purpose,
# To show forth His glory and
# For man to witness to His purpose and
# That man might mission all the peoples of the world.
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So God prepared Himself a special family in a man who was a descendant of Seth. This man was called Abraham and he and his descendants, were used by God, not to set up an elitism to promote His Name, but to be an election of people to begin that work, so that all peoples of the earth would be blessed, in the seed of Abraham, who was Jesus Christ our Lord. The promise for this came before Abraham’s circumcision so that the promise was for all, not just the circumcised. Abraham and his family were to be a minority to serve the majority. It was not a narrowing of God’s purpose, but a means of reaching all those who had been scattered
This witness (the Jews) did not materialise as He wished, but the plan that He would provide a special Son, to focus the sinners of the earth, and to provide a Way for salvation, certainly came to fruition. To that end, 64 generations from the first son Adam, came the second son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who provided a way to save men from their evil ways.
Moses gives us the family history of the development of this family of Shem, where some were specifically “called by God”. He told us of the father Nahor, who begat Terah, and of Terah, who begat Abram, in Genesis 11, from Noah, in ten generations. It is the beginning of this large family, as numerous as the sand of the sea that we are concerned about in our study. It was a semi nomadic family never fully absorbed into the carefully constructed Sumerian civilisation. Still they would have heard of the flood, read from an incised clay tablet by a scribe, for it was a fable of their host country. However, because Abram’s family’s own oral tradition was very important to them they probably heard of it passed down within the family. By this oral tradition Abram would claim membership in his own tribe, and it would also explain the relationship of his tribe itself to other tribes. We are enlightened by history, especially the history of these God loved and dysfunctional families. Their stories help us to understand human complexities, and their history sharpens and extends our moral imagination.
2. WHERE DID ABRAM COME FROM?
Sumer, in the city of Ur.
The male children of the very wealthy in Sumer sat on stone benches in school, and inscribed clay slates with styluses. By 2500 BC the scribes had evolved better styluses with a triangular shaped point, wedged, rather than a point. If they made a mistake it was easily corrected by rubbing out on the damp clay. If they wished to store or preserve their work, it was left to dry, and then they could very easily slide it into a clay envelope. School was a rare experience for most children, and only for a privileged minority. These students were later employed as scribes. They wrote down laws, contracts and communications of all sorts, for example, for battle commanders, and for almanacs. There was advice and other practical documents, and the records and laws for the sales of land, property and slaves, and for marriages and divorces. As well, these scribes were used for scribing the immense collections of poetry and literature that had until then been transmitted by chant or recitation, to the accompaniment of a harp or lyre. Up until that time, all this learning lived in the memories of people. There are enough tablets unearthed now for people to learn the scripts and translate the messages and literary constructions on the tablets for us. Many of these are readily available for us to read. “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, a 3,500 line piece of prose, is classic literature of the day, preserved in clay tablets, and it dates from the third millennium BC, that is, a thousand years before Abram. It is the finest and oldest literature in existence, and it is a wondrous experience to sit and read the translated story through, when it was authorised so long ago.
There was a stepped pyramid, or ziggurat in Sumer, in the city of Ur, to the city’s god, built at the same time as the great Khufu’s pyramid at Giza in Egypt. The school was attached to the temple, and recorded the donations of grain, that is, wheat, but usually barley, and other offerings to the moon god, Nanna, chief deity of the Ziggurat complex. The rent from the temple’s vast land possessions went to support the temple weavers, metalworkers, potters and carpenters, and the multitudes of folk who worked in the complex. So the populace was easily subdued, if you didn’t work for the temple, you tilled and grazed animals on land owned by the temple.
The Sumerians had a bureaucratic thoroughness, as each temple offering was recorded twice on clay tablets, one for the donor, and the other was deposited in the sacred archives. The school also taught “a healthy dose of mathematics”, based on the number sixty, which can be divided by twelve numbers, and an easy and sensible method for calculations on the division of food, and the subdividing of land, and for paying wages. In “Time-Life History”, page 20, we read how the people of Ur learned and honed their “sexagesimal skills by solving practical problems” and we know that traces of those wonderful skills survive today in such familiar manifestations as the 60 second minute, and the 60 minute hour, and the 360 degree circle. Thank you for that, Sumerians, 2000 BC, host to our Aramean father, Abram, Deuteronomy 26:5, NIV. There were many advantages in this harsh and hard civilization.
This resource book also includes the history of writing in Sumeria and Egypt, on pages 37 to 53. As well, in the Biblical Archaeology Review for November/December, 1998, we learn that it was not until the late 1890’s that archaeologists realised that it was the earlier Sumerians, and not the Babylonians and Assyrians who had first used writing to keep their records. At Nippur, the religious capital of the Sumerians, there is a “Tablet Hill” where thousands of tablets have been found, as if in a library, quite remarkable.
So it is entirely possible that written histories were kept, in all civilisations, and the record of the advanced learning of scribes in Ur, with their little wedge shaped marks, helps us to build our argument that God had already ensured those written records were available for Moses to use. There are several sources that may have been available to Moses.
There is now a new chapter in the history of writing, and it shows that nothing stays “first” for long. Dr Gunter Dreyer, a contemporary German archaeologist, has discovered writing as early as 3300 BC, in Southern Egypt, so there is a rival for first with the skill of recording. There are lists, documenting linen and oil, delivered as taxes to an Egyptian king. There are notes, numbers, king’s names and institutions, all marked on clay tablets not much bigger than a postage stamp, encased in clay jars. These records were essential for an authority expanding an area of influence, and can be legitimately called writing because the each symbol stands for a consonant and together they make up syllables, February 1999, The Australian Christadelphian Shield Magazine. However the Egyptian papyrus records that abound today are still the best Egyptian historical records available and descriptions of these are found in the texts of this present study on Joseph as he came into power in Egypt.
3. WHAT ABOUT THE RECORDS?
It is thought by some (see “Introduction to Genesis”, Ellicott’s Commentary), that an account of creation was already in existence at the time of Abram in Ur, and that Terah, and later Abram, may have inherited a copy somehow. Perhaps it was a treasure that Noah took into the ark, for we only know the animals that went in. That does not preclude other treasures.
It is worth considering, as well, that Noah may have caused a record to be written just before his death. He died two years before the birth of Abram and might have been known to Terah. Terah was of the stock of Noah’s son, Shem and therefore related.
The word for writing at this time, means “to cut” or “to dig”, so it would not have been parchment as in Egypt. We already know that such an account is in the literature of the Assyrians, who obtained it from Ur of the Chaldees, be it a corrupt legend, with all of its monotheism gone. One clay tablet found at Nippur, in Sumeria, records one man and his family safely surviving a flood.
Picture writing gave way to a system of abstract symbols over 1,500 years. By 3300 BC we can readily understand the abstract pictures, but by 3000 BC they were turned on their side and not so readily identified. The use of the wedge shaped stylus brought about another change and by 1800 BC cuneiform, from the word “cuneus”, that is “wedge”, was produced, not much related to the old picture writing.
Perhaps if Abram was not an idolater, which seems unlikely, he made himself unpopular, trying to teach these now polytheistic people, that they were worshipping the created for the Creator, for they worshipped the heavenly creatures. The Jews, despite worship irregularities, never fell into the trap of formally worshipping these beings to the total exclusion of YHWH, (for He never left Himself without a witness, or continuing remnant). They were better taught by the first chapter of Genesis, than their idol worshipping relations. Even we Christians use the name days that signify worshipping of the sun, moon and planets. God specifically emphasises Himself as Creator, in this first chapter, and this was to prove a bulwark against the attractions of animal worship so prevalent in Egypt where Abram’s family would later seek refuge. This document of great authentic weight and authority would have been a precious treasure in the family of Shem, if indeed he had one, and would account for their later rejection of idolatry, and their persistence, that Abram’s family had in Canaan, in the belief of one sole Deity. The document would have been highly prized and religiously preserved. It would have travelled with the family over the generations, wherever they went, trussed in soft cloth (silk), against breakage, and carted, or stored, most carefully.
It provides the reason for the faith of Abram in following God’s directions, and his Godly actions then become intelligible.
It provides the basis for the noble character, trustful abandonment of his home to the wishes of his Lord God, the firm faith that set him apart, so that God from then on favoured him, and his family, with more revelations, for he was certainly fit for them.
It is then more easily understood how Moses, may have pieced together his Genesis record in the first five books of the Bible, - from the preserved record belonging to the called away Abram. But if the record is no older than Moses it would be difficult to account for the earlier possession by the Chaldees of so much of the inspired narrative. The same holds true for the Chaldean Legends of the Flood, of the Tower of Babel and other Genesis stories, (argues the commentator Ellicott). There are present day tribes in Africa, like the Ethiopians and the Maasai, that have, in their shrouded origins, known stories so similar to the Genesis story of say, Jacob and Esau, and practices, like circumcision and food taboos, that some commentators think that even these present day tribes, can lay claim to the ancient Hebrew peoples, as their ancestors, see page 75, “Enkop Ai, My Life with the Maasai”, by Catherine Oddie. Still this does not preclude the idea that some have, that the inspired word dropped into the mind, and then to the pen of Moses, from God.
Thus Moses,
instinct with the prophetic power,
that God had bestowed upon him,
placed the record into a revelation.
Being himself a prophet,
he recorded it in such a form that
would make it fit for the permanent use,
first, of the Jewish people,
and then of the Christian Church.
Without the Genesis record,
so much of the rest of the Bible
would be unintelligible.
Therefore to Moses,
under God’s guiding hand,
or/and to those who remembered
the oral traditions,
and to those who kept and guarded
the records,
we have a great debt.
4. ABRAM - REAL PERSON OR FICTION?
The discoveries that have now been made, affirm our belief that Abraham did exist, at about the time of the Sumerians, for we do understand that recording was possible at the time.
In his Biblical context, even with the unexplained contradictory or duplicate incidents, and episodes hard to understand, that we find in his life, and with the anachronisms that we can detect in the texts, there are not sufficient grounds for doubt, or signs of weakness, or signs that composition of the record took place long after the incidents took place, which seem to be the three main arguments. Some jejunely wish to assert that as Abraham did not go with the flow of the huge and pressing military campaigns, therefore the Biblical records of his journeys must be invalid, but that is not to say that he could not have travelled in the opposite direction, as has been discovered that other tribes have done, as well, without hindrance. There is enough evidence of identification of places where explorations have been made now, in our day, to preclude invalidations of the journeys of Abraham, - Ur, Haran, Shechem, Bethel, Salem (if Jerusalem), and Hebron. Gerar is still unidentified, and there is no positive evidence yet of the Beersheba location of yesteryear, though we know of the water well there.
Historically, we may easily seat Abraham long before the Mosaic Law, before Joseph and Moses, about 2000 BC. The Nuzi and Mari Tablets texts provide us with so much information that show us that Abraham followed closely in the practices and laws of the time in which he is historically placed, with treaties, for land and wells, and other documents. The Genesis text deserves no preferential status, if we wish to place it alongside other evidence, when comparing the historical texts of the time, but it can be shown to be consistent.
There are no other names, like “Abraham”, “Isaac” and “Jacob” in the Biblical text, and neither are there any in other historical texts, only in derivatives, which allows them a particular uniqueness, which serves our purpose, for we wish to add the point of the extra recording incentive of inspiration, as well.
The idea that other current cultures could preserve their history, with autobiographical records and texts, conveying factual information and narratives and conversations, similar to Genesis, stimulates us to think the Israelites did as well, and so a great source of information, (as well as that handed down by word of mouth over so few generations from Joseph’s death to Moses’ recording ability) would be available to Moses for the Genesis record, (65 years from the death of Joseph to the birth of Moses). The “Contemporary Age Reference Chart of Biblical Characters” compiled by Denis Arthur is useful here.
Religiously, Abraham was aware of God’s uniqueness and righteousness, yet also aware of others who worshipped Him, such as Melchizedek. He was prepared to witness to God with his public worship, and so he differed from other religious practices around him in Mesopotamia and Canaan and Egypt. He had a mission mandate from God. It is uncomfortable for the secular historian to find that the monotheistic faith was unique in the time of Abraham, and so he/she accordingly reckons it unlikely and treats it as a retrojection from later times, when it is possible to prove its existence. The fact that other religions have exploded from one man’s vision, for example, Islam, and the Akhenaton “heresy” of Egypt proves that it is possible, and highly likely that it developed this way. Both of these imposed a religious monotheism upon a polytheistic society. In the case of Egypt, this monotheism proved to be an advantage to God’s people, just when they needed advantage. Abraham’s faith quietly handed down through all the generations of the family, until its formal formulation under Moses is equally and entirely credible. It is fanciful that fragments of that monotheism lay in the libraries of Egypt from the “heresy” time of Akhenaton, to influence Moses in his writing of the Law, and that’s where it came from, that is, not through Abraham. The priests uprising had overturned the “heresy” that was prevalent at the time of Joseph, and so Moses entered the Pharaonic court, at a time of polytheistic power, inhospitable to the Israelites.
There are some studies of the different names of God used in derivative forms in other cults, but undoubtedly the absence of the divine name of God in any pre Mosaic personal name, is significant. Abraham naturally had a similar religious language to those about him, with animal sacrifices, altars and gifts to his God after a victory. It is therefore more remarkable that YHWH worship persisted, and was not assimilated. This is then another tribute to the care and preservation of His worship, by the Almighty who deemed that it to be so. These ceremonials, which were afterwards required of the Israelites, were later replaced in the Christian era, with different and more encompassing expressions of worship, which included the Gentiles as well. Abraham did find Melchizedek, (as Moses found Jethro), whose worship he could share, but he otherwise never joined the cults of the Canaanites.
Sociologically, Abraham is placed easily into a seminomadic culture not as yet controlled by a Mosaic law, moving long distances with all his possessions from Ur in Mesopotamia, west to Egypt, and back again, along with many others at that time, but more generally in a Canaan of city states. Around 2000 BC we know of warring tribes, for example, the Amorites, who were moving up and down Mesopotamia, but that does not exclude the movement of clans or tribes as well, who struck camp for long periods, or migrated for food, with their herds, as necessity arose. Even the Israelites, as did others, travelled for long distances to wage military campaigns that were in their own interests, for example Genesis 14, but seemed to ignore the great military campaigns that went on round about them, up and down in Canaan particularly. It would be comforting to think that they were not affected by them, but that seems hardly likely. Movements and treks of great and small tribes were reported to the Amorite King of Mari, by a series of fire signals, in the absence of human spies, and recorded, because town and steppe dwellers were dependent on each other. The Egyptians are known to have controlled the great influx of migrations in drought times by erecting forts along the way, and a wall at the entrance. For the same reason China (much later) erected their great wall.
Ancestrally - Abraham lived before the monarchy or leadership order of Israelitish history, but was recognised as the clan leader of that huge itinerant group of people, and therefore the Israelite’s revered ancestor, and patriarch, a thing not unusual for large tribes of that era. The role is amply described in the extensive archives of the Mari Tablets, now available. Family life was important, even amongst these itinerants, who maintained strict rules and traditions to protect that social context. Marriage contracts were in use, and progenitive lines could be sustained by the use of a slave girl, and are now recognised as appearing in cultures outside of the Genesis record, where we first hear of them. Burial caves and particular care of the dead were rights practised by other wandering tribes as well as the Israelites, giving them a focus in their movable lifestyle. “Dialogue Documents”, such as Abraham had with the Hittites for the purchase of the Machpelah land for burials, have been found. These were fashionable in the 7th to the 5th centuries, but such documents have now been found early in the era of 2000 BC.
Culturally - Abraham fits neatly into the Near Eastern context at the period that the Biblical text indicates, where tribes moved around in tents, and with animals, as described in Genesis, and became wealthy and traded with high standing among the local people, a cherished estate. (That’s why the incident at Shechem troubled Jacob so much.) There are records of a Palestinian presence in the Delta of the Nile, sometime after 2000 BC, a Middle Bronze age settlement, and paintings on a tomb at Beni Hasan of 37 Asiatics arriving in Egypt at that time. This is not to say that there was no conflict among the tribes and petty kingdoms at the time, as recorded in Genesis, for secular literature attests to this also, and indeed it was the reason why city walls and gates became common.
Objections are numerous, but not unexpected, once the Genesis text is considered. Naming places or areas after a people, later inhabiting a land, can be put down to a scribe making the text more palatable to his readers, and are only minimal anachronisms. At the same time the texts are basically authentic and historically valuable so that the anachronism does not affect the sense of the narrative, if the reason for the anachronism is understood. The story is not falsified by the naming of a place or a people using titles in place six or seven centuries later. It is an adjustment easily made, if the circumstances are known. There could be other reasons for seeming anachronisms, that circumstances may not be what are first thought. For instance, it is now considered, after so much doubt, that camels may have been introduced in the time that the Biblical records mentions them, Genesis 12;16, and so their appearance in the text is now treated as history, not as an anachronism
Absence of Evidence is occasionally raised against a belief in the existence of Abraham. Archaeologists argue continually whether the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This is groundless for the once written documents now available, (and there are enormous numbers available to us lay people) must be minute in proportion to what was actually written. If Abraham’s treaty with Abimelech at Gerar, was written, it would hardly be available to us, for being written on parchment it would decay quickly in the climate, or, if on a clay tablet, it would be lying undamaged in the undiscovered ruins of Gerar, (quite a problem), awaiting the spade in the right room in the king’s palace there. Abraham’s encounter with the kings of the east in Genesis 14 remains a puzzle for some, but considering it is of a period of only fifteen years of history, where a political picture can change rapidly, it may not be dismissed as an historically impossible fact, but rather a fact of historical ignorance, for no one is in possession of such historical detail as yet, (though Speaker’s and Ellicott’s Commentaries of the last century offer very convincing descriptions of these places and kings). We hope that clarification may soon emerge. The epithet of Abraham “as a Hebrew” in Genesis 14:13, is appropriate in the context, where kings are defined by the states they ruled, but as Abraham had no state or fatherland, the “Hebrew” term in history, “wanderer from the other side”, (of the river), denotes exactly that circumstance in the Middle Bronze Age.
Duplicate Narratives continue to be puzzles. The say you are my sister narratives, and the wells incidents to point. The former can be explained away as being well known and documented practices, and here neither Abraham nor Isaac had unmarried relatives to offer to cement alliances and renew treaties, and also, it needs saying, that both men were afraid, at that time, and without faith. Both patriarchs had trouble with the men of Gerar over water rights, and again the narratives are accused of being one and the same. However father and son living in the same area, in such ancient and unstable times, might easily have to negotiate twice for the same property. One could defeat the enemy, and in the next generation have to defeat the very same enemy, albeit another generation.
Conclusions can be made, not that the history of Abraham demands such a date as 2000 BC, (not precisely, but rather generally speaking), but that it allows it, in accord with Biblical literature, and that date is sustainable. The advantage of this Biblical record is that Abraham, “the friend of God” was a real person whose life story, however handed down, has been preserved reliably.
God expects that our faith be informed, not blind. God called Abraham and Abraham obeyed and experienced growing faithfulness. Without Abraham a major building block to the foundations of the establishment of the kingdom, of Judaism, and Christianity is lost. The return, for God, was His wish for “glory”, and He gave the mission mandate. A fictional Abraham might institute a belief system, but it would be with no rational approach to worship, and could supply no rational evidence for faith because any other community could invent a totally different figure to do the same. In as much as the Bible claims uniqueness, and the absolute of divine revelation, with provable inspiration, the Abraham narratives therefore deserve a positive and respectful approach by any who will study them.
So there is no need to consider as valid (or even doubt) our belief in Abraham.
(Many ideas and arguments in this section “Real Person or Fiction” are from A. R. Millard, “Abraham”, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Millard’s headings have been used, and are here acknowledged.)
5. UR, ON THE EUPHRATES RIVER
There is an elaborate system of law and order and custom and tradition, and 40 centuries of history in between the people or Ur and us, but they are just like us in their passions. To imagine their stories is to imagine ourselves there.
The son of Terah, Abram, married Sarai, in Ur of the Chaldees, a wonderfully civilised and commercial teeming city, (population 40,000 in 2100 BC) on the banks of the Euphrates River. The complex architecture, three storey buildings, with wide sweeping staircases, and effective plumbing and drainage, indicate the elegance and richness of life there. Several royal tombs have yielded a huge array of valuable goods, and show the surprising ingenuity and sophistication that made life in Ur pleasurable and productive. From their potting wheels they could easily see that by flipping them on their sides they would have a means of locomotion. They were solid wheels at first. There is abundant information about Ur, now that the patient archaeologists have uncovered so much there. This has led to novels like “Abram, Son of Terah”, by Florence Bauer, of the young boy Abram in this priest ridden, now crumbling empire of Sumeria.
The grasping priests exact their tribute, and take their bribes and presents, to build their vast treasuries, and while the king constantly raises taxes to meet the increasing cost of trying to hold together this unwieldy empire, the people and the provinces seethe with unrest. In the city the artisans work with copper and jewels, make bricks and buildings and walls, and baskets, and hundreds of other commercial enterprises, and on the land the serfs struggle to bring the water to the crops and pray that their god will bless their efforts, so that they can feed everyone.
Terah, a Sumerian by association, is an aging coppersmith, and Abram is his son, in a large household, within the city, where Sarai is the daughter of a favoured concubine. Terah’s great, great, great grandfather was Eber, (“Eber” is the origin of the word “Hebrew”) and according to Genesis 5 and 11 and in the “64 Generations from Adam to Christ” genealogical charts in the Scriptural records, Noah is number 10, and Eber is number 14, and Terah is number 19. So the novelist, Bauer, has chosen a family name, Eber, a captive Amorite slave, a Canaanite, and from Eber, Abram gets his first inkling of true belief. Eber is a worshipper of YHWH, and Abram observes his Godly habits, and learns about Him. When Abram’s family life becomes precarious and crowded and threatened with destruction, the house of Terah needs some drastic solution, and so the idolatrous Terah, Joshua 24:2, decides to move to Haran.
Well, we may not accept this novel story, so we might -
Consider:
* How was Abram’s faith awakened from his idolatrous family practices?
* By reading the Godly accounts?
* Or by a messenger sent by God, say, one from his relative Shem, or even Shem himself?
(Noah died just before Abraham was born, and Shem died when Isaac was around 40 years old),
* Or both?
* Where did Shem live at this time?
* What did he know of Abram?
* And why would Terah want to move?
* Was Terah’s business copper art, or shepherding, or both?
* Did they live in or out of the city walls?
* The city of Ur was made up of a mixed multitude, may we say that Terah was a Sumerian at that time only because he lived there?
Considering that these Shemites had influence in Ur, not being new settlers -
* How much would Terah be missed in Ur, being a reasonably wealthy and influential man?
* How much of an idolater was Terah?
This question assumes that there are different degrees of idolatry. * Is that a fair assumption?
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There is a wonderful picture in “Time-Life History”, pages 22-23, which shows Ur along side the Euphrates River, with a canal surrounding it and a harbour on each extremity so that ships could come up/down the river, from the Persian Gulf, pass into the canal, decide which harbour was convenient for unloading, and berth for port facilities. The two harbours were connected by an internal canal as well. It passed right through the middle of the city. The city was easy to defend as the surrounding land was marsh and often flooded. It is obvious to see why this city was such a sanctuary for its ramparts were easily defended and it was built on past and abandoned structures and therefore elevated. Although the empire was crumbling this city managed to hold out until the fertility of the surrounding soil declined and became salty, after years of irrigation and constant and necessary agriculture. Then the food supply dwindled and the city peoples began to be haunted by anxiety. They began again the old habit of warring amongst themselves, and their political strength, after millenniums of squabbling and in fighting, sapped away. The Elamites easily took Ur, and then later the Amorites, who had been entering the city as traders and mercenaries, eventually overran the city. Hammurabi, the Babylonian conqueror, later, (1800 BC) using Sumerian and Amorite laws forged his remarkable code that was in use in the land of Canaan in the days of the Patriarchs. The Greeks later extended Mesopotamia and included Sumer.
The chapter on Ur concludes, with Sumer under Babylon rule, and the last of those Sumerian poets sorrowfully jabbing cuneiform sticks into the soft clay, pouring out great sadness with their lamentations, for the political demise of their land. Yet in their very act of writing, they were ensuring for us, even today, that the ideas and ideals of Sumer would not die, but would leave their wedge shaped marks on every future civilisation, enriching many cultures through the centuries to come. Well, Terah and his family had long left them by then.
While Abram had already heard God’s call in Ur, and so was happy to move, Acts 7:2-4, Terah’s motive might have been safety. Since the Elamites destroyed Ur soon after, this move might well have saved their lives. We know that God worked on the mind of Abram, but He may well have worked on the wishes and initiative of Terah, for it is with one mind that they migrated. Genesis 11 describes the family lineage from Shem to Terah, and the migration and death of Terah in Haran. Abram’s brother Haran, lived in Ur, and died there, before his father, Terah, but his son Lot travelled with Terah. The Hebrew spelling of brother Haran and the city Haran are different, and thus probably have no connection. Milcah was the daughter of Haran and therefore Lot’s sister. She married her uncle Nahor. She was the mother of Bethuel, and the grandmother of Rebekah, and of course that family also travelled to Haran with Terah. By Jacob’s visit, after the deceitful blessing incident, they lived at Nahor, still in the Haran vicinity. Milcah was related to Abram through his brothers, Haran and Nahor.
CONCLUSION:
We have noted the wonderfully civilised city of Ur and the luxury that was there for Abram. Now we praise God that He found the faithful Abram, who was prepared to eschew that security, to fulfill His purpose. So we go with Abram and his family from Ur on the journey to Haran.
