Simply Me (continued)

Topic #1 - Philosophy (continued)

Chapter 2 (continued)

The God of Abraham

YHWH…Yahweh…Jehovah…Allah…or simply, God.  If you are a religious person who practices monotheism (the worship of a single Deity), and you address your particular Creator by one or more of these names, then, no matter which you use, you are in all probability a member of one of three specific faiths: Christianity, Islam, or Judaism.  The first two are the first and second largest religions in the world, while the third is the twelfth largest.  Judaism is the oldest of the three, while Islam is the youngest.  They each agree with one or both of the others on various points, and disagree on even more; but there is one point on which they all three agree: they were the same religion up until the life of a Hebrew man who was named Abram upon his birth, but who, in his later years, was given the name, “Abraham,” by the Deity he worshipped.

So, just who was this Abram/Abraham?  Well, all we know of him is what was passed down through Hebrew oral tradition, and later documented in the Book of Genesis…also known as the First Book of: the Torah, the Pentateuch, the Old Testament, and the Books of Moses.  In it, we are told that Abraham:

• was a direct descendant of Noah through Noah’s son, Shem;
• was born approximately 292 years after the Great Flood;
• was a pious, devout man who always answered the call of the Lord;
• was married to his half-sister, Sarai (whom God would later rename, “Sarah”);
• became exceedingly wealthy due to a ‘misunderstanding’ with Egypt’s Pharaoh about whether Sarai was his sister or his wife;
• was the uncle of Lot;
• saved Lot’s life twice: once by rescuing him from a hostile force that had taken him hostage; and once by bargaining with God to spare the lives of any righteous people who may have been living in Sodom and Gomorrah when God had decided to destroy those two cities;
• received four promises from God:

1. that God would make Abram “…into a great nation;”
2. that God would give all the land of Canaan to all of Abram’s offspring (descendants);
3. that, even though Abram and Sarai were old and childless, God would make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky or as the grains of sand on the seashore;
4. and that Ishmael, Abraham’s son with one of Sarah’s slaves, would not be forgotten; that he would be a great nation in his own right and would be the father of twelve rulers;

• fathered his first son, Ishmael, with Sarah’s slave, Hagar, at Sarah’s encouragement;
• fathered his heir, Isaac, with Sarah 14 years after the birth of Ishmael;
• had his faith tested by God, who commanded Abraham to offer his young son, Isaac, as a burnt sacrifice.  God stopped the sacrifice before the boy could be harmed.

In Jewish and Christian tradition, Abraham was the first of the three Patriarchs of the Israelites, with his son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, being the second and third.  Jacob, whose name would be changed by God to, “Israel,” was the father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and whose direct descendants would include Moses, through his son, Levi, and the Israelite Kings David and Solomon, through his son, Judah.  Christian tradition holds that Jesus is also a direct descendant of Jacob/Israel through King David.

This is where the schism occurs between Judaism/Christianity and Islam.  While Islamic tradition holds that all of the above were Prophets of Allah (God); that Abraham, Isaac, and Israel were Patriarchs of the Israelites; this tradition maintains that Abraham’s oldest son, Ishmael, was also one of the Patriarchs of the Israelites, and was in fact Abraham’s favorite son and true heir.  Muhammad himself, the founder of Islam, claimed to be a direct descendant of Ishmael.  I’ll go into Islam in more detail in a later post.  Next time, I’m going to focus on the descendants of Isaac: Judaism and Christianity.

Until then, Be Well...

© James P. Rice 2011, 2016