Abraham

ABRAHAM. - Patriarch of the Old Testament, son of Terah, descendant of Shem. His story, rich in detail, is narrated in Gen. 11:26-25:11.

I. ABRAHAM IN SACRED SCRIPTURE

To determine the period in which A. lived, it was customary to have recourse to the synchronism with Hammurabi, the Babylonian king who lived around 2000 B.C., who was identified with 'Amrāphel, king of Shinar, against whom A. fought (Gen. 14, 9); but since recent discoveries have made it possible to fix the date of Hammurabi's reign between 1728 and 1685 B.C., the identification with 'Amrāphel appears increasingly problematic. According to the data of the Bible, A. was born 1200 years before the foundation of the Temple, fixed at 968 B.C., that is, in 2168 B.C. (cf. Gen. 21, 5; 25, 26; 47, 9; Ex. 12, 40; I Kings 6, 1). The setting of the biblical narrative about A. finds correspondence and confirmation in the information we have about the contemporary Mesopotamian East.

A.'s family, born in Ur (v.), was idolatrous (Josh. 24, 2; Judg. 5, 7-9; cf. Gen. 31, 19, 35), and some descendants of Terah bear in their names traces of the moon god Sin, whose cult had its central seat at Ur. Terah, who belonged to the semi-nomadic Semitic tribes settled in lower Mesopotamia, in the time of the troubles following the fall of the 3rd dynasty of Ur in 1940 B.C. moved northward, to Haran or Harran, a transit station for passing into Canaan and a city devoted, like Ur, to the god Sin. Amid the polytheism and immorality of his homeland, A. had kept himself, not without special divine help, faithful to the Lord Yahweh. After his father's death, God addressed to him the definitive invitation (he had already spoken to him at Ur, cf. Acts 7, 2) to leave his kindred and his country to go toward the land that He would show him. On this occasion, God blessed A. for the first time, granting him his favor and his assistance, and promised him a countless descendants of wide renown. A. would furthermore be a source of blessing for all peoples (Gen. 12, 3), inasmuch as among his descendants would be the Messiah, savior of the world.

At the age of 75, A., with his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot, son of his brother Haran (Hārān), already dead, left Haran, directing himself with his riches and his servants - some hundreds of persons (cf. Gen. 14, 14) - toward the southwest, into the land of Canaan, which he crossed from north to south, moving in various directions. We find him at Shechem, at the oak grove of Moreh in the heart of the country, in the gorge between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, then farther south, at Bethel, and finally in the extreme southern region of the Negeb. At the oak grove of Moreh the Lord appeared to him and promised to give to him and to his descendants the land in which he was, and A. raised an altar in that place and at Bethel (Gen. 12, 5-9). On the occasion of a famine he had to go down to Egypt, which the Nile saved from drought, and to prevent the king, by getting rid of the husband, from seizing Sarah for his harem, he advised her to declare herself his sister - as indeed she was on her father's side only, Gen. 20, 12 - but the Lord provided that the woman should suffer no outrage and that the incident should benefit A.

Having returned to Canaan, to avoid disagreements with his nephew Lot on account of their respective herds, which needed vast pastures, he separated from him, leaving him the territory of the Pentapolis. God then renewed the promises (Gen. 13, 14-17). A. pitched his tents at the oak grove of Mamre near Hebron, where he dedicated an altar to the Lord, sanctifying the place already dedicated to Canaanite worship. A military expedition allowed A. to test his strength. After twelve years of tribute to the king of Elam, who at that time was preeminent in Mesopotamia and in anterior Asia, the five kings of the Palestinian Pentapolis attempted to shake off his yoke, but against them marched four eastern kings: 'Amrāphel king of Shinar (or Sin'ar), Arioch king of Ellāsār, Chedorlaomer king of 'Elām, Tidal king of Gōim. Among the prisoners they took was also Lot, whom A., after long pursuing the victorious troops, freed with a lightning night attack. Many attempts have been made to find the names of the four eastern kings in contemporary documents, whose scarcity does not permit definitive conclusions.

Returning from the expedition, A. met Melchizedek (v.), king of Salem and priest of the "most high God," who offered to the exhausted troops and in sacrifice to the Lord bread and wine, blessing A., who offered him a tenth part of the booty (Gen. 14, 17-24). In a new theophany A. asked God that his promise be concretized in an heir; he reaffirmed to him his unlimited faith "and God reckoned it to him as righteousness," confirming his word with a solemn covenant concluded according to Babylonian custom: God, in the symbol of a burning fire, passed through the victims of the sacrifice cut in two (Gen. 15). Sarah, irremediably sterile, in order to have a son availed herself of the right that Babylonian law gave her (cf. Code of Hammurabi, 144-47) and offered to A. the slave Hagar so that she might give him an heir who would be, by right, considered the son of the mistress. At the age of 86, A. thus had Ishmael (Gen. 16). When he was 99 years old, in an important apparition, God further specified the terms of the covenant interceded between him and A. The Lord repeated the promise of a most numerous descendants (Gen. 17, 2, 4-6) and of a land (v. 8), while A. had to commit himself to worship Yahweh as the one true God (v. 7), to remain faithful to the norm of perfection established by him (v. 1) and to have faith in the stability of the promises (vv. 1, 17-19). This is a conscious adherence to God, toward whom one's whole life is oriented and into whose hands one abandons the future. The visible sign of the covenant is circumcision (v.) in the male (vv. 11-14), by which A.'s descendants become heirs of the promises made to the patriarch (v. 12). Finally, the Lord announced as imminent the birth of a son of Sarah, who would be the direct heir of the divine promises. Ishmael too had his share of blessing (vv. 15-22). On that occasion, A. practiced circumcision on himself, on Ishmael at thirteen, and on all the men of his house, including a hundred foreigners by origin (vv. 25-27).

The new orientation of A.'s life was expressed by the change, willed by God, of the name of the patriarch and of his wife. A. would no longer be 'Abhrām (the name is attested in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium in the forms A-ba-am-ra-ma, A-ba-ra-ma, A-ba-am-ram and probably means "He is great as to the father," that is, of noble birth), but 'Abhrāhām, which the Bible (Gen. 17, 5) interprets as "Father of a multitude of peoples" because of the assonance between the ending -hām and the Hebrew hamōn "multitude." Sarah, until then called Sarai (Assyr. Sa-ra-ai), has her name changed to the more recent form Sārāh, "princess," corresponding to the Babylonian Sarratu "queen." Later, at the oak grove of Mamre, in a mysterious apparition of three men whom A. hosted, God confirmed to him the promise of the heir despite Sarah's disbelief. On that occasion God confided to his friend the intention of destroying the sinful Pentapolis. A.'s generous intercession did not avail to avert the scourge, from which only Lot escaped (Gen. 19, 29). From Mamre, A. moved to the Negeb, settling at Philistine Gerar, where once again he succeeded in removing Sarah from the desires of King Abimelech, with whom A. formed a friendship (Gen. 20, 1-18).

When he was 100 years old, A. had the awaited heir: Isaac (Gen. 21, 1-7). Regularly circumcised, his weaning was sumptuously celebrated (v. 8). Later the child aroused Sarah's jealousy, who wanted Ishmael expelled from her house. A., obeying the Lord, separated from his first son (Gen. 21, 1-21; cf. 25, 12-16). In Philistia A. was respected and feared, and had occasion to secure for himself, by a legal transaction, the right of ownership over the well of Bersabea, important for the prosperity of his flocks, 40 km. as the crow flies from Gerar. But God put A.'s faith to a hard test: he ordered him to go up a mountain in the "land of Moriah" to sacrifice Isaac there. Along the way the child's innocent questions tear at his heart, but do not undermine his faith and his spirit of absolute obedience and love. In commanding the killing of the son who was heir to the promises, God asked of A. an act of heroic faith, and in preventing its fulfillment through the intervention of an angel, he condemned the practice of human sacrifices in use among the Canaanites, among whom A. lived (v. ISACCO).

Sarah died, at the age of 127, at Hebron. In order to give her burial, A. bought the cave of Machpelah from the Hittites. The transaction for the purchase is narrated with an abundance of precise details, because that was the first piece of land stably possessed by the Hebrews in Canaan (Gen. 23, 1-20). Another narrative, rich in oriental folklore, reproduces the negotiations conducted by A.'s faithful servant to choose a wife for Isaac. The one chosen was a relative: Rebecca, niece of Nahor, A.'s brother, because the patriarch, for ethnic and religious reasons, did not want a foreign woman for his son (Gen. 24). After Sarah's death, A. took another wife named Keturah (Gen. 25, 1-6), from whom were born the ancestors of various tribes dwelling to the south and southeast of Palestine, in the steppes. He then provided, according to the law of the time, to secure for Isaac his inheritance by sending the other sons away from him.

At 175 years A. "died in a good old age, an old man and full of years," and was buried by Isaac and Ishmael in the cave of Machpelah, beside Sarah (Gen. 25, 7-11). The memory of A. remained alive throughout all the centuries of the history of the chosen people, which inherited from him the messianic promise.

In the New Testament, the Virgin Mary and Zechariah sing of the promises and the covenant of God with A. (Lk. 1, 55-73), which are fulfilled in Jesus, "son" of the patriarch (Mt. 1, 1; Lk. 3, 34). Jesus himself gives to a sick woman and to Zacchaeus this title "son of A.," of which the Jews were particularly proud (Lk. 13, 16; 10, 9; Mt. 3, 9; Lk. 3, 8; Jn. 8, 39), but he declares that it is not carnal descent, but rather the imitation of A.'s works, that counts (Jn. 8, 33-44). A. is in heaven (Lk. 13, 28) and Jews and gentiles will rest in his "bosom" (Lk. 13, 28; 16, 22-30).

Peter, Stephen and Paul will recall the Abrahamic promises (Acts 3, 25; 7, 2-8, 17; Heb. 6, 13; II Cor. 11, 22), which were fulfilled in Christ for all those who, through faith, are sons of the great patriarch (Rom. 9, 7-9; Gal. 3, 29; 4, 22-31). A. is the representative of the economy of the promise (ἐπικτωσία) — opposed to the bilateral Mosaic covenant — which has its full realization in the New Testament (Gal. 3, 16-18). The exaltation of A.'s faith (Rom. ch. 4; Gal. 3, 6-9; Heb. 11, 8-19; Jas. 4, 21-23) and the demonstration of the superiority of Christ's priesthood over the Aaronic one on the basis of what took place between A. and Melchizedek (Heb. ch. 7) are two classic chapters of Pauline preaching.

In the time of Pope Damasus (366-84) the name of A. was inserted into the canon of the Mass, and his memory has been recorded in the martyrologies from the 9th century on the date of Oct. 9. He is also invoked in the prayers for the agony.

BOSOM OF ABRAHAM

In the well-known parable of the rich man, the angels carry Lazarus the beggar, after his death, "into the bosom of A." (Lk. 16:21 ff.). The expression, rare and ancient in rabbinic writings, is frequent in patristic literature, in the liturgies for the dead of all rites, and in Christian inscriptions. With few exceptions, ecclesiastical writers ancient ecclesiastical writers understood its metaphorical meaning and referred it to the Limbo (v.) of the patriarchs for the pre-Christian era and then to Paradise (St. Augustine, Quaest. evang., II, 38; PL 35, 1530). St. Thomas justified the latter use (Sum. Theol. Suppl. q. 69 a. 4 in corp. and ad 2).

According to modern exegetes, the metaphor may have a twofold value. For some it refers to the heavenly banquet at which A. is the head of the table; he who sits at his right, reclining on the low couch and propped on his left elbow, can easily lean back upon his breast: in sim (John 13, 23; Pliny, Ep. 4, 22, 4). Other authors prefer to see in the rest upon Abraham's bosom the paternal protection and tenderness of the patriarch of believers (Rom. 4, 16 ff.) who receives into eternal happiness his children, intimately united to him (cf. John 1, 23; Luke 13, 28; and the apocryphal IV Macc. 13, 17 where, however, "the bosom" is a probably Christian interpolation).

In this second sense "bosom" is used in the Babylonian language (Code of Hammurabi, XL, 49 ff.: the king carries his subjects in his bosom) and in the Hebrew language (Num. 11, 12; 1 Kings 3, 20; 17, 19; Lam. 2, 12).

Salvatore Garofalo

2. ABRAHAM IN THE AGGADIC LEGEND

The father of A., according to this legend, was a general of Nimrod's army, and of his own initiative devoted himself to the search for truth, arriving at the knowledge of the oneness of God. Nimrod, king and astrologer, convinced on his part that he was God, and foreseeing the birth of a child destined to dethrone him, gathered seventy thousand pregnant women and had the newborns killed; but A. remained safe, hidden in a cave. Grown up, A. was a disciple of Shem from whom he learned the art of fixing the leap year. He did not take part in the sin of the tower of Babel, but by renouncing the spoils of war after the victory over the kings of the Pentapolis, he sanctified the name of God. Since, according to his astrological predictions, he believed he was not to have offspring, he was reproached for this by the Lord. Who then showed him the four empires that in the future would enslave Israel. The guilt of the enslavement is to be ascribed to A., who had presented Sarah to the king of Egypt as a sister, rather than as a wife. A. loved the land of Canaan because he hoped that his descendants would be a people of farmers. Lot's shepherds did not scruple to graze the flocks in others' fields, unlike A.'s shepherds. Hence the disagreements and the separation. The change of the name Abram to Abraham gives rise to various interpretations: father, chosen, beloved, king, powerful, most faithful among the nations. The three angels hosted by A. were: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, who assumed human likeness in order to visit A. A. chose the cave of Machpelah as the place of his burial, because there the little sheep destined for the banquet for the angels had taken refuge; and there Adam and Eve rested with burning torches near their bedside, while a sweet odor filled the whole cave.

Eugenio Zolli

3. ICONOGRAPHY

Cemetery art prefers to represent A. in the sacrifice of Isaac, according to various schemes: A. brandishing the knife in his right hand, while his left rests on Isaac's head or leads him by the hand; Isaac, instead, is kneeling beside the altar, or carries the wood. Sporadic examples present father and son praying, or A. pointing to the fire. A ram, the divine hand or else a group of doves complete the scene. Sculpture sometimes represents Isaac in the air together with the angel. The theme appears already in the synagogue of Dura Europos (year 245) and in mosaics, glass, lamps, rings, gems, spoons and medals. If, originally, it foreshadowed the idea of salvation, Constantinian art later made of it a theme parallel to that of the scene of the Lord's passion, interpreting it therefore in the typological sense, long since widespread. The Ravenna basilical decoration, finally, lent it the well-known Eucharistic meaning. It is presumable that in Milan and Nola it foreshadowed the same meaning, as also in the first mosaic panel of St. Mary Major in Rome in which the meeting of A. and Melchizedek is represented, followed by the historical scenes of the separation of Lot from A., and the vision of Mamre.

Among the great artists of the Renaissance, the sacrifice of A. was treated, besides by Gozzoli in the Camposanto and Sodoma in the cathedral of Pisa, by Titian in St. Mary of Health in Venice, by Tiepolo in the archiepiscopal palace of Udine and by Tintoretto (Uffizi Gallery); we also recall the painting by C. Allori in the Pitti Gallery. The scene of the sacrifice of A. was assigned as the theme for the competition (1402) for the second door of the Florentine Baptistery.

Among the depictions by foreign artists, those of Rembrandt and Rubens are notable. - See Pl. VIII.

(1922), p. 159 ff.; K. Künstle, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, II, Freiburg im Br. 1928; V. Casagrande, L'arte a servizio della Chiesa, II, Turin 1932.

Luciano De Bruyne

4. POPULAR POETRY AND THEATER

The figure of A. inspired a short poem in 30 octaves, of which printings from the early nineteenth century are known. In the theater, a French medieval mystery play and a Rappresentazione di Abram e Isac by Feo Belcari are to be remembered.

Paolo Toschi

5. APOCALYPSE of A

Apocryphon of the end of the 1st cent. A.D., preserved in Slavonic. The 1st part (chaps. 1-8) contains the story of Abraham and of his father T'are, in accordance with the Jewish legend (cf. B. Beer, Leben Abrahams nach Auffassung der jüdischen Sage, Leipzig 1859). The 2nd part (chaps. 9-32) is an amplification of Gen. 15, 1 ff.

Jewish tradition — perhaps also presupposed in Jn. 8:56 — spoke of a revelation to Abraham during his sacrifice (Gen. 15:9 ff.). The texts have been collected in H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Das Evangelium nach Markus, Lukas und Johannes und die Apostelgeschichte, II, Munich 1924, p. 525 f. (cf. also I, 468; IV, 1065, 1115). The Apocalypse of A. is a Jewish writing; for example, the tree of knowledge in paradise is the vine (ch. 23) in conformity with Jewish beliefs (Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit., III, pp. 250, 609, 646); the angel Azazel is a figure of Jewish demonology (Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit., III, p. 781 ff.). The angel Iaoel (a sort of precursor of Metatron) alongside Michael (thus also in a tabula devotionis from Pozzuoli of the 2nd-3rd century A.D.) demonstrates a tendency toward Gnostic speculation. Toward the end (ch. 29), certain allusions presuppose revision by a Christian (a Gnostic).

The Slavonic Apocalypse of A. differs from the Book of Abraham, also called "Apocalypse" among the Gnostic Sethians (Epiphanius, Haer., 39, 5, 1: ed. Holl, II, p. 75, 11 f.): the quotations from the Apocalypse of A. among the Audians, given by Theodore bar Koni (C. H. Puech in Mélanges Cumont, Brussels 1936, p. 951 ff.) reveal quite a different character.

Erik Peterson

6. TESTAMENT of A

An apocryphon, whose Greek text was published by M. R. James in Texts and Studies, II, no. 2 (Cambridge 1892) in two recensions. Arabic, Ethiopic, Slavonic and Romanian translations demonstrate the interest of the Eastern Churches in it.

The title Testament is not apt: it is a legend of the death of A., which is modeled in part on the legend of the death of Moses. Michael replaces the angel of death, inasmuch as A. did not deserve that death should approach him, but he does not succeed in carrying off the patriarch's soul; finally the angel of death arrives. Before dying, however, A. sees the whole world, the secrets of heaven, the places of punishment and paradise. Two ways lead to heaven, at the crossing of which stands the golden throne of Adam; Abel judges the dead, and beside him stand two angels, who record human deeds, good or evil, and weigh them. The material of the Testament of A. is, at least partially, of Jewish origin: Abel as judge of the dead would be quite strange in a Christian work; on the other hand, however, the eschatology in it is influenced by the Apocalypse of Paul.

Erik Peterson