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| Abram's Origins |
a more Biblical perspective is helpful to understand
this key figure in the message of Holy Scripture.
necessary
correction!
said that Abraham was simply part of the pagan culture of Ur of the Chaldeans (at that time the capital and port of Sumer, now southern Iraq), before God had called him out to become what the Bible later presents him as. Some of these misrepresentations have even grossly portrayed Abram as previously a user of temple prostitutes. This is not true!
God scattered the human race by the division of their languages, from their defensive congregating around Babel after the horrific global tsunami and their migration southward over generations into the lowlands of Mesopotamia, Heber and his family are portrayed as a distinct group in the Bible's genealogy of Abram. Abram's family were part of these descendants of Heber (from which the term 'Hebrews' eventually developed), whose son was named for that unique Babel division (Peleg).
So the Abram we read of in Genesis was not simply one of the people of Ur.
Abraham's Ancestry
reason, we are told that it was Abram's father Terah, who, after the tragically premature death of his younger son Haran, took his family out of Ur, which included Haran's son Lot (Abram's nephew).
| Genesis 11:31. *some have said that there could be no connection with Terah's deceased son because there is a slight spelling difference, but this was before any alphabet had been developed so its spelling does not apply. |
A study of the Bible's detail shows that Abram stayed with his father until Terah died (in his settlement named for Haran*), only then journeying further (not knowing where he would end up, Hebrews 11:8) to eventually arrive in the land of the Canaanites, which, because of his believing God beyond-his-understanding, becomes the Promised Land to be inherited by his descendants when the iniquity of the existing inhabitants (the Amorites/Canaanites) would, generations later, become full/complete (Genesis 15:16) to deserve their disinheritance.
temptingly opportune for Christian preachers to try and find some example of personal spiritual conversion in Abram leaving Ur, but this is not true to its context, and there is no book in human history more deserving and more worthy of respect, within its own literary and historical context, than the Holy Bible of God: not only in its essential message but in every structure of its thought and original literary presentation.
was not a user of pagan temple prostitutes until he was called by God!
That is a repulsively grotesque misrepresentation of an exemplary individual who is presented in the first book of Holy Scripture and throughout its pages as the example to follow (even after his faith, having become encapsulated in God's promise concerning Isaac, needed to then be set free by God from that limiting horizon by a willingness to sacrifice him as a burnt offering on Melchizedek's mount Moriah).
That is a repulsively grotesque misrepresentation of an exemplary individual who is presented in the first book of Holy Scripture and throughout its pages as the example to follow (even after his faith, having become encapsulated in God's promise concerning Isaac, needed to then be set free by God from that limiting horizon by a willingness to sacrifice him as a burnt offering on Melchizedek's mount Moriah).
Some will need to apologize to Abraham when they meet him in the coming resurrection.
