Abraham is a significant figure throughout the Bible, and plays an important role in extra-Biblical Jewish tradition and in the Mohammedan religion.
1. In the Old Testament:
It is naturally as progenitor of the people of Israel, "the seed of Abraham," as they are often termed, that Abraham stands out most prominently in the Old Testament books. Sometimes the contrast between him as an individual and his numerous progeny serves to point a lesson (Isa 51:2; Eze 33:24; perhaps Mal 2:10; compare 15). "The God of Abraham" serves as a designation of Yahweh from the time of Isaac to the latest period; it is by this title that Moses identifies the God who has sent him with the ancestral deity of the children of Israel (Ex 3:15). Men remembered in those later times that this God appeared to Abraham in theophany (Ex 6:3), and, when he was still among his people who worshipped other gods (Jos 24:3) chose him (Ne 9:7), led him, redeemed him (Isa 29:22) and made him the recipient of those special blessings (Mic 7:20) which were pledged by covenant and oath (so every larger historical book, also the historical Ps 105:9), notably the inheritance of the land of Canaan (De 6:10) Nor was Abraham's religious personality forgotten by his posterity: he was remembered by them as God's friend (2Ch 20:7; Isa 41:8), His servant, the very recollection of whom by God would offset the horror with which the sins of his descendants inspired Yahweh (De 9:27).
2. In the New Testament:
When we pass to the New Testament we are astonished at the wealth and variety of allusion to Abraham. As in the Old Testament, his position of ancestor lends him much of his significance, not only as ancestor of Israel (Ac 13:26), but specifically as ancestor, now of the Levitical priesthood (Heb 7:5), now of the Messiah (Mt 1:1), now, by the peculiarly Christian doctrine of the unity of believers in Christ, of Christian believers (Ga 3:16,29). All that Abraham the ancestor received through Divine election, by the covenant made with him, is inherited by his seed and passes under the collective names of the promise (Ro 4:13), the blessing (Ga 3:14), mercy (Lu 1:54), the oath (Lu 1:73), the covenant (Ac 3:25). The way in which Abraham responded to this peculiar goodness of God makes him the type of the Christian believer. Though so far in the past that he was used as a measure of antiquity (Joh 8:58), he is declared to have "seen" Messiah's "day" (Joh 8:56). It is his faith in the Divine promise, which, just because it was for him peculiarly unsupported by any evidence of the senses, becomes the type of the faith that leads to justification (Ro 4:3), and therefore in this sense again he is the "father" of Christians, as believers (Ro 4:11). For that promise to Abraham was, after all, a "preaching beforehand" of the Christian gospel, in that it embraced "all the families of the earth" (Ga 3:8). Of this exalted honor, James reminds us, Abraham proved himself worthy, not by an inoperative faith, but by "works" that evidenced his righteousness (Jas 2:21; compare Joh 8:39). The obedience that faith wrought in him is what is especially praised by the author of Hebrews (Heb 11:8,17). In accordance with this high estimate of the patriarch's piety, we read of his eternal felicity, not only in the current conceptions of the Jews (parable, Lu 16:1-31), but also in the express assertion of our Lord (Mt 8:11; Lu 13:28). Incidental historical allusions to the events of Abraham's life are frequent in the New Testament, but do not add anything to this estimate of his religious significance.
3. In Jewish Tradition:
Outside the Scriptures we have abundant evidence of the way that Abraham was regarded by his posterity in the Jewish nation. The oldest of these witnesses, Ecclesiasticus, contains none of the accretions of the later Abraham-legends. Its praise of Abraham is confined to the same three great facts that appealed to the canonical writers, namely, his glory as Israel's ancestor, his election to be recipient of the covenant, and his piety (including perhaps a tinge of "nomism") even under severe testing (Ecclesiasticus 44:19-21). The Improbable and often unworthy and even grotesque features of Abraham's career and character in the later rabbinical midrashim are of no religious significance, beyond the evidence they afford of the way Abraham's unique position and piety were cherished by the Jews.
4. In the Koran:
To Mohammed Abraham is of importance in several ways. He is mentioned in no less than 188 verses of the Koran, more than any other character except Moses. He is one of the series of prophets sent by God. He is the common ancestor of the Arab and the Jew. He plays the same role of religious reformer over against his idolatrous kinsmen as Mohammed himself played. He builds the first pure temple for God's worship (at Mecca!). As in the Bible so in the Koran Abraham is the recipient of the Divine covenant for himself and for his posterity, and exhibits in his character the appropriate virtues of one so highly favored: faith, righteousness, purity of heart, gratitude, fidelity, compassion. He receives marked tokens of the Divine favor in the shape of deliverance, guidance, visions, angelic messengers (no theophanies for Mohammed!), miracles, assurance of resurrection and entrance into paradise. He is called "Imam of the peoples" (2 118)
VII. Interpretations of the Story Other than the Historical.
There are writers in both ancient and modern times who have, from various standpoints, interpreted the person and career of Abraham otherwise than as what it purports to be, namely, the real experiences of a human person named Abraham. These various views may be classified according to the motive or impulse which they believe to have led to the creation of this story in the mind of its author or authors.
1. The Allegorical Interpretation:
Philo's tract on Abraham bears as alternative titles, "On the Life of the Wise Man Made Perfect by Instruction, or, On the Unwritten Law." Abraham's life is not for him a history that serves to illustrate these things, but an allegory by which these things are embodied. Paul's use of the Sarah-Hagar episode in Ga 4:21-31 belongs to this type of exposition (compare allegoroumena, Ga 4:24), of which there are also a few other instances in his epistles; yet to infer from this that Paul shared Philo's general attitude toward the patriarchal narrative would be unwarranted, since his use of this method is incidental, exceptional, and merely corroborative of points already established by sound reason. "Luther compares it to a painting which decorates a house already built" (Schaff, "Galatians," Excursus).
2. The Personification Theory:
As to Philo Abraham is the personification of a certain type of humanity, so to some modern writers he is the personification of the Hebrew nation or of a tribe belonging to the Hebrew group. This view, which is indeed very widely held with respect to the patriarchal figures in general, furnishes so many more difficulties in its specific application to Abraham than to the others, that it has been rejected in Abraham's case even by some who have adopted it for figures like Isaac, Ishmael and Jacob. Thus Meyer (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, 250; compare also note on p. 251), speaking of his earlier opinion, acknowledges that, at the time when he "regarded the assertion of Stade as proved that Jacob and Isaac were tribes," even then he "still recognized Abraham as a mythical figure and originally a god." A similar differentiation of Abraham from the rest is true of most of the other adherents of the views about to be mentioned. Hence also Wellhausen says (Prolegomena 6, 317): "Only Abraham is certainly no name of a people, like Isaac and Lot; he is rather ambiguous anyway. We dare not of course on that account hold him in this connection as an historical personage; rather than that he might be a free creation of unconscious fiction. He is probably the youngest figure in this company and appears to have been only at a relatively late date put before his son Isaac."
3. The Mythical Theory:
Urged popularly by Noldeke (Im neuen Reich (1871), I, 508 ff) and taken up by other scholars, especially in the case of Abraham, the view gained general currency among those who denied the historicity of Gen, that the patriarchs were old deities. From this relatively high estate, it was held, they had fallen to the plane of mere mortals (though with remnants of the hero or even demigod here and there visible) on which they appear in Gen. A new phase of this mythical theory has been developed in the elaboration by Winckler and others of their astral-theology of the Babylonian world, in which the worship of Abraham as the moon-god by the Semites of Palestine plays a part. Abraham's traditional origin connects him with Ur and Haran, leading centers of the moon-cult. Apart from this fact the arguments relied upon to establish this identification of Abraham with Sin may be judged by the following samples: "When further the consort of Abraham bears the name Sarah, and one of the women among his closest relations the name Milcah, this gives food for thought, since these names correspond precisely with the titles of the female deities worshipped at Haran alongside the moongod Sin. Above all, however, the number 318, that appears in Ge 14:14 in connection with the figure of Abraham, is convincing because this number, which surely has no historical value, can only be satisfactorily explained from the circle of ideas of the moon-religion, since in the lunar year of 354 days there are just 318 days on which the moon is visible--deducting Ge 36:1-43 days, or three for each of the twelve months, on which the moon is invisible" (Baentsch, Monotheismus, 60 f). In spite of this assurance, however, nothing could exceed the scorn with which these combinations and conjectures of Winckler, A. Jeremias and others of this school are received by those who in fact differ from them with respect to Abraham in little save the answer to the question, what deity was Abraham (see e.g. Meyer, op. cit., 252 f, 256 f).
4. The "Saga" Theory:
Gunkel (Genesis, Introduction), in insisting upon the resemblance of the patriarchal narrative to the "sagas" of other primitive peoples, draws attention both to the human traits of figures like Abraham, and to the very early origin of the material embodied in our present book of Genesis. First as stories orally circulated, then as stories committed to writing, and finally as a number of collections or groups of such stories formed into a cycle, the Abraham-narratives, like the Jacob-narratives and the Joseph-narratives , grew through a long and complex literary history. Gressmann (op. cit, 9-34) amends Gunkel's results, in applying to them the principles of primitive literary development laid down by Professor Wundt in his Volkerpsychologie. He holds that the kernel of the Abraham-narratives is a series of fairy-stories, of international diffusion and unknown origin, which have been given "a local habitation and a name" by attaching to them the (ex hypothesi) then common name of Abraham (similarly Lot, etc.) and associating them with the country nearest to the wilderness of Judea, the home of their authors, namely, about Hebron and the Dead Sea. A high antiquity (1300-1100 BC) is asserted for these stories, their astonishing accuracy in details wherever they can be tested by extra-Biblical tradition is conceded, as also the probability that, "though many riddles still remain unsolved, yet many other traditions will be cleared up by new discoveries" of archaeology.
J. Oscar Boyd