Would you like updates when content is posted? How is one to deal with such a tremendous challenge? 52 And the king sent three men of his servants, and they went and brought Abram before the king. Establishing the pillars of faith upon the bedrock of the historicity of past events requires an honest person to evaluate, without bias, the question of the historical reality of the Torahs claims. Many in Maimonides generation believed that the existence of God was coterminous with Gods physical existence. These events occurred at some point in the past, and the Holy Author (God) describes them from the unique perspective of the divine. This is true even for a person who can digest the nuances of the ahistorical approach to the Torah. Instead, the text of the Torah should be understood on its own terms; the Torah itself is the matter being studied. When his father saw that his son Abraham had broken his gods he was very angry with him. The later life of Abraham is told in the book of Genesis Chapters 1125. Regarding this, seePinkasei Ha-Raayahvol. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities. If he had possessed the spirit which his son had, he would have said there is no power with these gods; but he did not, and Abraham had to flee from his fathers house, confiding in the Lord, who gave many promises to him and concerning his posterity. One of the questions that occupies philosophers of history as a discipline has been, to what extent can a historian really reconstruct the past and to what extent is he or she actually reshaping it? The text designates Terah, Abraham's father, as a "manufacturer of idols." One day, while Terah is away from his workshop, he entrusts it to young Abraham. The Midrash has also been discussed in the contexts of complete, unquestioned faith. Following the analysis offered here, the halachic tradition makes the religious value of any historical event that occurred before the revelation at Sinai contingent upon the power given to it by its inclusion in the narrative that came down to the world at Sinai. When the Torah describes various events that appear to be rooted in a concrete time and place, its account is more a retelling than a reconstruction. Abraham is known to have done something similar. Bible verses related to Idols from the King James Version (KJV) by Relevance. The ant says to the elephant, Just look at the dust-clouds were making!. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. See:The Complete Works of Achad Ha-Am(Tel Aviv, 1947), p. 342 [Hebrew]. What does the Bible say about idolatry? why dost thou worship . Abraham and the Idol Shop is a midrash that appears in Genesis Rabbah chapter 38. SeeIggrot Raayahvol. These events are seennot without causeas being singular and special. It is thou that didst place the hatchet in the hand of the big god, and thou sayest he smote them all. Abraham answered his father, and said: How, then, canst thou serve these idols in whom there is no power to do anything? Thus, whenever a question arises about something written, our goal would be to try and get as close as we can to reproducing the event as it occurred, to analyze the event itself, if possible, in order to learn what really happened. We would not shy away from reading alternative descriptions of the event, even contradictory ones, and compare these versions to the one we have in our hands. (Joshua 24:2), there is no Biblical record of him actually making [14]M.Pesachim10:5. Understanding the Torah this way can strengthen the deep vitality buried in its every story, every verse, every word even every letter. Shouldnt we expect from God a more coherent story, one that is free of the subtle and even blatant contradictions that can be found within it? Another participant argued that he still couldnt see, despite my explanation, why the Torah chose to speak to us in historical language. To me, the key question is whether ones approach to exploring the ahistoricity of the narrative is in order to reduce the vital importance of the Torah and its message or whether it is the opposite, to increase it, as I suggest above. 17 And Abram said, As the Lord liveth these images shall not remain in my fathers house; so shall the Lord who created me do unto me if in three days time I do not break them all. A different approach (cutting edge and more realistic) assumes that reconstruction of the past, with a point-by-point accurate portrayal, is impossible. The main purpose of contracts and newspapers, for example, is to translate the real worldwhere a deal was struck or something worth describing occurredinto writing. My thanks to Hillel ben-Sasson for sharpening this point. Idolatry, in this sense, means abandoning the way of God for another aim. Will not the Judge(V) of all the earth do right?(W), 26The Lord said, If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Save 15% for life on BibleGateway+ with code SPRINGSTUDY15. Now, believing it is safe, Abram leaves Noah's home and returns to his father Terah. Lord. why would the ancient Greeks have Worshipped Demeter. Nimrod came from a line which was cursed by Noah: "Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves shall he be unto his brothers." By birth, Nimrod had no right to be a king or ruler. By submitting your email address, you understand that you will receive email communications from Bible Gateway, a division of The Zondervan Corporation, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA, including commercial communications and messages from partners of Bible Gateway. It is this difference, which lies at the heart of the distinction between the two interpretive methods described above. [22]This distinction is similar to that of Achad Ha-Am between historical truth (the way a group relates to events from its past, what we now call cultural memory or mnemohistory) and archaeological truth (what actually happened in the past.) Abraham is the first patriarch and is seen as the father of the four Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bah Faith. Enter code SPRINGSTUDY15 and have answers to your Bible questions at your fingertips. [3]See the long discussion inResponsa Rashba(1:414), where Rashba uses strong language to criticize various sages who suggested a philosophical-allegorical understanding for a number of biblical characters, including Abraham. 58 Dost thou not know, or hast thou not heard, that this evil which thou doest, our ancestors sinned therein in days of old, and the eternal God brought the waters of the flood upon them and destroyed them all, and also destroyed the whole earth on their account? 13Jehiel, Azaziah, Nahath, Asahel, Jerimoth, Jozabad, Eliel, Ismachiah, Mahath, and Benaiah were overseers [g]under the authority of Conaniah and his brother Shimei by the appointment of King Hezekiah, and (O)Azariah was the chief officer of the house of God. When Terah returned, he asked Abraham what happened to all the idols. In contrast to the midrash, the Bible itself never credits Abraham with monotheistic beliefs. Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. It is a post-biblical story imagining the early life of Abraham. The question the rabbis are trying to answer with the Midrash is why and how did Haran die in the presence of his father. Nevertheless, see his comment further on in the piece, The words ofaggada, which can have such good and blessed effects are literally the words of the living God. This statement seems to be very much in accord with what I called the highest level of faith, the belief in the ahistoricity of the narrative. As such, writing is secondary to the event itself. 31Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah, (A)broke the memorial stones in pieces, cut down the [a]Asherim and pulled down the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, until [b]they had destroyed them all. In verse 7 God said the covenant He established with Abraham was to be everlasting and that He alone was to be God to Abraham and his offspring. President Nelson shared the following story last April: I adored my parents. 23 And when Abram had gone from them he went to his mother and sat before her, and he said to his mother, Behold, my father has shown me those who made heaven and earth, and all the sons of men. If you have any questions, please review our Privacy Policy or email us at privacy@biblegateway.com. The opposite is the case. Oops! He was looking forward. The interpretive strategy of the received text is paramount takes an entirely different approach, which attempts to encounter the word of God without any mediation. 5 From . [1] According to Jewish tradition, Terah was an idolater. How Modern Prophets Contextualized This Account, [Abraham] understood that there was a God in heaven, a living and true God, and that no man should worship any other God but Him. 49 And Abram hastened and sprang from before his father, and took the hatchet from his fathers largest idol, with which Abram broke it and ran away. It is, furthermore, impossible to deny another benefit of the ahistorical model of understanding the Torahs narratives. The first and simplest is, What the Torah says about the event is what is important. The second is shorter but sharper, What the Torah says is what is important.. 21 And Terah said to his son, Behold these are they which made all thou seest upon earth, and which created me and thee, and all mankind. Writing, not just in these examples, is a reality substitute of great value. A woman enters to offer food to the idols. Access 50+ premium resources. It is precisely the struggle of thinkers like Rambam and Rav Kook that can be most helpful in answering such questions. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. The Bible tells us the Lord said to him: Get thee up from thy fathers house, from the land wherein thou wast born, and go up to a land I will show unto thee, and which I will afterwards give unto thee for an inheritance. And we are told that he went up, not knowing whither he went. 4, It is said Abrahams father was an idolater, and that he had a number of gods in his house. "You shall not delay the offering from your harvest and your vintage. Abraham's father, Terah. My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help. New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. 14 And Abram knew the Lord, and he went in his ways and instructions, and the Lord his God was with him. On the other hand, Haran needed to see that Abraham would be saved by God before believing, and because of this, Haran was not saved from the fire by God. Some critics of the Bible point to the story of Abraham, who laid his son Isaac on an altar and prepared to sacrifice him as directed by God (Genesis 22:1-14). 22 And Terah bowed down to his gods, and he then went away from them, and Abram, his son, went away with him. This claim, however, can be countered by making recourse to the premise of comparative literature, where it is one and the same whether a given story has a historical basis or not: comparison between texts always offers useful and challenging insights. There have been responses that take a more conservative approach; see, for instance, Adam Zertal,A Nation is Born: The Altar on Mount Ebal and the Beginning of Israel(Israel: Yedioth Aharonot, 2000), 292 [Hebrew]; Yitzhak Meitlis,Excavating the Bible: New Archaeological Evidence for the Historical Reliability of Scripture(Bartleby, 2012). The first statement, the simpler one, would probably be acceptable to anyone. Although the Bible says Terah "worshiped other gods" This Midrash can be interpreted as an example of persecution against those of monotheistic beliefs during a time when polytheism dominated.[8]. Rabbi Yehudah said: It applies even to unclean animals. Rabbi Yehudah said to them: But wasnt the sciatic nerve forbidden to the sons of Jacob, and they were permitted to eat unclean animals! They said to him: The law was stated at Sinai but was included in its proper place. For a summary of the issues surrounding pre-Sinaitic rules, see the entry in theEncylopedia Talmudit, One may not learn [rules] from the time before the giving of the Torah, (vol. are also to be treated as idols." Child sacrifice. Masoretic Text; an ancient Hebrew scribal tradition. Intuitive attachment to our inherited traditions is common to all people, regardless of education. A comparison between the various tellings allows us to clarify the core values the come through in each text, and, consequently, to characterize with more clarity the meaning with which the scriptural Author meant to imbue the story (a claim made above as well.) The consequence was, his father and the idolatrous priests of that day sought to take his life. [28] Although they believed that the great and majestic body of God was not comparable to their small and weak bodies, nevertheless, they could not let go of a God with some sort of a physical body. And Abram answered the king, saying, And if there be no power in them why dost thou serve them and cause the sons of men to err through thy follies? (R) 25Far be it from you to do such a thing(S)to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous(T) and the wicked alike. Nations Descended from Noah. Said he, Father, I did not do anything to them, they quarreled among themselves and went to work fighting and knocked one another down, broke one anothers heads and knocked off one anothers arms and legs. Oh, said his father, my sons do not tell me anything of that kind, for they are made of wood and they could not move or stir from their place nor knock one another down; it has been some other agency that has done it. Why, father, said he, would you worship a being that could not stir or move, that had hands and could not handle, that had legs and could not walk, a mouth that could not speak, and a head and it was of no use? According to this second phrasing, the events described in the Torah are part of Gods narrative; whether this narrative has a basis in historical fact doesnt matter. And Abram answered the king in the words that he spoke to his father, and he said, The large god that was with them in the house did to them what thou hast heard. 29 And Abram took the savory meat from his mother, and brought it before his fathers gods into the chamber; and he came nigh unto them that they might eat, and he placed it before them, and Abram sat before them all day, thinking perhaps they might eat. And Terah answered his son Abram and said, Behold those who created us are all with us in the house. In their understanding, the written text is not there to convey an event; it is the event itself. 20 And Abram said to his father, My lord, shew them to me I pray thee; and Terah brought Abram into the chamber of the inner court, and Abram saw, and behold the whole room was full of gods of wood and stone, twelve great images and others less than they without number. Abraham mocked them, and said, Surely, the savory meat that I prepared doth not please you, or perhaps it is too little for you! Although Hajar is Abraham's second wife she is the first to bear him a son, Ishmael. 1, pp. I expected my father to punish me, but he never said a word. 1. Ep 200 | Luke 12-17; John 11, Come Follow Me 2023 (May 1-7), Ep 199 | John 7-10, Come Follow Me 2023 (April 24-30), Ep 198 | Matthew 18; Luke 10, Come Follow Me 2023 (April 17-23), Ep 197 | Matthew 15-17; Mark 7-9, Come Follow Me 2023 (April 10-16), Ep 196 | Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 5-6, Come Follow Me 2023 (March 27-April 2). In my book, I explore a middle position that distinguishes between cases where it is necessary to free ourselves from a historicity that strangles the spirit of the text and cases where the historicity of the story would actually make the spirit of the story that much brighter. If the religious value of events comes from their being included in the word of God, let us allow God to speak to us in Gods own language, and to tell us the divine story with its entire force. [Abraham] understood that there was a God in heaven, a living and true God, and that no man should worship any other God but Him. 42 Is there in these gods spirit, soul or power to do all thou hast told me? Rijksmuseum 1 The Midrashic Abraham Rabbi Chiyya said: Terah was an idol worshiper. [b](P) 23Then Abraham approached him and said: Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (C) 18Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation,(D) and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. The power of a story cannot be found purely in the ideological explication of the divine message contained within, even if the message once understood, requires a person to live up to it in his or her life. [13]Even if its conclusions will, in the end, be rejectednot always and not necessarilyby practical halacha. New American Standard Bible (NASB). And Nimrod and all his princes and servants were that day sitting before him, and Terah sat also before them. what is the supplement of an angle measuring 54 degrees? Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. The Torah describes various events from its own unique perspective. 2 Chronicles 31:1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Abraham married them according to the Book of Genesis). Abraham chose to follow God alone, and he demonstrated his commitment by circumcising every male in his household. 15[i]Under his authority were (P)Eden, Miniamin, Jeshua, Shemaiah, Amariah, and Shecaniah, in (Q)the cities of the priests, to distribute their portions faithfully to their brothers by divisions, whether great or small, 16without regard to their genealogical enrollment, to the males from [j](R)thirty years old and upwardeveryone who entered the house of the Lord (S)for his daily obligationsfor their work in their duties according to their divisions; 17as well as the priests who were enrolled genealogically according to their fathers households, and the Levites (T)from twenty years old and upward, by their duties and their divisions. One time a woman came carrying a dish of fine flour. To attempt an answer, I suggest that dry mechanical lists of rules, such as do not murder and do not steal, couldnt accomplish the transmission of lofty values to humankind. Cautiously, I would like to suggest that doing so is not important. 16 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. If the stories about the ancestors of the nation had not been included in the Torah at Sinai, it seems likely that they would be without any religious implications. This point can be expressed in two different ways. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places. The business deal or the event is the main matter of significance, describing the event in writing is simply a means of conveying knowledge of that deal or event to others. When President Nelson shared the story of his breaking the bottles of alcohol his father owned, I kept thinking about another prophet who also broke things. Powered by WordPress. Considering this, insofar as observance is concerned, is it important to defend the belief that all of the stories narrated in the book of Genesis actually happened? However, in this case, God was testing the obedience and faith of Abraham. 4 The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. This story is taken from The Book of Jasher 11:21-49, Terah, in response to Abrahams question to him about who the God was that had created heaven and earth and the children of men, took him to the hall wherein stood twelve great idols and a large number of little idols, and pointing to them he said, Here are they who have made all thou seest on earth, they who have created also me and thee and all men on the earth, and he bowed down before his gods, and left the hall with his son. Christian Standard Bible Once he went on a trip and he placed Abraham in charge of the store in his place. And yet, even as a boy, I knew I was missing something. Save 15% for life! Sign up now for the latest news and deals from Bible Gateway! A woman came carrying a plate of fine flour and she told me to offer it before them. 15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." 2 But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue[ a] childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of 4Also he told the people who lived in Jerusalem to give (F)the portion due to the priests and the Levites, so that they might devote themselves to (G)the Law of the Lord.
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