Discovery of God Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism

CHAPTER ONE A Palace in Flames Reaching us like pulses of ancient light from a star in a distant galaxy, the circumstances of Abraham's birth are obscure. His world--so different from our own, where the worship of one God at most is taken for granted--might as well be a different galaxy. However, this much is clear: no sooner had the child been born than the enemies of God set out to kill him. In that year, according to tradition, knowledge of the Lord was scarce among men, and certain forces in the Near East wished to keep things that way. Stories collected in medieval times, later published under the title Ma'asei Avraham Avinu ("Deeds of Abraham Our Father"), recall his birth as being marked by a star rising in the east, consuming other stars. At this fearful wonder, priests at the court of a Mesopotamian tyrant, Nimrod, prophesied that a child was to be born whose descendants would seize the spiritual future of mankind, condemning the old gods to the ashes, to be replaced by the One God. Nimrod trembled at this. Almost alone among his contemporaries, who were ignorant of the Almighty, he knew God and hated Him. The Bible itself mentions Nimrod only in passing, noting that he was "a mighty hunter before the Lord," which the Oral Torah understands to mean that he hunted men's souls, seeking to turn them away from God. So Nimrod, advised by Satan, literally hunted Abraham. The future patriarch was born in a cave suffused with supernatural light, and God sent the angel Gabriel to protect him, causing a black cloud to hide the child from his enemies. The boy was called Abram. Nimrod sought to bribe the child's father, Terach. If Terach would slay his own son, Nimrod promised great riches. Instead, Terach lied, insisting that the infant had already perished, and kept his boy in the cave until the danger had passed. Thirteen years went by before it was safe for Abram to emerge from hiding. Details of these stories--the star in the east, the black cloud, the bribe for Terach--not only are dismissed as fiction by modern scholars but are neglected by the greatest medieval sages as well. However, the sages wholly accept the work called Pirke d'Rabbi Eliezer ("Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer"), attributed to the school of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who lived around a.d. 100. What Pirke d'Rabbi Eliezer records about the patriarch's birth is terse. It can be relied on if any midrash, or biblical interpolation transmitted by tradition, can be: "When Abraham our Father was born, all the powerful men in [Nimrod's] kingdom sought to murder him. He was hidden underground for 13 years, during which he saw neither the sun nor the moon. After 13 years had passed, he emerged from underground, speaking the Holy Tongue [Hebrew]. He despised the sacred trees, loathed the idols, and trusted in the shadow of his Creator. He said, 'Lord of Hosts, happy is the man who trusts in you,' " a declaration later enshrined by King David in Psalm 84. The general location of Abram's birth and early suffering is Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers centering on what is today Iraq and extending into southern Turkey. More specifically, Jewish tradition directs our attention to Cuthah, twenty miles northeast of Baghdad, as the city where Abram was born. There, an archaeological mound called Tell Ibrahim rises from the plain. A tell is an artificial hill comprising layer on layer of debris from a series of collapsed cities that once occupied a site, all interspersed and covered over with dirt. There are lots of them in the Near East. The farther down you dig, the further back in time you go. Since Muslim and Jewish beliefs on the subject of the first patriarch agree on many points, it is unsurprising to learn that the Arabic name "Tell Ibrahim" corresponds with the Jewish tradition that this undistinguished mound hides the ruins of Abram's birthplaceKlinghoffer, David is the author of 'Discovery of God Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism', published 2004 under ISBN 9780385499743 and ISBN 0385499744.