Abraham's Great Unanswered Prayer

Every third year about this time, the lectionary brings us to consider the time when Abraham prayed for Sodom. He showed faith in God's goodness, confidence that God would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked. He showed humility in recognizing God's right to take no notice of his request in the matter, "since I am but dust and ash." He showed persistence, "What if there are only 30? 20? 10?" At the end of the day, God did not spare Sodom -- but he did spare Abraham's relative Lot and his family. (We are not told whether Lot was counted as righteous -- so there is room to wonder whether Lot was spared for Abraham's sake or for his own.*) 

Was Abraham's prayer misguided? The Bible never speaks of it as misguided. God mentions no fault in Abraham's prayer: Persistent, humble, faithful -- and not granted. God still valued Abraham, still kept his promises to Abraham, still honored Abraham -- and yet that prayer was not answered. Even though Abraham's request to spare the city was not granted, his request to spare the innocent (or spare his family) was heard. 

I am not sure whether God considered Abraham's request, or whether Abraham's view was right from the beginning: confidence that God would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked. It gave him the boldness to speak. But it may have also meant that our Father in heaven knew what we needed before we asked him.

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* Update: A reader has pointed out that 2 Peter 2:7 calls Lot righteous, so the interpretation of the ancient readers was that Lot was spared for his own sake.

Of Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, and Abraham

I'd like to start by putting two ancient writings on the table before I explain why:

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196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.
201. If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina.
(from the Code of Hammurabi, around 1800 B.C.)

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ... (Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21)

The Code of Hammurabi predates Moses by centuries, by any chronology I've ever heard. I don't want to make too much of the similarities between the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and the laws passed down in the Torah. I suspect the various peoples of that place and that era shared a sense of justice, and likewise shared a sense that these commands were handed down by God (or gods, as the case may be). If some would see this as proof positive that the Hebrew legal code was not, after all, handed to Moses in its entirety on Mount Sinai, that is not for me to argue.

One more thing before I get to my actual point.

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The Epic of Gilgamesh is an early Babylonian record of a great flood. Even allowing an early date for the book of Genesis around the time worked out in chronologies for the exodus from Egypt, still the Epic of Gilgamesh is earlier. Even Answers in Genesis (a conservative Christian website, to say the least) acknowledges, "Comparing the flood stories in the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis, one is impressed with the numerous similarities between the two accounts." Many scholars believe that the Hebrew account is largely borrowed from the earlier Babylonian account. Others say that the two accounts both preserve the memory of the same event.

Again, my point is not whether Noah is a rework of Gilgamesh.

I'll get to the point now.

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It's interesting, I think, that the Hebrew legal code may show a Babylonian influence. It is interesting again that the Hebrew account of the flood bears such a striking resemblance to the older Babylonian story.

Why is it that Babylon keeps coming up? At other places scholars research possible similarities to other cultures like the Greeks or Persians. The older stuff -- Babylonian.

It's possible that it's just coincidence; we can research similarities between the Hebrews and the Babylonians because the Babylonian records exist for us to make that comparison; the best records we have of those more ancient times are Babylonian. Possible -- but there's no particular reason the Hebrew writings should resemble them quite that closely unless there was some cultural influence.

It's possible that, if we did a proper study of all the ancient legal codes and all the ancient flood accounts, we might find that the Hebrew records resembled something else more than the Babylonian accounts. And that's a more serious possibility, though still a tall order to fill, given the close similarities.

But there is another possibility I'd like to mention. What if the Hebrews received part of their legal code, and part of their memories of the ancient world and the dawn of human history, from ancestors who came from Babylon? What if there was an early migration of a people from Babylon to the land that later became the homeland of the Hebrews?

They went forth from Ur of the Chaldeans, to go into the land of Canaan. (Genesis 11:31, speaking of the family of Abraham's migration from Babylon)

I would not by any stretch call this conclusive. I would want to spend a year poring over ancient legal codes and flood accounts before I used words as strong as "tentative" with something like this. But it is an intriguing possibility: the repeated similarities between Hebrew sacred writings and earlier Babylonian writings may provide an independent line of argument that the ancestors of the Hebrews spent some time in Babylon.

A paternity test for Abraham

Our knowledge of DNA keeps getting a stronger connection to ethnic studies and human ethnic history. I'd like to go on record hoping that someone, at some point, gets permission to run a DNA analysis on the human remains that are in the tomb said to belong to Abraham and Sarah. There are also tombs in other places reputed to belong to Jacob and to Ishmael. In some cases, of course, more than one site has been proposed for the tombs, with one site having more ancient attestation than the other. But if a DNA test could be done in a non-destructive way on remains that old, I'd be interested in the results. The cultures of that region are very geneaology-conscious, but the history has also been turbulent. Have these cultures succeeded in keeping track of their patriarchs?

Praying for Sodom

In the last couple of weeks I've seen more than one piece around the blogosphere about Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems to be on peoples' minds lately. Recently I taught a teenage Sunday school class on one of the texts neighboring to that. We're studying times in the Bible when God revealed himself directly to people; God revealed himself directly to Abraham just previous to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Does everyone remember that scene in the Bible where Abraham argues with God and bargains with God and haggles with God? Do you know what Abraham was trying to do? He was trying to save Sodom. He was praying for Sodom, begging for Sodom, pleading for Sodom. He did not ask for the wicked to be counted righteous. He asked that the city be spared ("forgiven" in some translations) because of the righteous people who lived there. Abraham was counted not only prophet, but also a friend of God.

I can't help but notice the contrast between Abraham and all the rest of us. Abraham did not excuse the wickedness of the city; he did not define one sin as greater and another as lesser; he did not exult over the bad guys getting blasted. He considered it his moral obligation to contend for what was right, and it made him bold before God.

I know there is a lot to be said about Sodom and Gomorrah, and most of us have already studied and taken notes. All I ask is that we add one mental image to that set of notes: the mental image of Abraham, from whom we all reckon our spiritual heritage, praying for Sodom ...

Teenage Sunday School and Abraham's Sacrifice

Actually today we did a lot of Abraham -- a brief review of God's covenant, and of his rescue of Lot. But we spent the most time on the near-sacrifice of Isaac.

Challenge for the class: during the reading, listen for the answers to these two things:

1. Where did all this happen?
2. What's the promise associated with the place?

Read Genesis 22:1-14.

1. Where did all this happen? Moriah
   
2. Who picked the place? God did
   
3. What's the promise associated with the place? God will provide the sacrifice. (We also did a brief review of the fact that "God will provide" is what "Moriah" means.)
   
4. Sometimes authors draw on the Bible for inspiration, particularly Christian writers. Can anybody think of a book or movie with a place called "Moriah" in it? Not enough Lord Of The Rings fans in class today, only one got the reference to the mines of Moriah, and to Gandalf's sacrificing himself to save the fellowship there.
   
5. Does anyone know whether, in later times, sacrifice was important to Abraham's descendants in Israel? Yes, it was.
   
6. Does anyone know where they made the sacrifices? At the temple.
   
7. Does anyone know where they built the temple? On a mountain. In Jerusalem.
   

Read 2 Chronicles 3:1

Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.

1. Where exactly did they build the temple? Mt. Moriah. The same place Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac.
   
2. Who picked the place? God.
   
3. What was the promise that goes with the name "Moriah"? God will provide the sacrifice. (Which was a giveaway, it was still on the board, but I wanted them to see the connection.)
   
4. When it says "God will provide the sacrifice," what is the ultimate promise about? Jesus
   

Is Abraham Historical?

This is an old post back from the days when I used to post over at CADRE Comments. In light of a recent discussion over at Thinklings, I thought I'd dust it off again.

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It’s an ongoing question in Christian circles how far back Genesis is to be taken as historical. Here I will briefly cover some points that weigh on the historicity of Abraham in particular.

First, there's the Hebrew account of Abraham from the Bible. Where the Hebrew accounts bear on Hebrew history, most of the record have been kept by the Hebrews (understandably enough). But the Hebrew records do also record things of interest to other surrounding nations, particularly Arabia. Some of these points are as follows:

• Abraham was son of Terah (son of Nahor, son of Serug, etc., Genesis 11);
  
• His firstborn son Ishmael was by his Egyptian maidservant Hagar (Genesis 16).
  
• While Ishmael was still very young; Abraham’s wife Sarai mistreated Hagar and she fled into the wilderness. Hagar was distressed; God (or an angel of God) showed her water. (Similar accounts in Genesis 16 while Hagar was pregnant with Ishmael and Genesis 21 after Ishmael was weaned have led people to speculate whether these are the same account recorded twice, or two different instances of seeking water in the wilderness.)
  
• When Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael buried him beside Isaac’s mother Sarah (Genesis 25).
  
• Ishmael had 12 sons: Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jedur, Naphish, and Kedemah (Genesis 25).

Different camps of scholars give different dates for the Torah, but it is written at soonest several centuries after the events recorded for Abraham’s life. Is there anything to corroborate the Torah’s record? On this point the Arab traditions bear mentioning. According to the Arab traditions:

• Ibrahim was the son of Tarih (son of Nahur, son of Sarugh, etc.)
  
• Ibrahim’s son Ismail was born of a woman named Hagar, who was an Egyptian.
  
• Mecca was founded at the place where Ismail drank water shown to him by an angel of God when he was a small child accompanied by his mother. (This well is considered sacred to this day and is visited by Muslim pilgrims to Mecca.)
  
• Ismail had 12 sons: Nabit, Qaydhar, Adhbul, Mabsha, Misma, Mashi, Dimma, Adhr, Tayma, Yatur, Nabish, and Qaydhuma. The Arab tribes trace their descent from these sons of Ismail.
  
• Ismail was buried beside his mother Hagar in what is now Mecca.
  
• The Arabs recognize the same site in Israel as do the Hebrews as the final resting place of Ibrahim/Abraham.

Arab culture has historically depended heavily on oral tradition. The earliest written record for which I have an English translation is far after the date of the events: Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, from after the days of Mohammed. It preserves traditions of early Arab history and of the genealogy of Mohammed and of Arab tribes. It must be mentioned that this book was written millennia after Abraham; it claims, for this part of the record, to be reporting ancient traditions. The date gap should not be dismissed without consideration. Is there any reason to accept either record as authentic?

The foremost reason to accept the accounts would be the fact that they agree so largely with each other, especially when there is little reason to expect that these peoples would agree on anything unless they knew it to be true.

If someone were to argue that the Arabs borrowed from the Hebrews, it would mean that the genealogy-conscious Arab society forgot or replaced their own ancestry with an adopted Hebrew version of their ancestry. As unlikely as that seems, it would also raise the question of why they would have ancient burial sites of Ismail and Hagar in Mecca if they had not had their own traditions about Ismail and Hagar, and why they would “borrow” or even recognize the Hebrew records that Hagar was not buried with Abraham, which is less than flattering to their own culture. More historical dating and older records may become available as translation efforts continue, but for now it seems unlikely that the Arabs copied the Hebrews.

On the other hand, if someone were to argue that the Hebrews borrowed from the Arabs, the same types of issues can be raised as to why a genealogy-conscious culture would adopt someone else’s version of their ancestry. It also becomes difficult to explain why the Arabs recognize the tomb of Abraham and Sarah in the ancient homeland land of the Hebrews, as opposed to locating it in Arabia next to the burial places of Hagar and Ishmael. This is difficult to explain unless we consider the most obvious solution: that the tomb is authentic.

Is any of that conclusive? “Conclusive” is too strong a word for many peoples’ inclinations, especially with the translation work that remains to be done and the time gaps involved in the records. But the history of the people involved, the available records and traditions and historical sites, and the fact that two enemy cultures both agree so closely, all make more sense if the history is genuine.