General Notes

Abraham means "the father of a multitude".  He lived in Ur inChaldea about 1800 B.C.  Th e patriarch who was the father of the peopleof God, Abraham left the security and comfort o f Ur because of the callof God.  Promised a land and descendants, Abraham lived most of his l ifewithout either, having to live on trust.  God entered into a covenantwith Abraham, assurin g him that He kept His word.  Finally, in his oldage, a son called Isaac was born to Abraha m and his wife, Sarah.Abraham's supreme test of faith came when God apparently went against H isown promise and ordered Abraham to sacrifice the boy.  Abraham obedientlyprepared to carr y out the orders, but was stayed at the last minute whenGod intervened.  (Everyone in the Bib le, by William P. Barker, 1966)  A youthful Abraham leaves Mesopotamia with his father, Terah, andbegins a long period o f wandering which eventually sees him settle in thecentral hill country of Canaan (what we ca ll today the West Bank).During his early travels he develops ties with the city of Haran in n orthSyria.  Over the years, many of the brides of Israelite men wouldoriginate from this regi on as a result of these ties.  It was duringAbraham's lifetime that a great cataclysm destroy ed Sodom and Gomorrah(Gen. 19:23-26), an event preceded by a severe famine which decimated th epopulation of the Levant - forcing Abraham to take refuge in Egypt (Gen.12:10-20).  (Pharoah s and Kings, a Bibilical Quest, by David M. Rohl,1995)  He is revered as the spiritual ancestor of all Jews and Christians.(Everyone in the Bible, b y William P. Barker, 1966)  The Muslims call him Ibrahim.  He is the well-known founder of the Jewish people.  There exists fromBabylonia an early cla y tablet that bears the name of a man calledAbi-ramu, and the name is rendered as Abarama i n the Eblaite tablets.Another bears the name of Sarai, but whether these were the Abram andSa ri of the Genesis record or not, we have no way of knowing.  Josephusquotes the Babylonian hi storian Berosus, as saying, 'In the tenthgeneration after the Flood, there was a man among th e Chaldeans who wasrighteous and greatÔøΩ..'  Josephus regarded this remark as a directreferenc e to Abraham, even though Berosus did not actually name him.Abraham was, however, named by He cataeus and by Nicolaus of Damascus.(Internet: www.biblebelievers.org.au/nation01.htm)