REL 124 – Intro to the Old Testament
Essay 1
Gadzalski, Richard J.
September 12, 2010
Explain why Abraham is often considered "Father Abraham".

Abraham or the Father of Abraham can be trace back to the three cycles of to the Ancestral Story which is organized into major segments collections. Each of these segment collections is called a cycle. The reason for this is that each of these cycles contains a story that revolves around a major ancestral figure representing Abraham, Jacob, or Joseph. The three cycles separate themselves by brief genealogical references of the two ancestral children who branch off from the trajectory of Israel, which were Ishmael and Esau. God actually held out a promise of a home land and a large family for Abraham. Abraham was also called or named Abram. He migrated from southern Mesopotamia to Palestine. His wife, Sarah, because of a famine, moved to Egypt. Abraham and family finally separated due to competing claims of Canaan. God made a promise, or covenant to Abraham that he would fulfill his promise of a few things. First off, his children, which Abraham and his wife Sarah did not have nay offspring. Years would pass that Abraham and his wife could not conceive, so be that Sarah had her husband lay with her servant Hagar. Ishmael was the birth of that conception. God at that time reaffirmed the promise of children to Abraham and Sarah by his implementation of circumcision and gave new names to Abram and Sarah. The divine charge of Abram, God promises many things to him to get him motivated. Abraham has given up multiple things to follow God’s lead and awaits his promises. Years and decades go by with no resolution for Abraham. Abraham has no land, no children, and no visual hopes of seeing the covenant or future for himself or family. God, or in other word YHWH said to Abram, “Now YHWH said to Abram, “Go from this land of your birth and your kin and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make your into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless, you, and him who curse you I will curse: and through you all families of the earth shall bless themselves/be blessed.” Abraham was promised the following three things, a homeland, offspring, and, less tangible of the two, and that would be a blessing. Abraham endured many test of God as being the chosen one at the time. Abraham was God’s first test or trail tribulation in regards to being truly royal or being the one to be his disciple of passing the word of his to the people. After all the hardship and trails of Abraham’s effort, God was testing Abraham’s faith. Abraham grew extremely close to God through a ritual reaction that was taken place. This in summary in accordance with the Priestly writer viewed Abraham as the fulfiller of the promise at Creation. Abraham obeyed God in the fact that he did not run from God in any of these incidences and he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. He obeyed and demonstrated his deep and secure faith in the promises of God. Abraham was very mature in his faith in God and displays an unending and devoted maturing of faith. In end Sarah dies and Abraham buried Sarah near a cave called Machpelah, which was a property near Hebron. Hebron was a property owned by a Hittie named Ephron. “Father of a multitude of nations” is Priestly equivalent to the Yahwistic promise of becoming a great nation, which YHWH pledged to Abraham in 12:2. Overall, Abraham acted in a way that he did was that he was concerned that there was no “fear of God” in Gear. God came to Abimelech and directly warned him and saved him from disaster. God changed Abraham's name from Abram to Abraham (in Genesis 17:5), to show that Abraham was to be the "father of many nations". The Hebrew for this name is a direct translation of that phrase. In addition, he was the first of the forefathers for the Jewish religion, as the father to Isaac and the grandfather to Jacob. Each of them is entitled to the title Father, but as the first, he is truly Father Abraham. At Passover, there is a song that calls these men the 3 Fathers. Their wives are known as the 4 Mothers. Abraham is considered as the father of Israel nation, and also the Islamic nation, so he is called father Abraham. For Jews, Abraham is, through Isaac and Jacob, the founding patriarch of the Children of Israel. God promised Abraham: "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you." With Abraham, God entered into "an everlasting covenant throughout the ages to be God to you and to your offspring to come.” Abraham is primarily a revered ancestor or patriarch " to whom God made several promises: chiefly, that he would have numberless descendants, who would receive the land of Canaan According to Jewish tradition, Abraham was the first post flood prophet to reject idolatry through rational analysis, although Shem and Eber carried on the tradition from Noah. Abraham not only symbolically appears as a fundamental figure for Judaism, but is recognized to have observed the tenets of the Torah before it was given to Moses. Modern scholars do not accept that the K'tav Ivri is named after. The early Midrashic sources explicitly state that the laws of Torah were observed by the Patriarchs long before Sinai, and in one case with a simultaneous explicit example for chronological calculations.