Did Abraham ever really exist?

I respectfully disagree that the books of the Torah were written in 500BC -- I've seen some claims of that lately, along with some people who claim that it was originally written in Greek, not a form of Paleo-Hebrew, another claim I see as being not supported by the evidence. It seems, to me, to be yet another effort of some peoples' part to discredit Christianity and/or Judaism.

Does it matter if there really was a guy named Abram/Abraham, somewhere back in the mists of time? On the one hand, not really -- most of Genesis represents things that are more mythical than they are historical. On the other, if Christ referred to him in a concrete manner ("Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" John 8:58 NIV) then either he was lying or not all-knowing, both indications that Jesus was not God.

With that in mind, along with the apparent genealogical ties that Israel has to Abraham, through Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's twelve sons, I'm inclined to believe that there really was an Abraham at some point in the distant past, and that he's not just a fabricated character or re-figured person from another culture.

reply to post by dashen

dashen

windword
Personally, I think that Abraham represents a creeping influence of Hinduism in the middle east.

There is definitely a connection between Abraham and Sarah and BRAHMA AND SARAWATI.

There are certain striking similarities between the Hindu god Brahma and his consort Saraisvati, and the Jewish Abraham and Sarai, that are more than mere coincidences. Although in all of India there is only one temple dedicated to Brahma, this cult is the third largest Hindu sect.

I think you may have it backwards my friend. The Aryans who invaded Northern India thousands of years ago were likely the children of Abraham and Keturah his concubine after Sarah's passing.

to quote the OT " Genesis 25:6:

And to the sons of Abraham's concubines, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from his son Isaac while he [Abraham] was still alive, eastward to the land of the East."

I don't think so.

Models of the Indo-Aryan migration discuss scenarios of prehistoric migrations of the proto-Indo-Aryans to their historically attested areas of settlement in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, generally considered to have started around 1500 BC.
en.wikipedia.org...

With the Aryans arrived the bedrock of the Hindu thought system, the Vedas. Considered the world's oldest writings, these scriptures originated before the Aryans migrated to the Indus Valley, later evolving into four scriptures: the Rig-Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. The oldest and most popular of these is the Rig-Veda, a collection of hymns which may date back as early as 5000 BCE.
..........................
The Rig-Veda tells of thirty-three gods, all of whom are born of one creator, Brahman.
www.waupun.k12.wi.us...

If Abraham did exist, he MAY have been "A-Brahmin" but he was NOT Brahman.

It is held that a majority of the Indo-Aryans spoke Old Kamarupi dialect or Old Assamese[9] also known as Kamarupi Prakrit, the precursor of Assamese language and the Kamatapuri lects; and that the learned few knew Sanskrit.
en.wikipedia.org...

The Vedas were written in Sanskrit, which was not an Aryan language.

FlyersFan

dashen
Except that Judaism is almost OCD about recording bloodlines.

Except that they HAD to get it wrong because the world isn't 6,000 years old.
And that's what the bloodline recordings claim. The world is 6,000 years old.
Not to mention the fact, that once again, there is still no proof that Abraham existed.
A debunked bloodline list (age of the world debunks it) in the Old Testament
doesn't prove he existed.

Talmud Chaggiga 13b-14a states that there were 974 generations before God created Adam.

Klassified
reply to post by dashen

 

Its so much better than that. Isaac was 36 years old at the time of the binding. Abraham only told his son that he was to be the sacrifice at the last moment. Isaac understood and asked to be bound because he wanted to be a perfect sacrifice. It is profoundly difficult to understand the mindset of these people. To label them as people who "heard voices" only serves to begin the dialogue in a negative tone. Besides "hearing voices" he taught the , readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic to the illiterate masses at the Dawn of Civilization. And the only reason you can read right now may just be because of him.

Can you give some references for that information? Little to none of that is in the bible. I think FF has come to the table with a lot of information here, and no one has refuted it to this point with a substantial rebuttal.

In the following verses Sarah, Isaacs mother dies of shock when she learns he is to be sacrificed. She was 127 years old upon her passing. She gave birth to Isaac at 90. Math.

Isaac understood and asked to be bound 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

22.8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

He told him in a non shocking way as to not make Isaac lose his resolve. Abraham was 136 years old at this point, so yes a 36 year old is a lad.
edit on 24-9-2013 by dashen because: (no reason given)

reply to post by FlyersFan
Here's the simple truth....know one knows for sure,unless they have evidence to carbon date or extract some type of DNA samples from the evidence,or even if a strand of hair,or maybe even a diary from the person/'s in question would be the only solid way to find out if they had existed in the past.Only other idea I could come up with, if recorded accounts of that period in time recorded by people whom were well know from those time's in question left evidence either written or painted of the individual in question.

reply to post by windword


I'd never considered this, thank you for posting!

reply to post by dashen


So did Abraham tell Isaac in a non shocking way as to not make Isaac lose his resolve or did Isaac understand and asked to be bound?

Because to me it look like Abraham lied

In the following verses Sarah, Isaacs mother dies of shock when she learns he is to be sacrificed. She was 127 years old upon her passing. She gave birth to Isaac at 90. Math.

And the whole Abraham Tested thing is Genesis 22 and the death of Sarah is Genesis 23 – fable

Most of the old testament is old religion rehashed into 'current time and place'. All those stories are older than Judaism itself. Abraham as described could not have existed.

reply to post by FlyersFan


I gave you S&F for your research and presentation, but I do not agree with your conclusion.

The OT tells us that Abraham came out of Ur (southern Iraq) from the remnant of Sumer, pre Babylon.

Abram was a nomad. His tribe was just a caravan of shepherds. They camped their way through their lives, journeying through many lands.

We will never find archaeological evidence of his existence. They would have left little or nothing as evidence and nothing that would be any different to the other tribes living in Canaan.

Regarding what some silly people are writing here that he was a murderer, well that is not true. He never sacrificed Isaac.

People forget that ALL people of the world were sacrificing their children to Baal like gods and goddesses like Diana. It was custom in Canaan to sacrifice the first born to Moloch and the fire. That is the state of all humanity at this time. Even the Hebrews, contrary to the Law of Israel, copied their neighbours and practised this as the Bible states.

That happening in the Bible is there to remind us that Abraham's God was not like the other gods and he made that clear in the lesson He taught to Abraham.

Many Christians believe that the story of Isaac is telling us that a man was willing to sacrifice his son for God. This is part of the covenant as we know later that God did have to sacrifice His Son for humanity.

Look at these ancient stories in context. Look at what all the other tribes were doing. Humanity was generally very barbaric and practised human sacrifice all over the world. That is what made the Hebrews different because their God replaced the sacrifice with an animal and then once Christ had come He took away the need for any blood offering.

If anything only the Hebrews and Christians have evolved us into much more civilized beings. I cannot think of any other ancient culture who urged a breaking away from sun worship and human sacrifice. The Babylonians did it, the Greeks and the Romans did it; the Romans and the Greeks were even sacrificing people in Christ's time. Check out J. G. Frazer's "The Golden Bough", J. Weston's "From Ritual To Romance" and the priests of Nemi for a detailed picture of sacrifice traditions all over the globe.

dashen
Except that Judaism is almost OCD about recording bloodlines. In the OT every player can have their ancestry placed back to Adam. Genesis goes from Adam, at the Dawn of Ancient Civilization, to Joseph in in around the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. There's your few thousand years right there. In reality the whole book is just a thread of these particular characters through history which where a "Light Unto Mankind".

edit on 24-9-2013 by dashen because: (no reason given)

yeah, but only if we believe a few of them lived to 300.

is that not a potential avenue for doubt?

reply to post by Revolution9


What about ancient relics like the Ipuwer Papyrus? It,

describes Egypt as afflicted by natural disasters and in a state of chaos, a topsy-turvy world where the poor have become rich, and the rich poor, and warfare, famine and death are everywhere. One symptom of this collapse of order is the lament that servants are leaving their servitude and acting rebelliously.[/


from Wikipedia Ipuwer Papyrus

Who is to say that this is not describing the plagues of Moses?

Also there are now discoveries being made in archaeology that reveal that there were languages that are possibly ancient Hebrew being spoken in the time of King David (970BC).

One example is this pot shard that was discovered. Please refer to my thread here about that;

www.abovetopsecret.com...

(Sorry the title of the thread should have read 970BC, not 97BC. I did not notice the mistake in time)

edit on 24-9-2013 by Revolution9 because: (no reason given)

Beavers

dashen
Except that Judaism is almost OCD about recording bloodlines. In the OT every player can have their ancestry placed back to Adam. Genesis goes from Adam, at the Dawn of Ancient Civilization, to Joseph in in around the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. There's your few thousand years right there. In reality the whole book is just a thread of these particular characters through history which where a "Light Unto Mankind".

edit on 24-9-2013 by dashen because: (no reason given)

yeah, but only if we believe a few of them lived to 300.

Why not?

You do realize that the whole text is about the supernatural, right? If we believe that Christ was resurrected from the grave, why wouldn't we be open to God letting some people live to be 300 or 900 years old?

Personally, I don't think that to be the case, but see no reason that it couldn't be and take no issue with anyone who thinks that there were 300 year old people in the Hebrew ancestry.

dashen
Abraham was taught by Shem, son of Noah, and Eber son of Shem. Noah learned from Methusaleh, he from Lemech and So on till Adam.

- Again ... the Jewish 'bloodlines' are wrong. For them to be correct, the world would have to be 6,000 years old. And we know for a fact that it is not.

-Noah didn't exist. That is a story 'borrowed' by the Jews from the Summerians. They 'freely adapted' the story and changed the names to claim it as their own.

FlyersFan

dashen
Abraham was taught by Shem, son of Noah, and Eber son of Shem. Noah learned from Methusaleh, he from Lemech and So on till Adam.

- Again ... the Jewish 'bloodlines' are wrong. For them to be correct, the world would have to be 6,000 years old. And we know for a fact that it is not.

-Noah didn't exist. That is a story 'borrowed' by the Jews from the Summerians. They 'freely adapted' the story and changed the names to claim it as their own.

Talmud Chaggiga 13b-14a states that there were 974 generations before God created Adam.

""Borrowed from the Sumerians" according to the OT the Hebrews are literally the great grandchildren of the Sumerian Royalty

adjensen
. On the other, if Christ referred to him in a concrete manner ("Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" John 8:58 NIV) then either he was lying or not all-knowing, both indications that Jesus was not God.

So we've got these choices ...
- Whoever wrote the bible and quoted Jesus got it wrong.
- Jesus Himself got it wrong, which means He isn't God as He claimed.
- Jesus got it right that Abraham actually existed, and Jesus God-head isn't in question.
- Jesus insinuated something that wasn't true, that Abraham existed, to make a point on a level that the Jews could understand. Something you'd not expect from God .. but then again, God allows all sorts of errors in religion to exist and He does nothing to fix it ... so who knows ...

The story in the bible is flat out wrong. There COULD have been someone named Abraham, but the story in scripture is historically wrong. There is no collaborating evidence to support scripture so that calls Abraham existing into serious question.

reply to post by Revolution9




Personally I think that Abraham was not one person, but reprented a tribe of people.

The OT tells us that Abraham came out of Ur (southern Iraq) from the remnant of Sumer, pre Babylon.

Bactria (a region of ancient Afghanistan) was the locality of a prototypical Jewish nation called Juhuda or Jaguda, also called Ur-Jaguda. Ur meant "place or town." Therefore, the bible was correct in stating that Abraham came from "Ur of the Chaldeans." "Chaldean," more correctly Kaul-Deva (Holy Kauls), was not the name of a specific ethnicity but the title of an ancient Hindu Brahmanical priestly caste who lived in what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Indian state of Kashmir.

Abram was a nomad. His tribe was just a caravan of shepherds. They camped their way through their lives, journeying through many lands.

In my opinion, Abraham's tribe was migrating.

We know that a flood drove Abraham out of India. "...Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, Even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan." (Joshua 24:2-3.)

"The drying up of the Sarasvati around 1900 BCE, which led to a major relocation of the population centered around in the Sindhu and the Sarasvati valleys, could have been the event that caused a migration westward from India. It is soon after this time that the Indic element begins to appear all over West Asia, Egypt, and Greece." (Indic Ideas in the Graeco-Roman World, by Subhash Kak, taken from IndiaStar online literary magazine; p.14)

Indian historian Kuttikhat Purushothama Chon believes that Abraham was driven out of India. He states that the Aryans, unable to defeat the Asuras (The mercantile caste that once ruled in the Indus Valley or Harappans) spent so many years fighting covertly against the Asuras, such as destroying their huge system of irrigation lakes, causing destructive flooding, that Abraham and his kindred just gave up and marched to West Asia. (See Remedy the Frauds in Hinduism.) Therefore, besides being driven out of Northern India by floods, the Aryans also forced Indian merchants, artisans, and educated classes to flee to West Asia.

Fascinating stuff!

Who Was Abraham

FlyersFan

dashen
Abraham was taught by Shem, son of Noah, and Eber son of Shem. Noah learned from Methusaleh, he from Lemech and So on till Adam.

- Again ... the Jewish 'bloodlines' are wrong. For them to be correct, the world would have to be 6,000 years old. And we know for a fact that it is not.

No, for Genesis to be taken literally, the world would have to be 6,000 years old, that's the connection.

The bloodlines simply trace back to someone named Adam, whom the Israelites believed was the first human being, but the bloodline could be correct without the "first human being" being literally the first homo-sapien, just some notable guy, and that has nothing to do with the age of the planet.

dashen

Talmud Chaggiga 13b-14a states that there were 974 generations before God created Adam.

generations of what?
and it cannot be men because according to the story there where no men yet

dashen
Talmud Chaggiga 13b-14a states that there were 974 generations before God created Adam.

So you are saying that Jews do not believe in the Creation Myth of Adam and Eve?
Then where did the Christians get it from?

My Jewish Learning

Adam was the first human being and the progenitor of the human race.

The first chapter of Genesis states that God made man in the sixth day of the Creation, fashioning him in His own image and giving him dominion over the rest of creation. The etymology of the word Adam connects it with Adamah, "ground or soil," and with Adom, "red." This suggests that Adam was formed from red soil or clay.

The second chapter of Genesis tells the creation of man in more detail. God created man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. God told the man that he could eat from every tree in the garden, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, under penalty of death.