fter the flood God made a covenant with Noah, promising to never again bring a global deluge. He told Noah that the rainbow would be a sign of this covenant. The Bible then gives us a table of nations explaining the descendants of Noah’s sons. At this time the famed Tower of Babel was built, its purpose to allow people to read the stars and use forms of astrology. The tower represented the power of human civilization over and against God, and for this reason its construction was never completed.1 God intervened in human history and the people were scattered throughout the world. Our story centers only on those people to whom God chose to work directly, the Jews, and in this sense we will only speak of other civilizations as they came into contact with the Jews as space does not allow for a detailed description of the development of other nations.
Since the mid 19th century, a great deal of archaeological research has been done in the Middle East which has contributed to a growing respect for the accuracy of the Old Testament. Archaeologists study ‘tells’, raised areas where ancient cities were built. In 1964, Dr. Paolo Matthiae, professor of Near East archaeology at the University of Rome began work on Tell Mardikh, the ancient city of Ebla, 30 miles south of modern Aleppo. He, with his wife and team made many important discoveries over the following ten years, however, in 1975 they discovered the largest and most comprehensive collection of ancient writings ever discovered in one place. In the palace of the city they found rooms containing over 20,000 tablets made of stone and clay, all of which recorded various items of history. This city had a population of about 260,000 and constituted one of the greatest powers of the Ancient Near East during the third to the second millennium B.C. Ebla was a flourishing Semitic civilization, renowned for its metal work, ceramics, textiles, woodworking and weapons of bronze.
For the Biblical scholar the records of this great city shine light on the Scriptures of the same era and the time of Abraham and the patriarchs. Eber, a direct descendent of Noah, and the relation of Abraham, is mentioned there as a King of Ebla. The gods mentioned include El and Ya, shortened versions of Yahweh and Jehovah, and this god is said to be the supreme God of about 500 lesser gods. Tablet number 1860 mentions the infamous cities of the plains: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Bela, in the same order as Genesis 14:2. Furthermore, there are also stories of creation and the flood, including the following lines which are very similar to the Genesis account of creation.
There was a time when there was no heaven, and Lugal (‘the great one’) formed it out of nothing; there was no earth and Lugal made it; there was no light, and he made it.2
The discoveries at Tell Mardikh are but one of hundreds of archaeological sites which have reinforced belief in the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. In chapter twelve of Genesis we are introduced to one of the most important characters on the stage of world history. His original name was Abram, a name later changed to that by which he is best known, Abraham. He became the father of the nations of Israel and of the Arab nations, a man at the very heart of the roots of Middle Eastern history. Both Jew and Moslem trace their roots back to this man, and consider him the predecessor to both Judaism and Islam. For Christianity, Abraham’s bloodline is not as important as his being the ‘father of the faithful’, a man who lived by faith in God, a man who trusted God.
God’s plan was to reveal Himself through a particular nation, a nation beginning with Abraham. At that time in world history people were again worshipping demon entities. Three major empires existed, the Egyptian, Hittite and Babylonian. These empires had polytheistic religions, that is, they worshipped a multitude of Gods. In the Babylonian city of Ur, one of the oldest cities in the world, was a huge ziggurat. It was excavated in the twentieth century and found to be similar to those of the Aztecs. These huge structures had but one purpose, the worship of demon gods. To that end, they often offered human sacrifices. The ziggurat stood in the centre of the city and was visible from every point, being the highest building.
Throughout the region were nomadic tribes, and Abraham’s could be described as one of these. They lived in large bands, Abraham’s tribe having over three hundred trained fighting men3 There was safety in numbers. As a boy Abraham had lived near Ur until he left this region to live in Haran, the area north of theEuphratesRiver.WhenAbrahamwasseventy-five God called him to leave Haran, “his country, people and father’s household”4 and journey to Canaan, which is now the State of Israel. God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, indeed he told him that two nations would come from him.
Abraham had two choices. He could remain where he was with his tribe, his wife Sarah, and their relatives, or he could obey God and go into the unknown, believing that God would do as He promised. He chose to believe and obey. This is why he is called a man of faith. He believed God and he acted on his belief. Faith is not about blind leaps in the dark, but about acting on the revelation we have been given by God. It almost always means acting without knowing the outcome, but we act in accordance with God’s promise, not in presumptuous stupidity as some misunderstand faith.
There are many incidents concerning Abraham and Sarah’s lives recorded in Genesis. Some of those stories reveal weaknesses in Abraham’s character and others his strengths. When he left for Canaan he took his nephew Lot with him. Eventually it became necessary to divide the territory between them and Lot chose the fertile valleys in which stood the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. When war broke out Abraham had to rescue Lot, and his nephew took to living in Sodom, the homosexual center of the known world at that time. The immorality of these two cities was such that God decided to destroy them and he made his plans known to Abraham. Abraham bargained with God for the cities, arguing that God should not destroy the righteous with the wicked. God agreed, but in the end a decision was made and the cities and their occupants were destroyed. The Bible suggests that sexual diseases are a natural consequence of immorality, whether heterosexual or homosexual, because the human body was designed for people to live within the sanctity of marriage.5 If a disease like AIDS had broken out due to the rampant homosexual practices of Sodom, the effect on a world without drugs to combat it may have been devastating, changing the course of human history.
Abraham then made a covenant with God which is recorded in Genesis 15. A covenant may be understood as a binding contract between two parties. This covenant, like all sacred covenants made with God, was sealed with blood representing that life and death bound the parties of the covenant. At the time of making this covenant God promised Abraham’s descendants the land of Canaan, and in a dream He told Abraham that his descendants would be slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years. After this time God would bring them out of the land of their oppressors with great wealth. During that four hundred years Canaan would become inhabited by many races of giants, descendants of the Nephilim. Archaeological evidence of these races is extensive, stories about them common, and many of the myths and legends concerning giants come from this era. In Abraham’s time these beings existed but were not prevalent. It is believed that they presided over the building of the ziggurats throughout this region and beyond, and encouraged the practice of human sacrifices, including those of children. They were also involved in the worship of Molech, a religion which considered the sacrifice of first-born children a norm.
Such was the attitude towards child sacrifice at the time of Abraham so it is not unusual that God chose to test the Father of Israel in the area of child
sacrifice. As previously mentioned, God had prom - ised Abraham and Sarah a son even though Sarah had passed menopause. Unfortunately, after a few years of waiting Sarah had not become pregnant. Sarah decided that they could give God some help in this area. Sarah’s plan was to build a family through her handmaiden Hagar, a kind of surrogate mother idea. Equally unfortunately, Abraham went along with the plan and Hagar produced him a son named Ishmael. At this time Abraham was eighty-six years old. This boy became the Father of the Arab nations. God recognised the boy and blessed him on account of Abraham, however, God did not consider Ishmael the son of the covenant.
After fourteen years Sarah did conceive and bore Isaac. Some years later God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. In the discourse God repeatedly refers to him as Abraham’s ‘only son’. Abraham took two of his servants, wood for the sacrifice and three days later arrived at the place designated by the Lord. He told his servants to wait with the donkey, and when he and the boy had finished worshipping the Lord they would both return. Father and son climbed up to the place on the hill and there Abraham prepared the altar with the wood on top. The son carried the wood on his back to the place of sacrifice. When Isaac inquired as to where the lamb was for the burnt offering, Abraham replied that the Lord would provide the lamb. He then took his son and tied him on top of the altar. As he took out his knife to kill his son the Lord stopped him. He revealed to Abraham that this was a test to him, and then showed him a ram caught in a thicket close by which he was to use for the burnt offering.6
There are many powerful issues in this story which are important to our understanding of Christianity. Firstly, Abraham can be seen as an archetype of God as a Father here. God continually refers to Isaac as his ‘only son’ who is to be sacrificed. Five hundred years after this we learn that a burnt offering of a lamb is performed to cleanse from sin. Isaac, the ‘only son’ was to be the lamb given for sin, just as Jesus Christ, God’s ‘only son’, called the ‘lamb of God’ would be given as a sacrifice for sin. God sacrificed his only son Jesus knowing He would be raised from death.Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son knowing that God would raise him from death. We know this because Abraham told his servants that both he and the boy would return, and also for the simple reason that Abraham believed it was through Isaac that the nation of Israel was promised. We can also see parallels in that Isaac was a miracle baby, a baby born well past the possible time for Sarah, and Jesus was of course a miracle child, conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Abraham is considered to be the Father of the faithful, the Father of those who are saved by faith. Is was fitting that his faith should be such that his test foretells the miraculous coming of the Messiah, the sacrifice of the lamb of God for sin, and faith in the resurrection from the dead. God foretells the plan of salvation in this event, and at the same time He lays down the requirements of those who would come to God for salvation. It is the nature of that salvation that every person who would be free from the guilt and penalty of sin, must in a sense offer Jesus Christ to the Father as a sacrifice for their sin.
Abraham’s name appears often in the New Testament especially where the subject of faith is discussed. He is considered a man of faith simply because he acted upon the knowledge he received from God, trusting God for the best possible outcome. He never acted presumptuously, but only as directed, and he acted on what he believed to be true about the nature of God. It is his absolute trust in God and his willingness to act upon that trust which commends him as the Father of those who have faith.