Book One: CHAPTER I-- FROM ABRAHAM TO EGYPT

CHAPTER I

 

From Abraham to Egypt

 

c. 2000 B.C.E.                The story of Israel, at least as far as its nationhood is concerned, begins with the figure of Abraham. If Abraham did exist, it is generally accepted that he lived somewhere near 2000 B.C.E. or soon after. This is based not so much on the historicity of the man, but by beginning with elements of the story of which there are historical certainty and their dates (such as the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel around 722 B.C.E.) and working backwards through the story. Abraham was a native of Ur, which was a prominent city in the Mesopotamian region of Sumer. 

 

                        Sumer is the region where civilization began around 3200 B.C.E., as well as being the location where the Bible places the Garden of Eden. The region was the seat of civilization in Mesopotamia for about 1200 years. The culture of Sumer invented the wheel, the lunar calendar, as well as an ingenious method of irrigating crops in the dry Mesopotamian desert by carving canals from the two main rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Sumerians invented writing, known as cuneiform (“wedge shaped,”from the Latin cuneus). They also constructed ziggurats, large, pyramid-like temples, which provided artificial mountains upon which their gods could reside in a predominately flat landscape.

 

                        For nearly nine centuries, there was no unified government in Sumer. Instead the region was dotted with politically independent city-states. There was often a great deal of competition and antagonism among the various city-states, which resulted in the occasional battles or all-out wars. Yet, regardless of the level of animosity one city-state may have felt toward another, and regardless of the ferocity of the battle, a city-state would stop short of conquering its rival. This was largely due to the neurotic nature of Sumerian religion. Although all of Sumer more or less accepted the same pantheon of gods, each city-state had its own patron god or goddess. Mesopotamian gods were unpredictable and often capricious. They were very rarely the source of comfort and condolence, but were often the cause of suffering and misfortune. Since each city-state had its own protecting god or goddess, to conquer another city would be to humiliate the divine defender of that city, and thus invite misfortune upon one’s own city. 

 

c. 2335 B.C.E.                This all changed, however, when Sargon, civilization’s first empire-builder, conquered the cities of his native region of Akkad, as well as the cities of Sumer, uniting the two regions into a single dominion. His empire was short-lived, lasting slightly longer than two centuries. By 2130 B.C.E. Sumer had regained its independence. This time the Sumerians maintained a larger political organization beyond the city-state. The capital of the region moved from city to city, depending on its importance. Abraham’s hometown of Ur served as the capital for most of this period, demonstrating its overall significance to the region.

 

c.2000 B.C.E.                During Abraham’s time, the dominance of the Sumerian Era would have been giving way to the ascendency of the Old Babylonian Era. Culturally, the Old Babylonian Era was similar to its preceding Sumerian Era, differing only in geography and language. The geography had shifted north from Sumer to Akkad because of the gradual sterilization of viable farmland resulting from the high sodium content of the water that they used for irrigation. Since civilization is linked to urban life, and urban life is linked to the agriculture that can sustain it, the political importance of city life migrated north. The Sumerian language during this time gave way to the dominance of Semitic languages, particularly that of the Amorites. 

 

                        Abraham and his family, following the geographical shift of the changing eras, migrated from Ur to Haran. It was during his stay in Haran that Abraham, then known simply as Abram, received the first of many promises from God. The original promise is that he would become a great nation, he would be blessed, and that everyone on earth would receive a blessing through him. The promise is restated many times, evolving into one of both property and progeny. The promise of property specified that the region of Canaan would one day belong to him and his descendants. The promise of progeny pronounced that Abraham would one day have more descendants than could ever be counted. 

 

                        After hearing the promise at the age of 75, Abraham made a career change from city-dweller to wandering nomad. For another hundred years he wandered throughout Canaan, acquiring many material possessions along the way. When he eventually died at the age of 175, the promise seemed poorly fulfilled. Out of all of the promised Canaan, Abraham owned only one burial plot; and instead of descendants that could not be counted, he had eight sons.

 

                        The issue of the burial plot presents a possible historical glitch. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham purchased the burial plot from the Hittites; yet, the Hittite invasion of Mesopotamia is dated around 1600 B.C.E., which is much later than the date associated with Abraham. Even allowing for the impossibly long lives of biblical Patriarchs, Abraham’s death at the age of 175 predates the Hittite invasion by more than two centuries. There are a variety of possibilities to account for this apparent anachronism. The two most obvious are that (1) the Hittites had a significant presence in Mesopotamia and Canaan long before the massive Hittite movement into the region; or (2) Abraham lived much later than is commonly thought by biblical scholars and historians. 

 

                        It is certainly reasonable that the Hittites were in Canaan long before 1595 B.C.E., when they destroyed Babylon on their way to Asia Minor. The Kassites also invaded the region around the same time as the Hittites. So if the story reflected a period after the Hittite invasion of Mesopotamia, then logically it should mention the Kassite invaders. The Bible, however, makes no mention of the Kassites, supporting the notion that the Hittites were in Palestine before the so-called Kassite and Hittite interlude. Nevertheless, the case for a later dating for Abraham is also valid. Around the same time that the Kassites and Hittites invaded Mesopotamia, Abraham’s grandson and great-grandchildren migrated to Egypt. This means that there were four generations from Abraham to the Egyptian sojourn, spanning about 400 years, making each generation a length of about 100 years. If it is accepted that the date of c.1600 B.C.E. reflects an accurate date for the Israelite migration to Egypt, and if the length of the generations of the Patriarchs are adjusted to a more realistic length, then Abraham would have lived somewhere around 1800 B.C.E. to 1750 B.C.E. at the earliest. 

 

                        Since there is no historical evidence of Israel migrating to Egypt, there is no historical reason to establish a concrete date for such an event. For that matter, there is no historical evidence that supports the existence of Abraham at all. So there is no sense in marrying oneself to any particular date for his existence. It is, after all, a matter of probability, not a matter of certainty.

 

                        After Abraham’s death, the promise that was originally made to him was passed on to his second son, Isaac. Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, was born by the slave-woman, Hagar. Isaac, however, was born by Abraham’s wife, Sarah. On the surface it may appear that even though Isaac was Abraham’s second son, he was his first legitimate son. This is an erroneous assertion. It was perfectly acceptable to father a child by means of a slave and consider that child to be legitimate. So it is not that Abraham was fooling around with a slave-women and produced an illegitimate son; it was that Abraham was using his property wisely, producing what he had yet to procure, an heir. The passing of the promise to Isaac rather than Ishmael has the point of declaring something about the nature of Abraham’s God. Primogeniture was the cultural norm. That is, it was customary to leave everything to the first born male, in this case, Ishmael. Nevertheless, God is not bound by social norms. God will choose who God will choose, whenever God wills to choose that person. Polite Semitic society may have deemed Ishmael the heir, but God considered Isaac to be the heir. The point of the story is the Jewish declaration that God is not tame, nor can God ever be domesticated. If the lion in the wild has its own set of standards and norms that do not apply to the cat in the household, then this is certainly true about the God of Israel. 

 

                        The biblical story does not appear to be very concerned with the figure of Isaac. His purpose in the plot is to function as a down-payment for the promise of descendants and to get the story to Jacob, his son. God clearly favored Jacob over his brother Esau, once more choosing the second born over the first. Esau was a “man’s man,” a rugged outdoor type; Jacob, however, was a bit of a “momma’s boy” and a scoundrel. He defrauded his brother of his birthright, purchasing it for a bowl of lentil soup, and he robbed his brother of his blessing, disguising himself as Esau while Esau was out hunting. Jacob’s conniving forced him to flee his home for fear of his safety, eventually settling with his uncle Laban, who lived in Haran.

 

                        It is while he was in Haran that Jacob finally found himself on the receiving end of dishonest dealings. He fell in love with his cousin Rachel and made a contract with Laban to work for him for seven years for the right to marry her, only to be duped into marrying Rachel’s older, and less-attractive sister, Leah. Jacob had to agree to work another seven years to marry Rachel. Jacob proved to be rather fertile, producing twelve sons through four women. These twelve sons became identified with the twelve tribes of Israel.

 

                        In spite of Jacob’s fourteen years of indentured servitude, he grew wealthy while living in Haran. Jacob decided it was time to move back to Canaan and reconcile with his bother. Along the way Jacob had an encounter with a strange figure who wrestled him throughout the night. At dawn, when the wrestling match was over, Jacob received a new name, Israel. The ancestor of the Israelites was, therefore, known by two names, which may suggest that two patriarchs may lie behind the figure of Jacob/Israel.  The merging of the two figures into a single person may reflect the reality of merging tribal identities. Certain tribes identified themselves with the figure of Jacob, while other tribes identified themselves with the figure of Israel.

 

                        While Jacob was still alive, the promise appeared to have passed to Joseph, Jacob’s tenth son, but the first son born by his wife Rachel. It is through the actions of Joseph that allowed both the promised land and progeny to be obtained by the remaining tribes descended from the other brothers. 

 

                        Joseph was a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams. To the ancients, this meant that Joseph actively received revelations and the ability to interpret those revelations. The ancients did not perceive dreams as the active meanderings of the sub-conscious mind. Dreams came from outside the self. They were how gods communicated with mortals. Therefore, the dreamer, Joseph, was blessed with the ability to hear the very voice of God and understand what that voice was saying. This, indeed, was a powerful skill, and it, along with the fact that he was Jacob’s favorite, was the cause of contention amongst him and his brothers. His brothers sold him into slavery and faked his death so that no one would ever go looking for him. Joseph was purchased by the captain of the guard of the pharaoh in Egypt. He soon was put in charge of the official’s household until he caught the eye of his master’s wife and found himself in prison. From prison, Joseph advanced to the presence of the pharaoh, interpreting his dream, and in effect, saving Egypt from famine, and becoming the most powerful person in Egypt, second only to the pharaoh.

 

c. 1600 B.C.E.                Joseph was reunited with his family when Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain during the famine from which Joseph had saved Egypt. Joseph forgave his brothers and brought his entire family to live in Egypt, where they were given land in the region of Goshen. Jacob died in Egypt at the age of 147. Joseph died at the age of 110. Jacob’s other sons eventually died as well, but only after demonstrating that they too shared their father’s proclivity for procreation. The Bible states that the number of Israelites, that is Jacob and his descendants, who migrated down to Egypt were seventy individuals. From this original seed of seventy, the literal children of Israel prospered and reproduced until the land was filled with them, becoming the figurative “Children of Israel.”