Abraham
First of the three
patriarchs
of the Jewish people, father of
Isaac
and grandfather of
Jacob
. The story of Abraham is told in
the book of Genesis
(11: 27–25: 18). Critical scholarship sees in this account a welding-together of different traditions, and the migrations of Abraham as a later attempt at mirroring the journeys of the children of Israel towards the land of Israel in order to provide a theological scheme in which later events are anticipated through the divine promise to Abraham and his seed. The suggestion made by nineteenth-century scholars that Abraham is not an historical figure at all has been abandoned by the majority of contemporary scholars who detect ...