I’m always seeing that he was born in Babylon and we are studying this in my Western Civilizations class. I haven’t seen definite proof he was or wasn’t and was wondering if anyone had some links or websites that weren’t biased to check out regarding the issue.
No, Abraham wasn’t a Jew- but he was the father of the Jews.
Strictly speaking, a Jew is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Since Abraham wasn’t his own ancestor, he wasn’t, technically, a Jew. But the covenant that the Jewish people believe they have with God was first made with Abraham.
Abraham was the first human to make a special covenant with the One God. That’s why Christians and Moslems revere Abraham as much as his Jewish descendants do.
Not until God asked him to cut off his hoo-hah.
(A thousand pardons to all our circumsized Dopers.)
The word Jew means someone of the tribe of Judah. Judah being one of the 12 sons of Jacob (a.k.a. Israel), the names Jew and Israelite can’t go any further back in time than the origin of the 12 tribes. So the proper ethnic description for Abrahim is “Hebrew.”
*People of the Book, why do you argue about Abraham when the Torah and Gospel were not sent down until after him? Do you not use your reason?
Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a Seeker after Truth, a Muslim; he was no associator of others with God.
The closest people to Abraham are those who follow him, as well as the Prophet and those who believe. God is the believers’ Patron.*
—Qur’an 3:65, 67-68
The best description of Abraham was that ethnically, he was “Hebrew”, and religiously, he worshipped and obeyed the diety still worshipped by Jews. Howeverm since he lived prior to the revealation at Sinai, not all the laws currently associated with Judaism were in force for followers of this diety at the time.
I read an interesting article recently that pointed out similarities in the stories of Abraham and the Hindu god Brahma, which suggested that the stories were conflated and Abraham is a version of the Hindu god.
Anybody else heard this?
Fool that I am! A link here is. www.viewzone.com/abraham.html
I looked at the web site photopat listed. I found one line strongly suspect:
But Isaac’s name in Hebrew is Yitzchak (that’s a hard ch as in chutzpha), yud - tzaddik - chet - kaf sofit. “Ishaak” would be aleph (or ayin) - shin - aleph (or ayin) - kaf sofit. (Actually, I’m blanking on the Hebrew; the final letter might be qoph.) And “Yishakhu” might be yud - shin - chet (or khaf sofit). The two aren’t the same at all.
So I’m suspicious about the rest of the article.
Well… I for one had once heard that “Hebrew” derived from an Egyptian word like “Aipru” (IIRC), meaning something like “guest worker” or “migrant worker”. It’s a stretch (and I’m way less than 100% sure of this), but I think I read it in the commentary to the maps in the “Penguin Atlas of the Ancient World”. I would then think from the context that “Hebrew” refers to the Hebrew/Jewish people of the time of Moses and so forth, who was of course later than Abraham. I don’t know if any of this is right or even being remembered correctly.
So what would Abraham have referred to himself as? Chaldean?
This is probably accurate. The word “Ivri” (the actual Hebrew form of the word “Hebrew” means “from the other side (“Ever”) of the river”, a description that would have applied to Abraham, who came to Canaan from Chaldea.
No, the word “Hebrew” would have applied before they came to Egypt. It would have applied as soon as Abraham settled in Canaan. By the time his descendants settled in Egypt, they probably referred to themselves exclusively as “Israelites”, descendants of Abraham’s grandon Jacob/Israel. Although the Egyptians quite possibly continued to refer to them as “Hebrews.”
That was his place of origin, but all the Biblical stories indicate that he desired to separate himself from association with his origiins. So others might have referred to him as Chaldean, but most likely he would have referred to himself as Hebrew.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Well I’ve heard that the word jews stems from those who descended from the House of Judah as opposed to those descended from the House of Israel. Ive heard this, when the subject of British-Israelism comes up which requires a belief that the House of Israel was exiled at a different time than the House of Judah, never returned and “vanished”. Thus the “lost ten tribes”.
New testament writing however do not support this. For example the Apostle James addresses his epistle to the 12 tribes. The apostle Paul was addresses as a Jew, Israelite, and a Hebrew. Clearly no distinction was made in 1st century times, so none should be made now.