Reading the Pentateuch Politically; from Abraham to Moses

By Dr. Martin Sicker

This book is a continuation of an earlier work, Reading Genesis Politically, the primary focus of which is the first ten chapters of the much larger book of Genesis. The present study begins with chapter eleven of Genesis which introduces the story of the emergence of Abraham, the iconic founder of the Jewish nation and Judaic civilization. As indicated by the title of the present study its primary concern is with the prehistory of ancient Israel. The sole source of information about Israel’s national origins is imbedded in the Pentateuch, the five books of the Torah, in which the birth of Israel is portrayed as part of a divine plan for the betterment of mankind. As a result, its prehistory beginning with Abraham and concluding with Moses is necessarily theopolitical in nature, reflecting the critical divine role in its formation.
There are of course virtually innumerable studies of the Pentateuchal narratives that address the roles of the Patriarchs in preserving the religious heritage of Abraham until its culmination in the work of Moses. However, there are very few studies that direct attention to the necessarily socio-political aspects of the narratives that establish the basis for the ultimate emergence of a viable but querulous nation out of what the biblical text repeatedly terms “a stiff-necked people,” primarily related by common ethnicity as descendants of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669827689

Dr. Martin Sicker

Dr. Martin Sicker is a writer and lecturer on the Middle Eastern geopolitical and cultural history, with a special focus on Jewish history and religion. He is the author of 62 previous books on these subjects as well as on geopolitics, political theory, and political economy.

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Martin Sicker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

2 Volume 1916 Holy Bible 24 Books of the Old Testament Hebrew & English

Harkavy. Translated and Revised by Alexander Harkavy. Printed in 1916 by Hebrew Publishing Company of New York, New York

Rev. date: 05/26/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

841079

Contents

211184.png

Preface

1. Theopolitical and Geopolitical Backgrounds

2. The Era of Abraham and Isaac

3. The Era of Jacob and His Sons

4. The Era of Joseph in Egypt

5. The Era of Moses Begins

6. The Post-Exodus Period

7. Organizing for Success

8. Invasion Plans Interrupted

9. The End of theEra of Moses

References

Notes

Preface

211184.png

The following study is intended to be a continuation of an earlier work, Reading Genesis Politically, the primary focus of which is the first ten chapters of the much larger book of Genesis. The present study begins with chapter eleven of Genesis which introduces the story of the emergence of Abraham, the iconic founder of the Jewish nation and Judaic civilization. As indicated by the title of the present study, Reading the Pentateuch Politically; From Abraham to Moses, its primary concern is with the early history, or perhaps better the prehistory, of ancient Israel. Because the sole source of information about Israel’s national origins is the Pentateuch, the five books of the Torah, in which the birth of Israel is portrayed as part of a divine plan for the betterment of mankind, its early history beginning with Abraham and concluding with Moses is necessarily theopolitical in nature, reflecting the critical divine role in its formation. Although there are virtually innumerable studies of the Pentateuchal narratives that address the roles of the Patriarchs in preserving the conceptual heritage of Abraham until its culmination in the work of Moses, few direct attention to the necessarily political aspects of the narratives that establish the basis for the actual emergence of a tangible nation out of loosely connected groups of common ethnicity.

1

211172.png

Theopolitical and Geopolitical Backgrounds

Ancient Theopolitics

In the remote ancient world, before the concept of ‘nature’ entered human thought, natural events such as sunrise and sunset, winter and summer, rain and drought, were conceived as the actions of forces that were beyond human control, forces that were characterized as ‘gods.’ It was commonly believed that the actions of these deities that impinged on the wellbeing of mankind in diverse areas of human habitation could be ameliorated by placating these gods through various forms of worship and self-sacrifice. In effect, the ancient world of mankind was steeped in a variety of religious beliefs and practices, later characterized as polytheism, which attached importance to a hierarchy of gods that varied according to the primary concerns of people living in diverse environmental areas of settlement.

The primary concern of this study is the emergence of a belief system in antiquity that rejected polytheism and promulgated the unique concept of monotheism, and the fundamental restructuring of civilization that it implied. As recorded in the ancient collection of teachings known variously as the Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, or the Torah, which is first and foremost a library of essentially political teachings and documents. The principal focus of this cohesive collection is with establishing an ideological framework within which a unique society and civilization might emerge and flourish. It may be useful to recall at this point that the notion of civilization is itself a political idea. A civilization is the morally authoritative institutional infrastructure that facilitates the flowering of society and culture, by establishing and enforcing patterns of civil relationships, in effect, by civilizing human behavior.

This is not to suggest that the Torah does not contain a great deal of guidance concerning human behavior outside the political sphere. As the sages of the Talmud put it, there are seventy faces to the Torah, covering every aspect of man’s relationship to God, to man, as well as to himself. Nonetheless, it seems clear that the Torah’s overriding concern is with the shaping of a unique civilization, within which its guidance will serve to bring that civilization to its highest potential for achieving the divine mission assigned to it by the one and only God.

Because of its essentially political orientation, it should come as no surprise that there is very little doctrinal theology to be found in the Pentateuch. The primary subject of the work is man rather than God. It presupposes the existence of God, who is described as the creator of the universe, but tells us virtually nothing about the divine. Although theologians have been reading their beliefs and predilections into the biblical texts for some two millennia, sometimes rather ingeniously, the simple fact is that there is little in the work that reasonably lends itself to such theological interpretations. This is not to suggest that the biblical narrative cannot be read from a variety of perspectives, as has traditionally been the case in the long history of biblical interpretation. Ambiguities in the written text certainly do encourage speculative readings of its intent, ranging from the rational to the mystical and esoteric. Nonetheless, the primary focus of the Torah remains on the desiderata for the ideal civilization and society it envisages.

The Torah is principally concerned with man in his relation to God, his fellow man and society in a closely interrelated manner, drawing no clear distinction between the religious and the secular, a differentiation that would have been alien to the biblical world view. Its prescriptions for the ordering of human society and man’s place in it are therefore set forth as authoritative political theology which, upon dispassionate consideration, will be seen as reflecting the political philosophy of its author(s).

It would of course be of inestimable value to know the identity of the author or authors of the early biblical writings. This would enable us to better understand why the narrative is presented in its current form, and might provide the answers to many questions about the apparent anomalies to be found in the texts. But, access to this knowledge has thus far proven to be beyond the competence of modern biblical scholarship and will most likely continue to remain so for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, given the approach taken in this work, I suggest that it will make little if any significant difference what theory one maintains regarding the question of biblical authorship.

If one accepts the traditional idea that Moses authored the Torah in accordance with the direct divine revelation received by him, as seems to be the explicit assertion of the biblical text, the work may be understood as truly representing a political philosophy in the purest possible sense. After all, if we conceive of God as omnicompetent, then the divinely ordained prescriptions revealed to us through Moses must represent ultimate and perfect reason. Presumably, the deity could have chosen another scheme of political teaching. The fact that none other is revealed suggests that this is the one that God in His infinite wisdom deemed most appropriate for humankind, at least in its general fundamental principles, and as particularly applicable to the exemplary civilization and society intended to be created by the children of Israel.

Alternatively, one may prefer to believe that the prescriptions of the Pentateuch are the personal work of Moses, conceived by him in accordance with his own insights, or perhaps formulated under divine inspiration. In this case, the Torah may be understood as setting forth a Mosaic political philosophy, thinly veiled as political theology. Similarly, if one prefers to accept a theory of non-Mosaic authorship, or authorship by a variety of hands over an extended period of time, in accordance with the documentary hypotheses of modern higher biblical criticism, the basic premise that we have suggested underlies the work remains unaffected. The Torah as we have it, and as it has been known for some two and a half millennia, still represents the political philosophy of its authors or editors couched in terms of a plausible political theology. To skirt the perennial issue of authorship, in the study that follows, because the biblical text is presented in the form of a narrative, I will refer to its exponent as the narrator.

It seems self-evident from even a cursory reading of the Torah that at least one of its principal purposes is to set forth the guiding principles under which Israelite civilization was to take shape. It is noteworthy in this regard that the story of Israel, beginning with the saga of the patriarch Abraham, only starts to unfold in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Genesis. The preceding eleven chapters of the biblical work set forth in essence a political philosophy intended to serve all mankind, and has been explored in depth in an earlier work, Reading Genesis Politically.

Notwithstanding the emphatic theopolitical content of the Torah, the realization of its civilization building aims must take place within the context of the secular geopolitics of the existing ancient world, to which we now turn.

Ancient Geopolitics

The story of ancient Israel begins with its patriarch Abraham, a story that unfolds in the context of developments in the region frequently referred to as the Near East. The term, whose definition has changed in the course of its history, generally refers to the lands bounded by the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Red Seas, and the Persian Gulf, with a connecting land bridge, Cisjordan, between Asia and Africa. The Near East has three major ecological areas, termed fertile, semi-arid, and arid . . . The term ‘fertile’ is applied to good agricultural lands having a mean annual rainfall of over 12 inches. Semi-arid are the regions having a mean annual rainfall between 12 and 6 inches. Where there is less than 6 inches of rainfall—the arid regions—modern agriculture cannot be practiced and the main economic activities must be herding or hunting.¹

Generally speaking, these lands of the Near East tend to fall in the semi-arid and arid categories, a factor of major importance in the geopolitics of the ancient world, with one major exception. Running through them is a crescent-shaped belt of rich well-watered land from the alluvial flatlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which the Greeks later named Mesopotamia (‘the land between the rivers’), which lessens dependence on rainfall as the primary source of water for agricultural purposes. Both rivers rise in the mountains of Armenia, separated at one point by a distance of 450 miles, and both flow southeastward by different routes gradually approaching each other until they joined about 95 miles from the Persian Gulf into which the merged rivers, known as the Shatt al-Arab, emptied.

Starting from the northern shores of the Persian Gulf the crescent-shaped belt of fertile land, aptly named the Fertile Crescent, follows the Tigris and Euphrates valleys as far as northern Syria, then turns westward to Cilicia and then southward till it reaches the Mediterranean coat, from which it continues southward along the coast of Cisjordan to the Egyptian Nile Delta. While the shorter Tigris descends more rapidly than the Euphrates, it was the latter river that provided a main avenue of travel to the west by Babylonians, Assyrians, Armenians, and Mitanni in their respective periods. All of these countries wished to trade with prosperous Egypt to the south.²

It was in this region that the first great civilizations known to the western world appeared, in which man first made the transition from hunting, fishing, and cave dwelling to systematic farming within an organized community. From this focus, the new mode of civilization extended to lower Mesopotamia, and from there to the Syro-Palestinian coast, to Egypt, to the Anatolian plateau, to the Indus Valley in Pakistan, to Crete, and to Greece.³

The Fertile Crescent, over a period of millennia, served as a magnet to peoples from less attractive regions, and, as such became the target of repeated attempts to gain control of parts of it, generating patterns of immigration and emigration from or to less favored regions on its periphery. In numerous instances, such population movements resulted in attempts to cross the land bridge region and seek to seize parts of Egypt, where agriculture thrived because it was not dependent on rainy seasons, but rather on the routine flooding of the Nile. As a result, the relatively small land bridge region of Cisjordan, little more than 150 miles north to south along the Mediterranean coast, and about 60 miles east to west across its center, became home to many remnants of failed attempts by people of diverse origins to gain a permanent foothold in Egypt. In Cisjordan, these displaced migrants formed discrete villages which over time became cities, and in numerous instances city-states, dominating the villages and towns on their periphery.

It is noteworthy that at the beginning of the so-called Urban Age in the late fourth millennium BCE, because of its geographic position that made it the sole land connection between Asia and Africa, Cisjordan served as host to increasing trade and military activities. The territory was also valued because it was the source of many desired products and materials. Its olives and wines were renowned far and wide, its timber was praised, salt and bitumen from the Dead Sea were in great demand. Sinai and the Negev produced copper and turquoise; Galilee and Lebanon, balsam and perfumes.⁴

During the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 BCE) an ethnic Semitic-speaking people, subsequently known as Canaanites, took a dominant position in southern Syria and especially in Cisjordan, which became known as Canaan. The name Canaan, which first appears in a 15th century cuneiform document found at Nuzi, serves in the Bible, in a narrower sense, as a designation for the area of Cis-Jordan, and in a broader sense, also for Western Syria. . . . Because of its unique location, it experienced the impact of cultural influences that flowed through it from all points of the circle encompassing Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and the Greek islands on the one hand, and Egypt, Cush and Arabia on the other. Moreover, as a mere strip of land between sea and desert, connecting Eurasia and Africa, it served as the main channel for the most important continental arteries of communication—the great routes of commerce and conquest alike.⁵

According to the biblical narrative, the original territory of the Canaanites extended from Zidon [Sidon in the north], as thou goest toward Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, unto Lasha (Gen. 10:19). That is, biblical Canaan generally referred to the coastal area of Cisjordan extending inland south of the central hill country to the Jordan Valley. However, in anticipation of the impending conquest of the Promised Land, the territory of Canaan was subsequently significantly expanded.

In another biblical passage (Num. 34:1-12), the borders of the land of Canaan stretch from the territory just north of Byblos [an ancient port city north of Beirut] down to the Wadi el-Arish in the south. In the east the border was the river Jordan south of the Sea of Galilee, but northern Transjordan (Golan, Bashan, Hauran) and the Damascus territory, that is, the former Egyptian province of Upe, were included. . . .The name Canaan is thus not used in the biblical texts for Transjordan south of the river Yarmuk, that is, most of the modern state of Jordan. From the above it is clear that Canaan was a name for the more densely populated areas of the land, where the cultural and urban centers were located. The central hill country did not really count, because it was very sparsely settled.⁶

It is noteworthy that according to the biblical narrative, Canaan, the son of Ham, and grandson of Noah, was the progenitor of the ancient Amorites, Arkites, Arvadites, Canaanites, Girgashites, Hamathites, Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, Sinites, and Zemarites. It is further noted that the Canaanites spread throughout the region, but concentrated primarily in Cisjordan (Gen. 10:15-19). More significantly, it also should be noted that the peoples subsumed under the term Canaanites were not the indigenous populations of the land and therefore had no historically unassailable claim to it when subsequently challenged by the descendants of Abraham. Over time, the term Canaanites, especially in biblical literature, was extended to refer to the number of unrelated peoples who for a variety of reasons had become established residents in the territory of Cisjordan. It is noteworthy that one of the major groups to be found in Cisjordan was Semitic-speaking Amorites who migrated from the east, the term often used in the Bible as a substitute for Canaanites.

About 1800 BCE, much of Cisjordan and southern Syria were dominated by numerous relatively small and ethnically diverse city-states. Because the lowlands had the best soil and supply of water, the cities of Cisjordan were located primarily along the Mediterranean coastal plain, (where a major non-Semitic speaking people, the Philistines, later settled. The Greeks gave their area of settlement the name of Philistia, which was subsequently renamed ‘Palestine’ by the Romans), which included the Jezreel and Jordan valleys, to the north and east of central Cisjordan. By contrast, the hilly region between the Jordan Valley and the coastal plain was ill-suited for agriculture and was only sporadically settled. However, the hill country was suitable enough for semi-nomads to graze their sheep and goats. And so it was to this hill country, and to the even emptier and drier Negev further south, that Abraham and his family later relocated.

While these developments were taking place in the land bridge region, farther south in Egypt, beginning with the onset of the chaotic 13th and 14th dynasties in about 1756 BCE, there was a significant influx of semi-nomadic Amorites into the Nile Delta region to escape the drought and famine which periodically forced them out of Cisjordan. Their numbers increased to the extent that, it has plausibly been suggested, It is highly probable that many of the 70 pharaohs of the 13th dynasty, in particular at the end of the dynasty’s rule [ca. 1630], were no longer Egyptians themselves, but originated from the Amorite tribal leaders and were ruling under Egyptian names. However, even those who originated from distinguished Egyptian families increasingly depended on help from the Western Semites. Thus, beginning by backing candidates for the Egyptian throne, the newcomers from Canaan gradually became the decisive military in Egypt . . . [which] soon led the rulers of the Amorite tribes deciding to no longer resort to camouflage, but to rule Egypt themselves [as the 15th dynasty].⁷

It is noteworthy that the Amorite rulers were given the name of ‘Hyksos’ [foreign rulers] by Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian, writing in Greek, in the 3rd century BCE. Since the citations from Manetho were written in Greek, the term ‘Hyksos’ is a Greek variant of the Egyptian words ‘hekau khasut’—meaning ‘foreign rulers’ or, to be more precise, foreign Asiatic rulers’.⁸

Sometime during the eighteenth century BCE the migration of Indo-European tribes from Anatolia along with Indo-Aryans from Iran into the Fertile Crescent placed heavy pressures on the Semitic peoples who had settled in northern Mesopotamia. These population pressures precipitated a Semitic migratory movement from northern Mesopotamia westward along the Fertile Crescent into the mountains and coastal regions of Syria and Cisjordan. Semitic, and most notably Amorite, power soon became supreme in southwestern Asia from the Zagros Mountains to the frontiers of Egypt. However, the Amorites did not attempt to actually occupy the large amount of territory that came under their control. Given their numbers, it would not have been a practical option for them. Instead, and especially in Cisjordan, they were content to dominate the major trade routes passing through it from a number of strategically located fortresses. Thus, from their strongholds at Tell al-Ajul (the predecessor to Gaza) and Joppa (Jaffa), they were able to control much of the Mediterranean littoral, which provided the principal land route between Africa and Asia.

Given their record of success, it was only a matter of time before the Amorites and the mélange of peoples under their domination and influence began to consider Egypt a tempting target for further expansion. Marching southward along the Asian-African land bridge of Cisjordan, the Amorites, presumably led by a warrior aristocracy known to the Egyptians as the Hyksos, soon invaded the country around the beginning of the seventeenth century BCE. The Hyksos took control of and then fortified the ancient eastern delta town of Avaris, situated on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile. This became the principal power base from which they gradually extended their control over all of northern or Lower Egypt, which they ruled for more than a century until about 1550 BCE. The biblical narrative appears to assume that it was sometime during this period that Joseph, the great grandson of Abraham arrived in Egypt.⁹

The biblical narrative seems to suggest that the Hebrews and the Hyksos may have been on terms of considerable intimacy; so that the entry of the Hebrews into Egypt would have been facilitated by the presence of Hyksos in positions of power, and the Bondage accounted for by the enslavement of foreign elements after the fall of the Hyksos invaders. If this hypothesis has substance, it provides evidence that the Biblical version of the Hebrew sojourn in Egypt (Genesis 39-50; Exodus 1 ff.) derives from the same period as the events which it describes. For the Egyptians themselves, humiliated by their conquest at the hands of the Hyksos, avoided and suppressed any reference to the events of the period, and it would have been well-nigh impossible to learn the historical details very much later.¹⁰

Although never mentioning the Hyksos by name, there is a clear allusion in the biblical text to the idea that they were already in control of Egypt during this period, as it records: And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him out of the hand of the Ishmaelites that had brought him down hither (Gen. 39:1). The biblical narrator emphasizes that Potiphar, who held a high official position, was an Egyptian. If the pharaoh at the time had been Egyptian, there would have been no point in emphasizing that one of his senior officers was also one. But, if the regime had already been taken over by the Hyksos, the narrator would be suggesting that Potiphar held a trusted position in the pharaoh’s service notwithstanding that, or specifically because as noted below, he was an Egyptian.

It has been suggested that if we accept the assumption that the period of the wandering of the descendants of Abraham in Cisjordan took place in the 18th-16th centuries BCE, a major part of its duration coincides with the period of the Hyksos invasion and domination of Egypt. It has been suggested that the first dynasty of Hyksos rulers . . . retained its foreign character and probably welcomed additional immigrants, who would naturally tend to strengthen their hold on Egypt. Consequently, no restrictions were placed on the entry and exit of semi-nomadic groups.¹¹

2

211172.png

The Era of Abraham and Isaac

The saga of Abraham (originally named Abram) may be seen as essentially describing his repudiation of his family’s polytheistic world and the future to which it would have committed him, and his striving to create a new reality, and so, most appropriately, it begins with a migration, an act of disassociation: And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there (Gen. 11:13).

As patriarch of an extended family, Terah took Abraham and his wife Sarah, and his orphaned grandson Lot, along with him on the road to Cisjordan. The migration, viewed in the context of the biblical narrative, presumably took place during the period of the migratory waves set in motion by the great dispersion that followed in the wake of the attempted apotheosis of the state by Nimrod in southern Mesopotamia,¹² and may have coincided, historically, with the westward expansion of the Amorites toward Egypt. Some have speculated that Terah may have left Ur as a result of its conquest by Hammurabi of Babylonia, its economic life having been severely damaged by the military forays that seriously disrupted trade along the caravan routes to the city. In either case, it is clear that Terah was emigrating from Ur for evidently compelling albeit unstated reasons.

Why would Terah wish to relocate to Canaan? Probably because it was still a sparsely settled frontier region in the land bridge connecting Africa and Asia, through which at least one major international trade route between Egypt and Mesopotamia passed, and as such offered significant commercial opportunities for those prepared to undertake a certain amount of risk. The journey from southern Mesopotamia, assuming that the point of departure was from the city of Ur, located there, to Cisjordan was surely long, circuitous, and arduous. However, somewhere along the line Terah evidently decided to make a detour that led his entourage northward until he reached Haran, in present-day southeastern Turkey, an important ancient crossroads city for the caravan trade between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. Haran, about 550 miles from Ur, lay at the strategically important intersection of the main east-west route from Nineveh to Carchemish with that of the north-south route to Damascus.

It is noteworthy that the route followed by Terah generally reflects the topographical disposition of the region, Cisjordan being due west from southern Mesopotamia. However, before domestication of the camel and its extensive use for commercial purposes, the caravan route between the two areas necessarily followed a course skirting the curvature of the Arabian Desert that separated them, along the Fertile Crescent that stretches in a northerly arc from the Persian Gulf to Egypt. However, the most efficient route to Cisjordan from southern Mesopotamia would have been to proceed northward along the Euphrates to Mari, and then west to Aleppo, some distance south of Haran, at which point the road would turn south to Damascus and then Hazor, the ancient gateway to Cisjordan. For reasons that are not provided in the biblical account, Terah elected to proceed farther north to Haran, possibly because of its economic importance, but also perhaps because of its religious significance. Most scholars agree that Ur was a holy city and the center of worship of the moon, with Haran serving as the second most important center of that worship in northern Mesopotamia, the moon god being the god of the nomads and the travelers, the god of the caravans . . . the god whom Abraham renounces when he entrusts himself to the guidance of the Lord.¹³

Alternatively, some scholars argue that this geographical anomaly is easily resolved if one accepts that Ur of the Chaldees was not located in southern Mesopotamia as commonly assumed, but northeast of Haran in northern Mesopotamia, perhaps in southern Armenia. According to this view, the term Kasdim, rendered in the biblical verse as Chaldees, does not refer to the Chaldeans of southern Mesopotamia, but to a warlike people of the north that bore that name. In this regard an ancient Greek historian identifies the Chaldeans, a free people, and warlike, as part of the forces blocking the Greek expeditionary force from entering Armenia.¹⁴

It should be noted in this regard that the biblical Book of Joshua later states: Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the River . . . and I took your father Abraham from beyond the River (Josh. 24:2-3), the river in this passage commonly understood to refer to the Euphrates. However, ancient Ur in southern Mesopotamia has been located a number of miles south of the Euphrates, on its west bank, that is, on the same side of the river as Cisjordan, therefore making it improbable as Abraham’s point of origin if the statement in the Book of Joshua is correct, a description that better suits Haran, which is east of the Euphrates.¹⁵ If one assumes a northern location for Ur, then it becomes reasonable that the road to Cisjordan would pass through the caravan stop at Haran.

Ur of the Chaldeans is most likely to be identified with present day Urfa, also in northern Mesopotamia. The general area of northern Mesopotamia was a meeting ground of various peoples, most importantly the Amorites, the Arameans, and the Hurrians. . . . Abraham’s family in Mesopotamia is Aramean (note Deuteronomy 26:5); his kinsmen who stayed on in Mesopotamia are called Arameans (Genesis 25:20; 28:5; 31:20, 24) and they speak Aramaic (Genesis 31:47). The customs reflected in the Patriarchal stories, meanwhile, are of a piece with the practices of the Hurrians as known from Nuzi. Thus, while it would be unwise to label the Patriarchs as specifically Amorite or Aramean or Hurrian, it is clear that the cultural world of Abraham before he migrated to Canaan included elements of all three peoples in northern Mesopotamia.¹⁶

In any case, once there, Terah evidently decided to abandon his earlier plans to continue on to Cisjordan, possibly out of concern for the growing instability of the territory as competing waves of diverse peoples began flowing into the area seeking to establish footholds there. It may also have been because Terah began to have second thoughts about leaving the lands in which the Mesopotamian cultures with which he was familiar were to be found. Cisjordan was a strange land with a proliferation of alien cultures, the residue of the many and diverse armies that passed through the land bridge region in the course of the innumerable wars between Egypt and the powers that dominated Mesopotamia as well as those whose center was in Anatolia to the north. Moreover, Egypt had long sought to keep the unstable territory within its sphere of influence, and this too may have been a consideration that troubled Terah. In any case, Terah would remain in Haran for the rest of his life, as did Abraham’s mother, according to one legendary source.¹⁷

We do not have any indication of how old Abraham was at the time of his family’s departure from Ur or how long he remained in Haran. It is noteworthy that Augustine of Hippo, to reconcile an obvious contradiction between the New Testament Book of Acts and the chronicles of Eusebius, suggested that the length of Abraham’s stay in Haran was less than one year.¹⁸ In any case, the break with the society of his birth and upbringing undoubtedly gave Abraham occasion to reflect deeply on all that he had experienced and witnessed during his life. The shattering of social ties provided an opportunity to begin anew, to cast off the mold of the past. His time in Haran with his father thus served as a period of transition for Abraham. Having severed his linkages to the society in which he was reared, he became equally prepared to break his newly developing connections to his present circumstances and to commit all his moral strength and capacity for faith to an undreamed of future. As indicated in the biblical account, the moment for his divine selection, to become the founder and patriarch of a distinctive nation, one intended to be the embodiment of the divine aspiration for mankind, was at hand.

The social dislocations that attended the great population movements surely had significant consequences for the religious beliefs and moral state of the various peoples affected. The accompanying confusion and despair undoubtedly led to the growth of superstition and the proliferation of animist beliefs and practices, as well as attempts to appease and placate a host of deities who were identified with the forces of nature. There is no evident reason to believe that the descendants of Eber, of the Noahide line of Shem, remained immune to the corrupting influences of the pervasively idolatrous social environment. Presumably, this also included the family of Terah, with the singular exception of Abraham who, we may infer, had long demonstrated opposition to the essential irrationality of the pagan beliefs and idolatrous practices common to his society. Indeed, what seems to be implicit in the Genesis narrative is stated explicitly by the biblical author of the Book of Joshua: And Joshua said unto all the people; Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Your fathers dwelt of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods (Josh. 24:2). The message is clear. They, that is, Terah and Nahor, were polytheists, but not Abraham.

Abraham’s presumed iconoclasm, self-generated and possibly unique within his milieu, surely would have caused him to be viewed as a rebel and blasphemer against the dominant religious beliefs, something that was clearly unacceptable to the entrenched religious establishment. Indeed, it may even be conjectured that it was Abraham’s rebelliousness that instigated the desire if not the need for Terah to relocate his household to a distant and possibly more tolerant cultural and religious setting. The apocryphal book of Judith records, in this regard: These people are descended from the Chaldeans. At one time they settled in Mesopotamia because they did not want to worship the gods of their ancestors who were in Chaldea. They had abandoned the ways of their ancestors and worshipped the God of Heaven, the god they had come to know. When the Chaldeans drove them out from the presence of their gods, they fled to Mesopotamia and settled there for a long while.¹⁹

We may therefore assume that the characteristics which most differentiated Abraham from others in his society also intimated the moral fiber and strength of will that he possessed, attributes that would be essential for the divinely appointed mission that awaited him, a mission for which, as described in the biblical narrative, he was being divinely recruited. Now the Lord said unto Abram: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless you, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing (Gen. 12:1-2). It has been noted that in the Hebrew phrase goy gadol (a great nation), the term goy "has the meaning of ‘nation’ in the political sense of the word. For nation in the ethnic sense the Hebrew Bible prefers am."²⁰

Abraham is not simply to become the founder of yet another mystery religion, but rather the progenitor of a new civilization built on the rational ordering of a moral and just society designed to fulfil the intent of God in granting to man the divine-like capacity for creativity. If Abraham is to persevere where his ancestors failed, failures described clearly by the biblical narrator in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, his induction into his ultimate civilization-building role must proceed along different lines. Abraham is to undertake his vocation in the full light of critical reason. Subsequently, step-by-step, he will come to recognize and accept that which in its essence transcends reason. And only then will he be ready to carry out the task of initiating the moral redemption of mankind. Abraham thus begins his odyssey with an unaided and purely intellectual conception of God, arrived at in reaction to the intrinsic irrationality of the idolatry and polytheistic beliefs that were pervasive in the world in which he lived.

Abraham must have found himself in an increasingly untenable social situation in Haran. A known iconoclast, he of necessity stood in opposition to the mainstream of his society, including the members of his very own family. A man of great intellect and exceptional will power, he could hardly have regarded with equanimity the moral lassitude and degradation that pervaded his social environment. He would, of course, actively oppose the superstition and non-rationally grounded religious beliefs that he encountered at every turn. Surprisingly, he evidently was able to do this and get away with it, at least to some extent, notwithstanding the legends regarding his youthful incarcerations in Ur for his outspoken iconoclasm. Presumably, as subsequent events related in the narrative will corroborate, he must have possessed sufficient wealth and status to be able to pursue his calling without serious reprisals from the vested interests associated with the existing religious establishments in Haran.

Nonetheless, and notwithstanding his presumed ability to expound his ideas publicly with relative impunity, as well as to serve as a rallying point for others of similar inclinations who became his disciples, as a practical matter Abraham hardly represented a significant threat to the cultural underpinnings of the society in which he lived. His sophisticated arguments, reflecting the intellectuality of his approach, could be but of little interest to the vast majority of the people he might encounter. He offered no mysterious ritual with which to entice the superstitious by appealing to their deepest fears. He provided no emotional outlet for those who went about in constant awe of the gods and their hidden powers, which could be unleashed at any moment if not properly propitiated. He could not even describe in readily comprehensible terms that which he urged people to recognize as the one and only true God.

As a result, barring some truly radical steps on his part, all he could really look forward to was to live the rest of his life content with the knowledge that he and a few followers had a truer understanding of the universe than his neighbors. He certainly could not expect to bring about any widespread cultural change in his society unless he raised the personal stakes for himself significantly, and even then the prospects of significant success were not very attractive. Being a prudent man, he surely understood that the cost versus benefit probability was not at all favorable, and he desisted from advancing his convictions in a manner that might place him and others who adopted his views in serious physical jeopardy.

Abraham’s sense of frustration must have been compounded by his personal circumstances. His public activity could not but have been a constant source of embarrassment to his family. The very radicalness of his views undoubtedly caused severe strains in a family that was surely part of the mainstream of the society.

To add to Abraham’s concerns, the devaluation of the human spirit inherent in animism and idolatry had its repercussions on the moral stature of his society. Abraham increasingly found himself repelled by the prevailing social mores and could not but feel subject to an incrementally growing estrangement from his surroundings. He was ultimately confronted by the necessity to choose a course of action that would irreversibly establish his lifelong vocation. On the one hand, he could continue in the direction he had already set out upon, devoting himself to the reform of his society. To accomplish this, he would first have to succeed in a program of conversion to his views of sufficiently large numbers of people to be able to withstand the inevitable attempts at suppression of his reform movement by the entrenched societal power structure. Only then, as already suggested, through a protracted active and possibly violent struggle, would he be able to shatter and remove the pagan underpinnings of the prevailing culture and replace them with the humanism he came to believe in.

Despite the ardor of his convictions, Abraham surely understood the improbability of his succeeding in such an endeavor. He also had to take into consideration the potential risks of retaliation to which he might be subjecting the members of his extended family, most of whom did not share his beliefs, as well as the dangers it posed to his disciples who did. Moreover, the very intellectuality of his approach, unadorned by the aura of cultic mysteries, could have little attraction to the vast majority of the populace, thereby precluding the possibility of his initiating a significant popular movement for religious reform. Finally, the awkward personal situation in which he had consciously placed himself on account of his devotion to his barren wife Sarai (later renamed Sarah), made it even more difficult for him to capitalize effectively on his evidently considerable personal charisma.

The other basic alternative open to him was to put aside his attempts to reform the society of which he was a part, and to undertake a far more ambitious and radical approach, that of attempting to found a new civilization, one predicated on the fundamental concepts of human equality, individual responsibility, and social justice. Pursuing this course meant abandoning his society, leaving behind its every cultural vestige, and wandering in search of an appropriate place in which to found a new moral society, a place where entrenched interests would not stymie his efforts. But this option was also fraught with great risks. It would be unlikely that all of those who had accepted discipleship to him in Haran would be willing to uproot themselves totally from their families and surroundings to follow Abraham into the unknown.

Moreover, since he had no children of his own to succeed him, he could not even assure the continuation of what he might start once he himself succumbed to the ravages of time, bearing in mind that he was already seventy-five years old according to the biblical narrative. Finally, such a move would also involve a radical change to his life and lifestyle. He would have to assume new roles in addition to that of savant and social critic. He would have to become the leader of a non-family based clan which had no foundation or support in a larger tribal confederation, something unheard of in the agricultural-pastoral societies of the Mesopotamia of his day. He and his band of followers would have to be completely self-reliant, both in peace and in the event of conflict in a strange land.

Breaking all ties to the past, however, was a necessary but by no means a sufficient step. Abraham’s task would be to create a new civilization, and to do so he would have to establish conditions of social stability that would allow a society predicated on such a civilization to flourish. Moreover, a functioning society in the real and not in a theoretical world must be rooted in the soil, and if he was going to sever the roots with his homeland, it would be necessary to sprout new roots elsewhere. As pointed out by modern commentators, In order to realize spiritual goals, we need to live in the world with our feet planted firmly on the ground. The Promised Land is not a blank canvas empty of human life, because a new community or a new nation isn’t built in a vacuum. We have to work within the existing political realities. Though Abraham is a spiritual pioneer, he understands that he must navigate in the real world.²¹ There was little question in his mind regarding where the appropriate soil might be found. It clearly would be in Cisjordan, in the land later to be known as Canaan, the destination for which the Terahides had long ago set out when they initially emigrated from Ur, before they decided to settle in Haran instead.

The choice of Cisjordan seemed propitious. To some extent, the territory served as a no-man’s land between the pales of settlement of the Semites in Mesopotamia and the Hamites in Egypt and northeastern Africa. It was the land bridge between the centers of the two great civilizations of the ancient world that dominated the region. Traversed by important trade routes and flecked by a relatively small number of strongholds held by various migrant groups, it offered ample opportunities for settlement. It still constituted a fringe region whose political destiny had not yet been settled. Moreover, even though polytheism surely was rampant there as well, it was not of any one particular system but varied in accordance with the ethnic origins of the diverse peoples to be found in the land. In other words, the existing religious diversity there would facilitate the introduction of new ideas and forms of religious worship. Accordingly, this relatively sparsely settled land, sitting astride the primary land line of communication between Africa and Asia, could be the place from which the new civilization would spread its influence to the more populated centers of the wider region.

Given that all this may have seemed self-evident to Abraham, why did he not simply decide to go to Cisjordan, which originally had been the destination for which the Terahides set out when they migrated from Ur of the Chaldeons? In fact, he may have decided to do just that, but the question of where in Cisjordan he should go remained a problem because he had no prior knowledge of where in that land it would best serve his purpose to settle.

As a practical matter, the uncertainty about exactly where he was going probably helped him with the difficult task of breaking his ties to his father and his family. The ambiguity about his final destination would act as a deterrent to a decision by his aging father to emigrate with him rather than shatter the cohesiveness of the Terahide clan. A voyage into the unknown from a life of relative affluence and comfort would have little appeal to Terah and the members of his extended family.

But what of the risks that were inherent in such an enterprise? Would a microcosmic civilization founded by Abraham in an as yet relatively unsettled territory be able to have any significant impact on the surrounding societies? Would it be viable, socially, politically, and economically? What would happen to it after Abraham was no longer there to inspire and lead it? Was there among his followers one upon whom he could rely to carry on the enterprise he had started, one upon whom he could place his mantle of leadership?

In answer to these soul-searing queries, as noted by the biblical narrator, he heard the enigmatic divine response: I will make of thee a great nation. Abraham heard himself being assured that his concerns were groundless and that they would be accommodated to an extent beyond his most reasonable expectations. He, being without children of his own and therefore unable to be the progenitor of his own family line, would somehow become the progenitor of not merely a people but a great nation. This must have struck him as a particularly strange notion.

After all, what is a nation? In antiquity, a nation surely meant a people of common ancestry bound together as a body, and connected to a specific land. The biblical use of the term goy or ‘nation’ rather than am or ‘people’ in this text is highly significant because "Unlike am, goy requires a territorial base, since the concept is a political one."²² Indeed the ancient Hebrew term for nation, goy, derives from the same root as the word for a physical body, even a corpse. This, of course, did not mean that no outsider could become part of the nation; it did not imply opposition to exogenous marriage. It simply meant that outsiders could only become part of the nation by marrying into it, and not merely by residing among its members. The notion of a polyethnic nation, one that was not based on some degree of common ancestry, would have been considered a contradiction in terms. The notion of a polyethnic nation is conceivable in contemporary times only by incorrectly using the term ‘nation’ as a synonym for ‘state,’ a usage which is both widespread and highly misleading, especially when it also equates nationalism with patriotism.

Nations, like the individuals of which they are constituted, are not normally characterized by any inclination to seek the wellbeing of other nations except when it is clearly in their interest to do so. Even the compassion and humanity that may reasonably be expected of individuals as human beings are virtues that typically remain unrecognizable among nations; international morality has never been a corollary of interpersonal ethics. Nonetheless, the avowed purpose of the nation Abraham is to found is to be fundamentally different in this regard from all other nations, setting itself a national mission that it would have to struggle very hard to be worthy of and to accomplish.

The choice Abraham made was momentous and dramatic, as well as carefully considered. His decision was not that of a brash romantic seeking fame and fortune as an adventurer. As we are informed by the biblical narrator, Abraham was already a fully mature man of worldly experience, no less than seventy-five years old, when he decided to leave Haran and undertake his seemingly quixotic mission. No longer a young man with his vision clouded by naïve perceptions of his role in life, his complete break from everything he had known, including the general culture in which he had grown to maturity and probably even the language in which he communicated as well, could not but have been very painful for him. For one thing, he had to leave behind his aged father, and possibly his mother as well, which a person of his sensibilities surely would not find easy to do.

Undoubtedly, Abraham did not see eye to eye with his father on a great many things. This would be the understandable consequence of the wide divergence in their approaches to comprehending the apparent natural order of the universe and man’s place and role in it. However, such disagreements would not have affected the basic filial respect and concern that he would bear toward his aged father. To depart from Terah at this point in his life surely involved a serious test of Abraham’s resolve to pursue the extraordinary course to which he believed he was called to set out on.

At this point, the narrator directs our attention to some significant aspects of Abraham’s departure from hearth and kin. Setting out for a new life, Abraham severs his ties to the past, but does not do so capriciously. He is no wild-eyed ascetic wandering off into the desert seeking solitude and anonymity. He does not steal away in the middle of the night with a pack on his back. Abraham is a man with a keen sense of personal and social responsibility. He does not depart with his affairs unsettled, relying on others to deal with them on his behalf. Moreover, he is not blinded by a missionary zeal that assumes that his future needs will be taken care of by fate or divine intervention. Quite the contrary, Abraham’s departure from the family home in Haran is more like a carefully prepared emigration than a capricious act of sudden inspiration. To assure his economic viability in a new land, Abraham also took with him all of his movable property, household effects as well as servants, monetary wealth as well as whatever livestock he may have possessed, noting that at this point it is hardly likely that Abraham’s principal occupation was in anything but commerce. His decision to act did not come easily or abruptly, but only after the careful deliberation befitting a man of his years and character.

It has been pointed out that Abraham was rich in gold and silver, as well as in cattle. Aside from the intrinsic worth of herds and flocks, we must remember that they served as a common medium of exchange in the Near East. Moreover, unlike precious metal, they have advantages of great service to wandering traders: They are a form of wealth that increases naturally, and are capable of locomotion. The Bible, then, portrays the Patriarchs not as shepherds, but rather as wealthy individuals of prestige. Note, moreover, that generally they are portrayed as possessing servants who care for the animals (Genesis 13:7, 26:20).²³

The narrator omits any mention of Abraham’s itinerary en route to his ultimate destination, presumably because it is incidental to the main thrust of the story. Nonetheless, we may assume that he followed the caravan routes from Mesopotamia to Egypt, following the Balikh River from Haran until it approached the Euphrates, which was crossed near that point, and then proceeded to the oasis of Tadmor (Palmyra), after which he passed through Damascus before turning in a southwesterly direction to Hazor, the principal northern gateway to Cisjordan, skirting the Sea of Galilee, and then entering into the heart of Cisjordan, a distance of some 600 miles.²⁴

As a practical matter, considering the distance involved, it is quite understandable that Abraham would take everything he owned with him, since it would be no simple matter to go and scout out the land and then return to Haran, only to then gather his belongings and make the difficult trek a second time, as some have suggested. But, as the narrator advises us, the necessary political conditions in the country for the successful emergence of a new civilization, the one to be founded by Abraham, were not yet at hand, because the Canaanite was then in the land (Gen. 12:6).

He had uprooted himself, his household, and his followers, for the purpose of founding a new moral order. However, such an order could not be established without viable social and political roots in some territory, and for that reason he had journeyed to Cisjordan. There he expected to find a lightly populated land where he could plant new roots from which his society of the future would grow and flourish. Yet, upon his arrival there, it became readily apparent that he had been cherishing an illusion. Instead of a sparsely populated and relatively untroubled land on the fringes of Semitic civilization, he found a land seething with political turmoil, the object of a struggle for control between the primarily Semitic and other peoples and tribes of the north and east and the primarily Hamitic and other peoples and tribes of the south and southwest, which included the Canaanites, after whom the land would later be named. The tribes under the leadership of the Canaanites, which was also subsequently used by the biblical narrator as a generic name for the mélange of peoples and tribes found in Cisjordan, had just recently obtained a strong grip on a significant part of the country and were building a power base there that they clearly would not surrender without a major struggle.

It has been suggested that the Canaanites, who were considered by the narrator to be Hamites, and not Semites, since their namesake Canaan was a son of Ham (Gen. 10:6), immigrated to the land in a relatively late period. The land was originally settled by Semitic tribes, which were then compelled to withdraw slowly because of the growing presence of the Canaanites.²⁵ It is assumed by some that the Canaanites had only recently moved north from their original area of settlement near the Red Sea.

Assessing the situation with which he now needed to contend, Abraham quickly came to the conclusion that he did not have the human resources that would be required to compete effectively with the Canaanites, whose primary areas of concentration were in the arable lowlands of Cisjordan, for possession of the country. Demonstrating his adaptability, a most important quality for a leader, he perhaps reluctantly concluded that until such time that his followers increased substantially in numbers and he was in a position to take on the Canaanites in a struggle for land, the outcome of which would inevitably be determined on the battlefield, he would effectively be compelled to confine himself to the more sparsely populated and economically limited hill country, into which the Canaanites had not yet penetrated to any great extent.

This in itself posed another significant dilemma for Abraham. The hill country offered little opportunity for agricultural development and the social stability that it implied, a critical factor for building the kind of society he envisioned. Instead, he would have to rely on animal husbandry to achieve economic viability, which meant a perennial search for pastures and grazing lands and the consequent difficulty in establishing firm roots in the soil, a virtual precondition for a stable society. However, he was not deterred by these considerations, and remained determined to continue on the course he had set for himself.

With unwavering faith in the future that he had been assured was to be his, Abraham brushed aside these problems as merely temporary impediments that he eventually would somehow overcome. In the meantime, he would do what he could to make the best of the circumstances in which he found himself. If necessary, he would become an animal breeder, a vocation for which he had little if any prior preparation, living on the fringes of Canaanite agricultural society.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that Abraham, and the patriarchs that followed him, always chose to set up their camp in the immediate neighborhood of a town, as evidenced by the fact that wherever the biblical account speaks of their setting up camp, it invariably mentions a nearby town. Thus, upon his entry into Canaan, Abraham passed through the land unto the place of Shekhem, unto the terebinth of Moreh . . . And he removed from thence to the mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east (Gen. 12:6-8). It has been suggested that this choice of campsite was suitable to their semi-nomadic, pastoral economy, in which they could wander about without encroaching on anyone’s rights without moving too far from permanently settled urban centers where they could dispose of their produce and obtain such necessities of life as they were unable to produce themselves.

Moreover, Though biblical sources do not mention seasonal wanderings, it may be assumed that the Patriarchs spent the rainy season and spring in the Negev, where the climate is warmer than in the north and where there is no lack of pasturage throughout December-April. During the summer and autumn months however they took refuge from the heat in the cooler highlands, where grazing lands were available in these seasons, for the region was still sparsely populated in the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C.E.²⁶

There were, however, some serious political considerations that had to be taken into account as well, considerations that could put Abraham’s entire enterprise and the welfare of his followers in mortal jeopardy. As long as he shied away from the major concentrations of Canaanite settlement, he and his relatively small but soon to be growing band of followers were not likely to be perceived as posing any serious threat to the emerging political order in Cisjordan and would therefore able to move through the countryside in search of open pasture and grazing lands unopposed. However, the situation might change dramatically if Abraham’s intent to establish a permanent base, even in the hill country, were to be perceived by the Canaanites as a potential threat to their hegemony in the area. In that case, he might find himself struggling for survival against far more powerful foes before he was strong enough to enter into such a contest with any prospect of success.

Given these concerns, Abraham was faced by the dilemma of what to do next. He seemed to have only three basic options, all extremely unattractive. On the one hand, he could commit himself to what seemed like a virtually hopeless struggle with the Canaanites, realizing that without some supernatural intervention on his