IS THE STORY OF ABRAHAM A MYTH?

The following information is an extraction from an Article that appeared in The New York Times entitled IS THE STORY OF ABRAHAM A MYTH? Princeton Professor Doubts Whether the Patriarch Ever Existed:

If there is a personage whose historical existence would seem to be established by centuries of written record and the confident belief of many nations, of whole races, through countless generations, it is that of Abraham, the patriarch.

Is the story of Abraham a myth?

The Jewish people trace their origin to Abraham. The account of his life given in the sacred books of the Hebrews—books accepted and held in equal reverence by the entire Christian world and the entire Muslim world—is positive, clear, and definite. So clear and definite, indeed, that the critics whose scrutiny of the Bible has led them to reject as myths and legends such Biblical stories as that of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, and the Deluge, have generally felt that real history began with it: that Abraham was the first historical character of whom we know. And, indeed, any layman who reads the first chapters of Genesis must feel a change in the character of the narrative as he passes from the extraordinary events described as happening at the beginning of time into the realistic atmosphere of the day when a man named Abram set out from the city of Ur, in Chaldea, to live the life of a nomad in Egypt and Palestine, prospering and becoming the head of a tribe which was to expand into a mighty nation. The exquisite character, merely from a literary standpoint, of such details as the incident of Hagar in the desert, the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, the finding of Rebekah by the well, would persuade every ordinary reader that he was on solid ground of historical time. When, furthermore, it is known that the story of Abraham is supported by numerous inscriptions recently found on Babylonian stones and tablets, there would seem to be no ground for suspicion as to the reality of the existence of the father of Isaac and Jacob and the Jewish race.

In point of fact, it is the connection, which is undeniable, between Babylonian literature and the Old Testament which is appealed to by those who assert that the Old Testament stories are fictitious, and who now declare that the character Abraham was no more a living man than was Osiris or Indra, Hercules or Apollo, Siegfried or Sigurd, Beowulf, or King Arthur, William Tell, or Jack the Giant Killer.

Professor Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton University lectured at the University of Pennsylvania last week, and made it clear to his auditors that in his scholarly opinion it was very doubtful indeed whether there was ever such a man named Abraham. Professor Wilson pointed out many curious similarities between Hebrew stories and Babylonian myths.