Three world religions trace themselves to Abraham, a figure most historians call legendary
Jews revere Abraham as their first patriarch, Christians as Jesus's forebear and spiritual father, Muslims as a prophet in the line leading to Muhammad. Yet most scholars think his story grew orally over centuries and was written into Genesis only in the Persian period, shaping Jewish identity after the exile.
Genesis tells his story as a chain of promises under threat. God calls Abram, as he was first named, to leave his father Terah's household and go to a land he will be shown, promising countless descendants and territory. The obstacle is obvious from the start: his wife Sarai cannot have children. Scholars describe the cycle as an obstacle story, a device that has worked in every culture, though its episodes are loosely connected and not always in logical order.
The family begins in Ur of the Chaldees. Terah sets out for Canaan with Abram, Sarai and Abram's nephew Lot but stops at Haran, dying there at 205 in the text's reckoning; some commentators, including Nahmanides, even argue Abram was born in Haran. At 75, Abram leaves with Lot, builds altars at Shechem and between Bethel and Ai, and heads south. Famine drives him to Egypt, where he has Sarai pose as his sister; Pharaoh takes her into the palace until plagues reveal the truth and the couple are escorted out.
Back in Canaan, the herds of Abram and Lot grow too large to share pasture, and quarrels break out among their herdsmen. Abram lets Lot choose, and Lot takes the well-watered Jordan plain near Sodom, while Abram settles at Mamre near Hebron. Later he buys the Cave of the Patriarchs at Hebron as Sarah's tomb, a purchase that stakes a claim to the land.
The promise passes to Isaac, Sarah's son, while his half-brother Ishmael is also told he will found a great nation. Through them Abraham is seen as ancestor of both Jews and Arabs. He later marries Keturah and fathers six more sons, but Isaac inherits. Beyond Judaism, Christianity and Islam, he is honoured in the Baháʼí and Druze faiths. Scholars note the traditions were also used to support rival claims to land.
Source: Abraham
