At the Crossroads 8

The next stage of God’s self-revelation to humankind, in the biblical tradition, is God’s covenant with Abraham and the patriarchs. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

“God chooses Abraham: (59) In order to gather together scattered humanity God calls Abram from his country, his kindred and his father's house, and makes him Abraham, that is, "the father of a multitude of nations". "In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." (60) The people descended from Abraham would be the trustee of the promise made to the patriarchs, the chosen people, called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the Church. They would be the root on to which the Gentiles would be grafted, once they came to believe. (61) The patriarchs, prophets and certain other Old Testament figures have been and always will be honored as saints in all the Church's liturgical traditions.”

With the Abraham story, we enter now into a historically describable part of the Bible. The general consensus among biblical scholars in the past pegged the time of Gen 12-50 to be somewhere between 1900-1500 BCE. The customs and movements described in Genesis coincide with what were going on in this period. The names of the patriarchs are known before 1500 BCE, but not after. The journey from Mesopotamia to Canaan and to Egypt seems to reflect the Amorite migrations in the Near East and the period of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt (2000-1750 BCE). Adoption of an heir (Gen 15,1-3) and taking a sister for a wife in marriage (Gen 12,10-20) find legal customary parallels in Nuzi and other places in this period. The Joseph story as foreign leader in Egypt seems to fit into the rule of the Hyksos, a group of Semitic invaders from Palestine, in Egypt from about 1750-1500 BCE. The lifestyle of the nomadic clans of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob resembles the way of life described in the Mari documents around the 18th-17th century Before the Common Era.

Certainly, modern contemporary archaeology cannot exactly fix the historical dates of the stories of Gen 12-50 or the stories of Abraham and his descendants. But it is also true that many particular details in the Abrahamic stories fit well into the period before the 1500 BCE. Other particular details, like camel caravans and the names of Philistine states, reflect a much later period than when the biblical author located them.

This biblical account of God’s call to Abraham celebrates God’s bursting forth into human history. This is God’s bursting forth and insertion into the conscience of historical humanity! We, the human species, have never been the same again! – Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC