World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn
Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”
Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008
The Problem of the Figure of Abraham in the Monotheistic Religions
and the Behaviour of Biblical Israel towards Other Peoples
Prof. em. Othmar Keel
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
PDF version for downloads
The origin of the state of Israel and religion
The present state of Israel has, at least in respect to its origins, no religious roots. Religious Jews used to express every year on the occasion of the Pesach or Passover celebration the hope of celebrating in Jerusalem the following year. This hope, however, never led to the idea of founding a Jewish state in Palestine. The overall view, in the light of Deuteronomy, was that God had driven them out of the Holy Land and sent them into exile because of their sins, and that only God or his Messiah could bring them back to this country. Israel as such has no religious roots, unless one considers the discrimination, persecution, pogroms, and massacres of Jews in traditionally Christian countries like Spain, Poland, Russia, France, Austria, Germany, etc. as religious phenomena—which they in part were and are.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), visionary of a Jewish state, father of political Zionism and founder of the World Zionist Organization (1897), was not religious. The only problem he wanted to solve was to prevent further future discrimination and massacres. One solution he envisaged was to baptize all Jews. Another was to establish a Jewish state in Argentina or Uganda. Colonialism at the end of the 19th century was at its height and was seen as something extremely positive for everybody, enhancing substantially the wellbeing of colonizers and colonized.
Herzl and the World Zionist Organization decided finally to focus on Palestine because mainly traditional Eastern European Jews suffering from pogroms in Russia were not ready to emigrate to Argentina or Uganda. Still, the leading and dominating forces in the state established in 1948 were secular labour movements represented by David Ben-Gurion. Most religious groups in Israel kept a certain distance from this state. Ben-Gurion himself was convinced that religion would sooner or later disappear.
The movement initiated by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), which tried to combine political Zionism and orthodox religious life, gained momentum only after the 1967 war. It was then that in religious circles the conviction won acceptance that the occupied territories were the nucleus of the land promised by God to the offspring of Abraham and that these territories should never again be given up. About 110,000 of the 275,000 settlers of today are religious. They are the tough and hard core of the settlers, and an important part of the population of Israel is afraid of them. They ignore international (secular) law and adamantly oppose a two-state solution, planned by the international community. Their slogan is: “Only the Bible is the roadmap of the Jewish people.” And “Bible” means in this context the promise made to Abraham according to Gen. 12:7 and similar passages. It is a fundamentalist approach, characterized by its ignorance of history and its determined decision to ignore it. In a non-fundamentalist approach, no revelation, no truth, no biblical passage can be understood correctly outside its historical context, which relativises the passage, the truth and the revelation. It is not by chance that the settlers refer first and foremost to the promise made to Abraham.
Abraham as an ideal screen for projections and means of immunization against real historical relations and connections
Abraham is most suited to become a screen for projections of all kinds since he is—unlike David, Jesus or Mohammed—a figure outside history. A historical figure resists manipulation to a certain degree. It is not that easy to make of Jesus a fighter and war hero and of Mohammed a Christian saint driven only by love of his neighbour whatever his belief may be. Abraham is not historical and his resistance to manipulation is thus minimal. According to biblical chronology, he lived quite a time before the Hebrews were in Egypt. There they spent, according to biblical chronology, 430 years (Ex. 12:40f.). According to this chronology, Abraham lived around 1700 BCE. According to Genesis 26, Abraham’s son Isaac met a king of the Philistines. The Philistines reached Palestine in the 12th century BCE. Though Abraham is supposed to have lived for 175 years (Gen. 25:7), he could not have been born earlier than around 1300 BCE. If it’s not possible to tell whether a man lived around 1700 or around 1300, he is not a historical figure.
In Islam
How suited Abraham was and is to become a screen for projections is demonstrated by the Abraham/Ibrahim of the Quran, where he is one of the most important figures. He is mentioned in no fewer than 25 of the 114 Suras of the Quran. After Mohammed had become acquainted with Judaism and Christianity, he started in 610 CE in Mecca to preach that there is only one god. He considered himself as one who continues and renews the teaching of Moses (Musa) and of a Judeo-Christian Jesus (Isa) who was a prophet, not the son of God. Mecca, including the Kaaba, was at that time completely pagan. The Ibrahim of the Meccan period is, in complete accordance with Jewish legends, the founder of monotheism (Hanifism) and a fighter against and destroyer of idols. Though Mohammed preached for 12 years he had almost no success and very few followers. Finally he left in 622 for Medina where he found very quickly an important number of believers. The main reason was that in Medina, in contrast to Mecca, lived a great number of Jews, and the Arabs of Medina had heard of one only God, holy scriptures and similar things.
Mohammed hoped very much to win the Jews as followers because he considered himself a prophet in the tradition of the Jewish prophets. He prescribed regular daily prayers, days of fasting, the taboo of pork, circumcision, and turning during prayer towards Jerusalem (cf. 1 Kings 8:44-48; Dan. 6:11). The Jews of Medina rejected Mohammed’s offer to join his community; some even made fun of him. Mohammed was so deeply offended and hurt that he started to drive the Jews out of Medina and had finally the remaining ones murdered. After this separation from the Jews he felt compelled to change the direction of prayer, the qiblah (Sura 2:136-146). He ordered his followers to pray in the direction of Mecca. He knew of course that the Kaaba was pagan. To solve the problem, he started to teach that Ibrahim and his son Ismail had built the Kaaba or at least cleansed the Kaaba from everything heathen. Abraham was used to cut the real and historical relations Islam had to the pagan Kaaba and the pagan rites.
And as a means of immunization in respect to real historical connections and relations, Abraham was also used in Christian and Jewish tradition.
In Christianity
For Christians, it was of no great importance to be biologically a son of Abraham, something of which a normal Jew at the time of Jesus would have been proud (John 8:37). The NT in part acknowledges and in part criticizes this attitude. “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. 3:9 and parallels).
It is Paul who separates Christianity from Judaism with the help of Abraham, who was, he says, justified by faith not by works, not by “works of the law”. For all who rely on the works of the law, as the Jews do, are cursed. Abraham was justified by belief. Paul repeats this again and again, quoting again and again one single verse of the Abraham tradition (Rom. 4:1ff.; Gal. 3:6ff.): “He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:6).
In Judaism
As Christianity used—or better, abused—Abraham to separate and elevate Christians in respect to the Jews, Judaism used and abused the figure of Abraham to separate Jews from paganism. The biblical Abraham visited and founded sanctuaries at different places—Shechem (Gen. 12:6f.); Bethel (Gen. 13:3f.); the oaks of Mamre (Gen. 18:1)—something Deuteronomy forbids. If there was a historical Abraham at all, he lived in the region of Mamre/Hebron. The prophet Ezekiel knew that the real origin of Jerusalem/Israel was not with Abraham in Ur but in Canaan: “Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hititte” (Ezek. 16:3).
Judaism made Abraham the first Jew, with no pagan qualities. It made him the first faultless and perfect Jew, who kept all the 613 commandments and interdictions of the Mishnah. Judaism too had its biblical verse to base this construction on. This verse says that Abraham obeyed God’s voice and kept his charges, his commands, his statutes and his laws (Gen. 26:5). Since the second century BCE, e.g. in the book of Jubilees, Abraham was exalted as the first monotheist, who destroyed all the idols his father had dealings with. The promise of the land to Abraham and his origin in Ur-Kasdim far away in southern Mesopotamia have their historical context at the time of the exile or shortly after the exile. They were meant to motivate the exiled Jews to come back to Palestine.
In short, Abraham was used by Jews, Christians and Islam to sever their connections with their true pagan, and in the case of Christianity and Islam, also Jewish roots.
The possession of the land and relations with other people
The possession of the land in the Bible texts was and is never unconditional. Texts such as Ezek. 33:23-29; Jer. 7:3-14 (as Dr Tarazi has shown) and the whole of Deuteronomy define the conditions under which Israel can remain in the land. Reliance on God is not enough. In respect to this subject there are at least two basic attitudes, documented in many biblical texts. One tradition sees the main condition as total reliance on God. As long as you are ready to commit your life, God will support you. A clear example of this attitude is the David and Goliath story. Goliath has the military power. David identifies with God and embodies the honour of God. In the story, David is victorious. In history, he usually was not.
At the beginning of the 6th century Jerusalem and Judah were under Babylonian rule. There was a bitter struggle in Jerusalem over whether to accept this domination or not. The national-religious movement headed by King Zedekiah relied on God. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel advised the king and his people to take seriously the Babylonian reality and to abide by the oath of loyalty sworn to Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek. 17:15). These prophets considered Babylonian rule as not just an act of arrogance directed against the God of Israel but as part of God’s governance of the world. The outcome of this bitter struggle is known: the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 BCE, and the Babylonian exile. The land of Israel was no more Israel’s land.
A second example would be the Maccabees, who revolted in the 2nd century BCE against the Greek Seleucids. They succeeded—at least for a while—because the Seleucids were under constant pressure from the Romans who were pushing eastwards.
A third of many other examples is from the time of Jesus. At this time the Zealots started to fight the Romans and with the help of God, as they thought, expelled the Romans for a short while. But the Romans came back with their legions and the result was the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
According to a true monotheistic view, all peoples are God’s peoples. According to a true belief in God as creator and father of all peoples, the right of every people has to be respected, and what is really needed is a true dialogue between the peoples. To use the promises to Abraham and to give them a timeless and unconditional value, to abuse them to ignore the Palestinian reality and justify the taking of land from the Palestinians, has no future and is a blasphemous, fundamentalist particularism. Like any fundamentalism it has no respect for the human condition, which is deeply historical, embedded in time and space.
Fundamentalism is inhumane and despises the respect for reality, the love of our neighbour as a human being deeply embedded in time and space; and because fundamentalism is without love for our neighbour, it is also without love of God and hated by God.
Note
The ideas developed here very briefly are argued in detail in
· Thomas Staubli, ed., Vertikale Ökumene: Erinnerungsarbeit im Dienst des interreligiösen Dialogs, Fribourg, 2005.
· Othmar Keel, Die Geschichte Jerusalems und die Entstehung des Monotheismus (Orte und Landschaften der Bibel IV/I), Göttingen, 2007.
