Abraham: The First Historical Biography - Hardcover

Rosenberg, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465070949 ISBN 13: 9780465070947

Publisher: Basic Books, 2006

Synopsis

The world's major religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-find a common root in one man: Abraham. Yet Abraham looms so large in the realm of world religions that he has remained a ward of the Divine rather than a flesh-and-blood citizen of Humanity. In his monumental new book, David Rosenberg provides a long-overdue history of the patriarch; while revealing that the original story embedded in the Bible is actually our oldest historical biography. We also discover that the wandering ascetic of tradition cannot explain our deep-seated feelings for Abraham and his God. The road that Abraham traveled was marked by signs of civilization that we still recognize: libraries, museums, hotels, and houses of worship. He is a sophisticated, educated Sumerian; an artisan who became the first Jew. Moreover, through Rosenberg's audacious translation of the Abraham story from Genesis, we learn that many of the core tenets of the monotheistic tradition-the idea of God's covenant and the soul-are Sumerian in origin. Rosenberg first finds Abraham at his father's workshop in the cosmopolitan city of ancient Ur and follows his journey through what is today the Middle East. What kind of baggage-emotional, material, and spiritual-would Abraham have taken with him on his migration to a new land? Abraham does more than present a founding spiritual figure and his dynamic relationships with father, wife, and son. We witness this man as he transforms his heritage into an anxious embrace of religion with secular culture-the human condition in which we are still enfolded today.

About this title

About the Author

David Rosenberg is a poet, essayist, and critic. He is the former editor of the Jewish Publication Society and was Harold Bloom's co-author on The Book of J. Rosenberg's other writings include A Poet's Bible and Lost Book of Paradise. He lives in Florida.

Reviews

Despite the subtitle, much of Rosenberg's fascinating and sometimes frustrating presentation of the biblical Abraham's life, while based on archeological evidence, is highly speculative. What Rosenberg does establish is a cultural context for Judaism's founder. Abraham, he says, would have been steeped in the sophisticated culture of his native Sumer, with its emphasis on history and continuity. The earliest of the biblical authors, called J (who was a woman, as Rosenberg postulated, with Harold Bloom, in The Book of J) would have known that culture, and Rosenberg analyzes how it informs her narrative. Abraham's new God, Yahweh, according to Rosenberg, was a blend of his old Sumerian household god and the creator god he found in Canaan; with Yahweh, Abraham created a new "cosmic theater" to replace the one Sumerians had enacted with their idols. Rosenberg's discussion can be dense and confusing as he switches over to considering the artistic and historical motives of J and two other biblical authors, known as E and P. But the book opens up into a compelling and moving interpretation that ponders the significance, for Abraham and his descendants, of his journey from Ur to Canaan, fraught with uncertainty for a man—expatriate, aging, childless—hanging between a lost past and a still unmapped future. (Apr. 3)
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The ancient patriarch Abraham lives here as a vibrant historical presence. Rosenberg warns, however, that readers will not see this remarkable man of antiquity if they persist in looking for him over the shoulders of Christian or Islamic guardians of orthodoxy. Instead, Rosenberg invites readers to see Abraham against the cultural background of ancient Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE. Hardly the unlettered nomad of Christian imagination, the historical Abraham, Rosenberg argues, studied Sumerian and Akkadian texts intensely before embarking on his epoch-making journey to Canaan. It was these archival sources, melded with oral tradition, that produced the biographical narrative that enshrined Abraham in scripture. Rosenberg's explanations of how the God of Scripture and first Hebrew appeared together on the stage of history draw on both immense research and shrewd speculation. Many devout Bible readers will resist those speculations as incompatible with traditional religious faith, but lively controversy--such as that surrounding The Book of J, which Rosenberg coauthored with Harold Bloom in 1990--always attracts readers. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465070949
• ISBN 13: 9780465070947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368