Bar-Ilan University Parashat Noach 5772/October 20, 2012 Parashat Hashavua Study Center

Bar-Ilan University

Parashat Noach 5772/October 20, 2012

Parashat Hashavua Study Center

Lectures on the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. A project of the Faculty of Jewish Studies, Paul and Helene Shulman Basic Jewish Studies Center, and the Office of the Campus Rabbi. Published on the Internet under the sponsorship of Bar-Ilan University's International Center for Jewish Identity. Prepared for Internet Publication by the Computer Center Staff at Bar-Ilan University.

938

Yosef Fleischman^*

"It is well known that the Patriarch Abraham was brought up in the religion…of the Sabeans": The Background to Understanding the Revolutionary Change Wrought by Abraham

The last few verses of this week's reading tell us briefly about Terah's journey, along with a part of his family, setting out from Ur of the Chaldeans and heading for the land of Canaan. Knowing about the civilization in Abraham's birthplace is without doubt important to our understanding the revolutionary change he initiated. Maimonides writes in Guide for the Perplexed (3:29):¹

It is well known that the Patriarch Abraham was brought up in the religion and the opinion of the Sabeans, that there is no divine being except the stars. I will tell you in this chapter their works which are at present extant in Arabic translations, and also in their ancient chronicles; and I will show you their opinion and their practice according to these books.

After briefly surveying the principles of the Sabean faith, Maimonides continues:

In these books, and in their chronicles, the history of Abraham our father is given in the following manner. Abraham was brought up in Kutha;² when he differed from the people and declared that there is a Maker besides the sun, they raised certain objections, and mentioned in their arguments the evident and manifest action of the sun in the Universe. "You are right," said Abraham, "[the sun acts in the same manner] as 'the axe in the hand of him that hews with it.'" Then some of his arguments against his opponents are mentioned. In short, the king put him in prison; but he continued many days, while in prison, to argue against them. At last the king was afraid that Abraham might corrupt the kingdom and turn the people away from their religion; he therefore expelled Abraham into Syria, after having deprived him of all his property. This is their account which you find clearly stated in the book called Nabatean Agriculture.³ (Guide, pp. 457-458)

The Sabean religion was the only form of pagan worship that existed under Islamic rule. Maimonides, who apparently was not familiar with other pagan practices, therefore identified all worship of heavenly bodies and idolatry with the Sabean religion. Thus Maimonides' exposition of the tenets of Abraham's monotheism is made in the context of the Sabean religion.⁴ It clearly follows from Maimonides' remarks that in his view anyone wishing to understand Abraham's spiritual-religious world must be well acquainted with the culture and literature of Abraham's land of birth. This information is of the utmost importance in understanding Abraham's uniqueness and the depth of the revolutionary change he introduced.

Moreover, Maimonides writes (ibid.): "I say that my knowledge of the belief, practice, and worship of the Sabeans has given me an insight into many of the divine precepts, and has led me to know their reason" (p. 461). He also explains some of the commandments as intended to counter the ideas and practices of the ancient Sabean cult.

In this article we shall follow Maimonides, to understand the message of the Torah and its stories of the patriarchs in general, and Genesis 11:26-32 in particular. The relevant material appears in the following two verses:

Haran died in the lifetime of his father Terah, in his native land, Ur of the Chaldeans (28). Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there (31).

Ur of the Chaldeans is defined in verse 28 as "his native land," but it is not clear whether that meant the native land of Terah or that of Haran. According to verse 31, Terah planned to journey from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan, but for some reason not specified by the Torah he only reached as far as Haran and did not continue to the land of Canaan. Terah settled in Haran and died there, long after Abraham had left the area, as we learn from a later portion of the narrative (Gen. 12:1-4). Thus, from these verses Abraham's birthplace is unclear.

Nahmanides, in his commentary on Gen. 11:28, seeks to prove that Abraham's family hailed from Aram Naharayim (and not from Ur of the Chaldeans), and to this end he traces the course of migration of Terah and his family:

Now Terah begot his older sons, Abraham and Nahor, across the river from the land of his fathers, and went with his son Abraham to the land of the Chaldeans, where his younger son Haran was born. His son Nahor either remained across the river in the city of Haran, or was born in that city, or settled in it, coming from Kutha.

Even if Abraham was not born in Ur of the Chaldeans, it is clear from the verses cited above that he lived there at least for several years, and that from there he set off with his father to Haran. The city of Ur is generally identified with the ancient Sumerian city of Uri(m) in southern Mesopotamia, across the Euphrates River (southern Iraq of today). Archaeological and epigraphic findings were discovered in this city attesting to its having been a thriving cultural and economic metropolis and the political capital of a large empire. The Hebrew name, Ur Casdim, indicates that Ur was the name of the city and Kasdim (Chaldeans) apparently the name of a people, so that we have Ur, the city of the Chaldeans. Haran was also an ancient city, founded in the time of the Summerians and Akkadians, and situated up the Baliah River in modern-day Turkey. Haran, like Ur, was an important religious center as well as an important and highly developed commercial and cultural center.

The Torah's disclosures regarding the wanderings of Terah's family lead us to understand that Abraham must have been born somewhere in Mesopotamia (Greek for the "land between the two rivers"), and spent part of his life in Ur of the Chaldeans and in Haran, both important cultural centers. There he became familiar with the Mesopotamian culture and their pagan religion, which he rejected to become the founder of monotheism. As Maimonides put it: "It is well known that the Patriarch Abraham was brought up in the religion and the opinion of the Sabeans," i.e., it is clear that Abraham was born, grew up, and was educated in a polytheistic society with cultural achievements which he rejected.

Following Maimonides, we are of the opinion that knowing even a little about the culture and religion in which Abraham grew up is important to understanding more clearly his greatness. For the past century we have known much about Mesopotamian culture throughout the generations, especially in the time of the patriarchs. We have access to their wisdom literature and poetry, law codes, legal and economic documents, letters, and papers dealing with mathematics, botany, and other subjects. These works are written in cuneiform on clay tablets in Sumerian or Akkadian. Here we present several examples of Mesopotamian wisdom literature, from which we may conclude that the society in which Abraham lived (and whose language he apparently spoke), and against whose values he fought was culturally very advanced, creative, and thoughtful. Various sayings in Mesopotamian culture express practical didactic wisdom, their objective being to instruct people how to behave in daily life. Here we present a sampling of five such Sumerian sayings pertaining to different walks of life:

Colleagues can argue with each other; anointed priests can speak words of evil.

Can great heroes withstand the flood? Can powerful men make fire subside?

You cannot know G-d's counsel; G-d's ways cannot be learned.

A willful and rebellious son—his mother wishes he would never have been born, never have been created by G-d.

A wicked woman in the home is worse than a thousand evil spirits.

Next we present two passages from a work belonging to the genre of wisdom literature from Abraham's homeland. This work uses a dialogue between a slave and his master to investigate the notion of truth and positive values, and concludes that all is vanity:

1. 
   Servant, hear me! Here I am, my master, attending you! / Love a woman! Love, my master, love! For a man who loves a woman will forget misery and sighing.
   

In the first few lines the servant says what he thinks his master expects to hear from him regarding women. The dialogue continues:

No, servant, I will not love a woman! / Do not love, O master, do not love, for woman is a bottomless pit, a ditch / woman is a sharp sword of iron that will fell a man's head!

In the above lines the servant dares to express his own opinion, which apparently stands in diametrical opposition to the accepted view of society. Only at this point does the wise man dare to say that woman is more bitter than death.

2. 
   Servant, hear me! Here I am, master, attending! / Quick, bring me water to wash my hands and serve it to me, for I wish to make a sacrifice to my god! Make an offering, O master, make an offering!
   

A man who makes an offering to his god, such a man will feel good and will go from greatness to greatness.

In the first lines of this example, the slave says what he thinks his master expects to hear from him about worshipping the gods. The dialogue then continues:

No, my servant, I shall not make an offering to my gods.

Do not make an offering, O master, do not make an offering! If you train god, he will follow you like a dog.

Here, too, in the last lines of the passage the servant dares to express an opinion diametrically opposed to society's conventional view. Only at this point does the wise man dare to say worshipping the gods is useless because of their weakness.⁵

In this work we find not only basic analogies to parts of Ecclesiastes, but also homilies that focus on the arguments that Abraham had with the pagans about their values and the tenets of their faith.

In conclusion, from Maimonides we learn that a moderate interest in the culture of Abraham's native land is of value. Today we have access to considerable findings about this culture that help us understand the magnitude of the revolutionary change made by Abraham. "It is well known that the Patriarch Abraham was brought up in the religion and the opinion of the Sabeans," meaning in the pagan culture of Mesopotamia which came to be recognized as the cradle of civilization due to its spiritual strength and accomplishments in a broad spectrum of fields of knowledge. There he grew up, there he struggled with complex views and beliefs, and there he came to acknowledge the Creator of the world and brought monotheism to mankind.

Translated by Rachel Rowen

* Prof. Fleischman teaches in the Department of Bible at Bar Ilan University. He specializes in study of the Bible in the light of the ancient Near East, and laws and the legal system in the Bible and the period of the return to Zion. He recently published Father-Daughter Relations in Biblical Law, Bethesda, Maryland, 2011.

1 http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim/the_guide_for_the_perplexed.pdf, p. 457.

2 Greater Kutha, a city south of Baghdad, on the banks of the Kutha River, a channel connecting the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some have identified it with Cuthah mentioned in II Kings 17:24.

3 The book, Al-Falaha al-Nabatiya, containing inter alia a description of the Sabean faith, is ascribed to a person by the name of Ibn Wahsiya, who claimed to have translated it from Chaldean to Arabic. For the past 140 years scholars have been divided concerning the authenticity and reliability of this book (according to Schwartz edition of Guide to the Perplexed, Tel Aviv 2008). Also cf. Nahmanides on Gen. 11:28, who, following Maimonides, presents this evidence.

4 Cf. Schwartz, loc. cit., and the references there.

5 Selected from S. Shifrah and Y. Klein, Bayamim ha-Rehokim hahem—Antologia mi-Shirat ha-Mizrah ha-Kadum, Tel Aviv 1996.