The Gods Are Broken!: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham

2 Abraham the Iconoclast

17 2 | Abraham the Iconoclast Why did God choose Abraham? (This question is closely related to another deep religious mystery: Why did God choose the Jews?) The Bible doesn’t offer us a single bit of guidance on the question. But it can be added to the list of other deep questions that the Bible leaves unanswered: Why did God choose Moses as a leader? Why did God take the Israelites out of Egypt? Why did God choose the land of Israel as the location for God’s promises? That’s the Bible’s normal way of functioning. In an oft-quoted essay, “Odysseus’ Scar,” literary critic Erich Auerbach contrasted the laconic style of the biblical narrative with the rich, textured, detailed nature of Greek myth. In the Odyssey, for example, we read a lengthy description of the scar on the hero’s foot. No such descriptions exist in the Bible. It is short on both description and explanation, leaving such details for later generations of sages and scholars to pursue. Why Did God Choose Abraham? The First Answers Almost as soon as the Torah was canonized in its final form (probably during or shortly after the Babylonian exile, circa 500 BCE), its readers began to wonder about omissions in the text—the white spaces between the black letters of the text. One of the biggest white spaces must have been, “Why Abraham ?” Early interpreters began to suspect that there was something different about Abraham. Perhaps he had a rebellious spirit; perhaps he could not tolerate the religious environment in which he found himself. 18 ABRAHAM THE ICONOCLAST That brings us to the book of Judith, which tells the story of a Jewish heroine of the same name, composed during the second century BCE. The book of Judith is part of the Apocrypha, the books of somewhat doubtful religious authority that were omitted from the Jewish and Protestant versions of the Bible but included in the Roman Catholic version. This is how the book of Judith imagines the origins of the Jewish people: This people, the Jews, are descended from the Chaldeans. At one time they lived in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers who were in Chaldea. For they had left the ways of their ancestors, and they worshiped the God of heaven, the God they had come to know; hence, the Chaldeans drove them out from the presence of their gods and they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there for a long time. Then their God commanded them to leave the place where they were living and go to the land of Canaan. (Judith 5:6–9) As mentioned earlier, the Jews were hardly the descendants of the Chaldeans; the Chaldeans didn’t appear in the ancient Middle East until the seventh or sixth centuries BCE. But, even in light of the text’s historical inaccuracy, the story has something powerful to teach us. The book of Judith is the first source that describes Jews as religious rebels. They pay for their religious nonconformity by becoming refugees. It is a pattern of Jewish history that would repeat itself, over and over, in many different contexts. About a hundred years later we find the true beginning of the idol-shattering motif in the book of Jubilees. Jubilees is a “counterbiblical ” text that emerged sometime during the first century BCE. It presents itself as a secondary, secret revelation of an angel to Moses during his second ascent up Mount Sinai; the angel recapitulates the biblical story, with some interesting additions. Apparently , the sectarians who dwelled by the shores of the Dead Sea (most likely those who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls) knew the book of Jubilees, and they often referred to it. ABRAHAM THE ICONOCLAST 19 The child Abraham began to realize the errors of the land—that everyone was going astray after graven images and after impurity . Abraham separated from his father so that he might not worship the idols with him. And he began to pray to the Creator of all so that He might save him from the errors of mankind. It came to pass that Abraham said to his father, “Oh father,” and he said, “Yes, my son?” Abraham asked: “What help or advantage do we have from these idols before which you worship and bow down? There is no spirit in them, because they are mute, and they...