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C. Medieval JudaismIn medieval rabbinic Judaism, Abraham is por-trayed as autodidact and iconoclast (/Iconoclasm),missionary (/Mission) and /martyr. He faith-fully and patiently suffers divine trials, andthrough his suffering accrues merit. This “merit ofAbraham” has eschatological (/Eschatology) andapocalyptic (/Apocalypses) significance. It will aidthe Jews in the future, in this world and the next.These motifs and images, found already in classicalrabbinic literature, were repeated, developed, andelaborated upon in the Jewish Middle Ages, underthe influence of /Christianity, /Islam, /philos-ophy, and /mysticism.1. Abraham in Medieval Midrash. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer (PRE; 8th or 9th cent., Islamic East)26–31 retells the stories of Abraham according tohis “ten trials”:

1) Abraham was hidden at /birth, to escape the decreeof wicked /King /Nimrod, who had ordered the murderof all Jewish male children (/Child, Children). 2) Abrahamwas imprisoned – and later thrown in a fiery furnace – forsmashing his /father’s idols (/Idol, Idolatry) and chal-lenging royal authority. 3) After miraculously escapingNimrod’s furnace, God commanded Abraham to abandonhome and /family. 4) But no sooner had he arrived in/Canaan than he was forced to flee once again due to/famine, this time to /Egypt, where 5) his wife /Sarahwas taken by /Pharaoh. 6) During the war with the fourkings, Abraham’s nephew /Lot was captured, forcingAbraham to collect a military force to redeem him. EvenAbraham’s covenants (/Covenant) with God were trying:7) he was shown his descendants’ Egyptian bondage in thecovenant of the pieces; 8) and his own physical weaknessin the covenant of /circumcision. The final two trials ofAbraham, according to PRE, were 9) his exile of /Hagarand /Ishmael, and 10) the trial par excellence – the com-mand to sacrifice /Isaac (/Aqedah).

Although PRE is based on earlier rabbinic texts,there is evidence of Islamic influence as well. Forexample, in PRE 30, when discussing the trial ofHagar and Ishmael, the author or compiler re-counts Abraham’s travels east. With Sarah’s permis-sion, Abraham visited Ishmael, but when he arrivedhe was greeted by Ishmael’s wife Aisha, who re-fused him food and water, in response to which heleft a message for his son: “Remove the doorstep ofyour house.” Abraham returned three years later tofind a new wife, named Fatima, who attended tohim according to the highest standards of hospital-ity. In response to this Abraham left a second mes-sage: “Keep the doorpost of your house.”

This story is clearly borrowed from the Islamiccycle of stories about Abraham, and seems to pre-serve a Shi‘ite polemic against Sunni Islam. How itentered this late midrashic text, however, and whatpurpose it could have served in a Jewish context,are questions that have not yet been fully answered.

Several other medieval midrashim (/Midrash)borrow from and build upon the stories and motifsfound in PRE. Three short narratives (Ma↪aseh Avra-

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ham, Ma↪aseh Avraham Avinu, and Midrash de-Avra-ham Avinu) focus on the early life of Abraham, as dotwo 12th century compilations: Sefer ha-Yashar andSefer ha-Zikhronot. The latter collects and synthesizespassages from PRE, together with other sources (in-cluding a Hebrew version of Pseudo-Philo, BiblicalAntiquities). The same stories are repeated, ex-panded, and elaborated in Pesiqta Rabbati andTanna de-vei Eliyyahu, although within a morestraightforward homiletical and liturgical context,and with greater emphasis on the eschatological“merit of Abraham.”2. Abraham in Maimonides. Abraham is a centralfigure, perhaps the central figure, in the writings ofMoses /Maimonides (Rambam: 1138–204). Mai-monides himself has justly been called “Abrahamicman.” Abraham is the key figure in Maimonides’sschematic history of religion; and nearly everywork by the Master – including each part of theGuide of the Perplexed – begins with a motto drawnfrom Gen 21 : 33: “In the name of the /Lord, Godof the world.”

In Maimonides’ code of /law, Mishneh Torah(in ch. 1 of the “Laws of Idolatry and Idolaters”),Abraham plays a central role in his history of reli-gion. There Maimonides describes a linear declinefrom /monotheism to idolatry, beginning withthe generation of /Enosh, when the people di-rected their prayers towards representatives of Godrather than God. In the succeeding generations,God, the first cause, was completely forgotten. In-stead, people considered the celestial bodies theonly rulers of the sublunar world. This continueduntil the birth of Abraham, who, through his ra-tional explorations of nature – without anyteacher – recognized that there is one God, the finalcause of celestial motion (as Maimonides presentsit, Abraham knew God through the “cosmologicalproof” of medieval theology). Abraham then de-voted himself to spreading his doctrines through-out the ancient Near East, challenging the ortho-doxies of his time, writing books to disseminate hisviews, attracting converts, and teaching his princi-ples to Isaac, who taught them to /Jacob, who cre-ated a religious community based on the true beliefof monotheism.

In Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides’s brief his-tory of religion is modified and elaborated in im-portant ways. In light of an Arabic book entitledNabatean Agriculture – a work of magic (/Magi,Magic) purporting to represent the beliefs of “Sa-bian” idolaters at the time of Abraham – Maimoni-des, as historian and anthropologist, attempted toreconstruct the exact social setting of Abraham’spreaching and polemics. For example, in Guide3 : 29, after briefly describing the star-worshippingreligion of the Sabians, Maimonides summarizes atext from the Nabatean Agriculture, which describesAbraham’s disputations with his contemporaries:

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When Ibrahim, who was brought up in Kutha, disa-greed with the community and asserted that there was anagent other than the sun, various arguments were broughtforward against him. … [which] set forth the clear and man-ifest activities of the sun in what exists. Thereupon he …told them: You are right; it is like an axe in the hands of acarpenter. Then they mention a part of his argumenta-tion … against them. At the conclusion of the story theymention that the king put Abraham our Father … intoprison [where]… he persevered for days and days in arguingagainst them. Thereupon the king became afraid that hewould ruin his polity and turn the people away from theirreligions and therefore he banished him toward /Syriaafter having confiscated all his property ….

Abraham reappears in several additional passa-ges in the Guide. In Guide 3 : 22, Maimonides ex-plains Gen 22 in detail. In Guide 3 : 51, Abraham,together with Isaac, Jacob, and /Moses, is singledout not as philosopher, polemicist, and championof the /faith, but as a Sufi sheikh of sorts, whocreates a political community, while not allowinghis bond with God to be broken; he continues po-litical engagement in this world without compro-mising in any way his mystical attachment to God.

Maimonides’s representation of Abraham hadsignificant influence on all later Jewish discussionsof Gen 12–25, exegetical and philosophical alike.His reconstruction of ancient paganism in light ofthe Nabatean Agriculture continued to influence bib-lical scholarship even into the early modern period.The conception of Abraham’s philosophical con-templation of God was repercussive as well as itwas controversial. Later opponents of philosophy,such as Hasdai /Crescas (ca. 1340–1410/11), at-tempted to undermine Maimonides’ rational reli-gion through a re-reading of the same biblical andrabbinic texts singled out by Maimonides. Accord-ing to Crescas, Abraham recognized the existenceand unity of God not through philosophy and theo-retical speculation, but through prophecy and reve-lation. For Crescas, in other words, divine revela-tion and prophecy – as represented by the first callto “get thee out” – marks the beginning of a reli-gious life of obedience rather than the end of aphilosophical life of speculation.3. Abraham in Nahømanides. Gen 12–25 was ex-plicated in the Jewish commentary tradition aswell, in the foundational commentaries by/Saadia ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi, Abraham /IbnEzra, and Rabbi Solomon Yitshøaqi (/Rashi). Mostcreative, however, was the work of Moses /Nahø -manides (Ramban; 1194–1270).

Nahømanides’ commentary on the /Torahbuilds upon midrash, Rashi and Ibn Ezra, borrowsfrom and criticizes Maimonides, but introducesnew ideas as well. Like the midrashim and Mai-monides, Nahømanides introduces legends aboutthe early life of Abraham in Haran and Kutha,elaborating upon them in light of the Nabatean Agri-culture. But he appeals to other sources as well, in-cluding Near Eastern geography, based on reports

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by contemporary travelers to the cities of Abra-ham’s youth. Nahømanides also introduces one dis-tinctive idea of his own theology – “concealed mira-cles” – to help explain why Abraham’s early-lifeconflicts with Sabians and Nimrod are alluded tobut not clearly reported in Scripture; God worksconcealed miracles for the righteous, to save themfrom difficult situations.

Nahømanides was one of the few medieval Jew-ish exegetes to use typology or prefigurative /exe-gesis, a method which was popular among Chris-tians rather than Jews. For example, citing a rab-binic maxim – “everything that happens to the pa-triarchs is a sign to the children” (ma↪aseh avot simanla-banim) – he explains Abraham’s descent intoEgypt as prefiguring the Egyptian bondage, thewar with the four kings as alluding to the four es-chatological kingdoms described in the Book of/Daniel, and /Melchizedek King of /Salem,priest of the most high God, as prefiguring thehigh priest in the future /Temple in /Jerusalem.This sort of prefigurative exegesis also helps himto find extra meaning in the text’s seemingly insig-nificant details. Thus, Abraham’s lie about Sarahwas actually a cause, a parallel foreshadowing, ofthe difficult trials in Egypt. Here the lie is not ig-nored or dismissed apologetically, but is rather fitinto a typological reading of redemption history,which takes seriously the implications (really cos-mic implications) of moral action.

A detailed criticism of Maimonides is found inNahømanides’ commentary on Gen 18 : 1. The bibli-cal text itself is problematic. God first appears toAbraham, followed by three men who are latercalled /angels. Does the text represent one God inthe form of three (as in Christian interpretations), asingle divine epiphany followed by the separatevisit of three angels, or a divine revelation followedby the visit of three “men” who are like angels?Maimonides had resolved this problem by fiat.God’s appearance to Abraham at Gen 18 : 1 marksthe beginning of a single prophetic dream or vi-sion, which means that all subsequent events in thenarrative are internal psychic experiences. But thisreading of the text creates additional problems;when does the dream end and reality begin? Afterthe /prophecy about Isaac? After the argumentwith God? After the destruction of /Sodom? In hiscommentary, Nahømanides responded to all theseproblems. Nevertheless, after rejecting the philo-sophical reading of Maimonides, he proceeds to in-troduce a kabbalistic explanation in its place(/Kabbalah). According to him, the angels arecalled “men” because they take on a fine corporealgarment allowing them to be recognized in the hu-man world. This, he says, is the “secret of the gar-ment.”

As in so many other areas, the rival explana-tions of Gen 18 by Maimonides and Nahømanides

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served as foundation for later reflections and con-troversies. For example, Rabbi Yom Tom ben Abra-ham al-Ishbili (Ritba, 1250–1330) devoted ch. 3 ofhis Sefer Zikkaron to reconciling the two great mas-ters of medieval Judaism.4. Abraham in the Zohar. Nahømanides was oneof the earliest biblical exegetes to introduce kabba-listic notions into a biblical commentary. In gen-eral, however, he was reserved in his use of Kabba-lah. In the following generation, the stories ofAbraham were explained in detail in the Zohar (late13th cent.), which would become the most influen-tial work of Kabbalah.

In the Zohar, Abraham’s life and travels are ex-plained with constant reference to the sefirot (“enu-merations”). Abraham himself is høesed (/Love;/Grace) or an individual who seeks to rise to høesedthrough his spiritual quests. His travels to Canaanwere self-motivated; he began the journey and onlythen did God say: “Get thee to Canaan.” In Canaanhe conjoined with the /Shekhinah, the lowest se-firah, but had to descend into Egypt, the realm ofevil, in order to refine himself. Only if he couldwithstand the forces of evil could he rise to a higherlevel still. Although he traveled frequently, he wasalways traveling toward the /Negeb, which meanssouth, and represents the sefirah høesed.

Concerning the lie about Sarah being his “sis-ter,” according to the Zohar Abraham did not reallylie, for Sarah is Shekhinah, and Shekhinah and høesedare siblings in the world of the sefirot, children ofhøokhmah (/“wisdom”). The sacrifice of Isaac is alsoexplained with reference to the sefirot. Abraham,qua høesed, was all grace and love, therefore heneeded to combine with din/gevurah (“severe judg-ment”) – Isaac – in order to achieve a proper bal-ance. In other words, Abraham took on the form ofIsaac in order to bind Isaac, while Isaac, by submit-ting peacefully to the sacrifice, took on the formof Abraham – passive love and grace. Only by thismerging of love and judgment can Jacob, true di-vine compassion, come to be.

The most interesting aspect of the ZoharicAbraham concerns circumcision, which is discussedat much greater length than any other subject inthe Abraham narrative. Circumcision, of course,was a central practice in rabbinic Judaism; the rab-binic sages were especially concerned with this sin-gle /commandment, in response to Christian po-lemics. With the Zohar, however, the concerns aresomewhat different. The mystical experience, inthe Zohar as in other traditions, is often representedas a union between male and female. In the Zohar,this applies from above and below; the mystic’s un-ion with Shekhinah from below and the union oftiferet (“adornment”) with Shekhinah through yesod(“foundation”) from above. For the Jewish mystic,moreover, this sexual-mystical union must takeplace in a pure state. Thus, it is only after circumci-

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sion that there can be a true vision of the divineworld. In other words, for the author/s of the Zohar,circumcision is a prerequisite for mystical union.

Bibliography. Primary: ■ Ma‘aseh Avraham Avinu, in Bet ha-Midrash (ed. A. Jellinek; Jerusalem 1938) vol. 1, 25–34.■ Ma‘aseh Avraham, ibid., vol. 2, 118–19. ■ Midrash de-Avra-ham Avinu, ibid., vol. 5, 40–42. ■ The Book of Memory, thatis the Chronicles of Jerahme’el (ed. E. Yassif; Ramat Aviv 2001).[Heb.] ■ The Chronicle of Jerahmeel (New York 1971).

Secondary: ■ R. Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands (Albany,N.Y., 1990). ■ M. Hallamish/H. Kasher/Y. Silver (eds.), TheFaith of Abraham (Ramat-Gan 2002). ■ S. Lowin, The Makingof a Forefather (Diss. Chicago 2002). ■ M. Saperstein, “Jew-ish Typological Exegesis after Nahmanides,” in “Your VoiceLike a Ram’s Horn” (Cincinnati, Ohio 1996) 23–36. ■ E. R.Wolfson, Circle in the Square (Albany, N.Y. 1995). ■ Id.,“The Secret of the Garment in Nahømanides,” Da‘at 24(1990) 25–49. ■ Id., “‘By Way of Truth’,” Association of Jew-ish Studies Review 14(1989): 103–78.

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