Abraham (Old Testament)

• Melchizedek revealed Most High observer to

43:5.17Ev­ery quar­an­tined or iso­lated world has a Vo­ron­da­dek Son act­ing as an ob­server. He does not par­tic­i­pate in plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion ex­cept when or­dered by the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther to in­ter­vene in the af­fairs of the na­tions. Ac­tu­ally it is this Most High ob­server who “rules in the king­doms of men.” Uran­tia is one of the iso­lated worlds of Nor­la­ti­adek, and a Vo­ron­da­dek ob­server has been sta­tioned on the planet ever since the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal. When Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek min­is­tered in semi­ma­te­rial form on Uran­tia, he paid re­spect­ful homage to the Most High ob­server then on duty, as it is writ­ten, “And Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, was the priest of the Most High.” Mel­chiz­e­dek re­vealed the re­la­tions of this Most High ob­server to Abra­ham when he said, “And blessed be the Most High, who has de­liv­ered your en­e­mies into your hand.”

• Jews › traced A.’s genealogy to Adam

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

• married his half-sister

82:5.4Su­pe­rior groups, when iso­lated, al­ways re­verted to con­san­guineous mat­ing. The Nod­ites for over one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years were one of the great in-mar­riage groups. The later-day in-mar­riage mores were tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the tra­di­tions of the vi­o­let race, in which, at first, mat­ings were, per­force, be­tween brother and sis­ter. And brother and sis­ter mar­riages were com­mon in early Egypt, Syria, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and through­out the lands once oc­cu­pied by the And­ites. The Egyp­tians long prac­ticed brother and sis­ter mar­riages in an ef­fort to keep the royal blood pure, a cus­tom which per­sisted even longer in Per­sia. Among the Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, be­fore the days of Abra­ham, cousin mar­riages were oblig­a­tory; cousins had prior mar­riage rights to cousins. Abra­ham him­self mar­ried his half sis­ter, but such unions were not al­lowed un­der the later mores of the Jews.

• sacrifice of Isaac

89:6.8The spec­ta­cle of Abra­ham con­strained to sac­ri­fice his son Isaac, while shock­ing to civ­i­lized sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ties, was not a new or strange idea to the men of those days. It was long a preva­lent prac­tice for fa­thers, at times of great emo­tional stress, to sac­ri­fice their first-born sons. Many peo­ples have a tra­di­tion anal­o­gous to this story, for there once ex­isted a world-wide and pro­found be­lief that it was nec­es­sary to of­fer a hu­man sac­ri­fice when any­thing ex­traor­di­nary or un­usual hap­pened.

• introduced tithing system

93:3.1With the pass­ing of a decade, Mel­chiz­e­dek or­ga­nized his schools at Salem, pat­tern­ing them on the olden sys­tem which had been de­vel­oped by the early Sethite priests of the sec­ond Eden. Even the idea of a tithing sys­tem, which was in­tro­duced by his later con­vert Abra­ham, was also de­rived from the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the meth­ods of the an­cient Sethites.

• believed halfheartedly in Melchizedek covenant

93:4.5And that was the whole of the creed of the Salem colony. But even such a short and sim­ple dec­la­ra­tion of faith was al­to­gether too much and too ad­vanced for the men of those days. They sim­ply could not grasp the idea of get­ting di­vine fa­vor for noth­ing—by faith. They were too deeply con­firmed in the be­lief that man was born un­der for­feit to the gods. Too long and too earnestly had they sac­ri­ficed and made gifts to the priests to be able to com­pre­hend the good news that sal­va­tion, di­vine fa­vor, was a free gift to all who would be­lieve in the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant. But Abra­ham did be­lieve half­heart­edly, and even that was “counted for righ­teous­ness.”

• victory over Chedorlaomer

93:4.14While no sac­ri­fices were per­mit­ted within the colony, Mel­chiz­e­dek well knew how dif­fi­cult it is to sud­denly up­root long-es­tab­lished cus­toms and ac­cord­ingly had wisely of­fered these peo­ple the sub­sti­tute of a sacra­ment of bread and wine for the older sac­ri­fice of flesh and blood. It is of rec­ord, “Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine.” But even this cau­tious in­no­va­tion was not al­to­gether suc­cess­ful; the var­i­ous tribes all main­tained aux­il­iary cen­ters on the out­skirts of Salem where they of­fered sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings. Even Abra­ham re­sorted to this bar­barous prac­tice af­ter his vic­tory over Ched­or­la­o­mer; he sim­ply did not feel quite at ease un­til he had of­fered a con­ven­tional sac­ri­fice. And Mel­chiz­e­dek never did suc­ceed in fully erad­i­cat­ing this pro­cliv­ity to sac­ri­fice from the re­li­gious prac­tices of his fol­low­ers, even of Abra­ham.

• Melchizedek’s brilliant pupil, chief supporter

93:4.16Mel­chiz­e­dek taught el­e­men­tary re­vealed truth at Salem for ninety-four years, and dur­ing this time Abra­ham at­tended the Salem school three dif­fer­ent times. He fi­nally be­came a con­vert to the Salem teach­ings, be­com­ing one of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s most bril­liant pupils and chief sup­port­ers.

• Melchizedek charged A. to keep alive truth of one God

93:5.1Al­though it may be an er­ror to speak of “cho­sen peo­ple,” it is not a mis­take to re­fer to Abra­ham as a cho­sen in­di­vid­ual. Mel­chiz­e­dek did lay upon Abra­ham the re­spon­si­bil­ity of keep­ing alive the truth of one God as dis­tin­guished from the pre­vail­ing be­lief in plu­ral de­i­ties.

93:5.2The choice of Pales­tine as the site for Ma­chi­venta’s ac­tiv­i­ties was in part pred­i­cated upon the de­sire to es­tab­lish con­tact with some hu­man fam­ily em­body­ing the po­ten­tials of lead­er­ship. At the time of the in­car­na­tion of Mel­chiz­e­dek there were many fam­i­lies on earth just as well pre­pared to re­ceive the doc­trine of Salem as was that of Abra­ham. There were equally en­dowed fam­i­lies among the red men, the yel­low men, and the de­scen­dants of the And­ites to the west and north. But, again, none of these lo­cal­i­ties were so fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated for Mi­chael’s sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance on earth as was the east­ern shore of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion in Pales­tine and the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Mi­chael among the He­brew peo­ple were in no small mea­sure de­ter­mined by ge­og­ra­phy, by the fact that Pales­tine was cen­trally lo­cated with ref­er­ence to the then ex­is­tent trade, travel, and civ­i­liza­tion of the world.

93:5.3For some time the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers had been ob­serv­ing the an­ces­tors of Abra­ham, and they con­fi­dently ex­pected off­spring in a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion who would be char­ac­ter­ized by in­tel­li­gence, ini­tia­tive, sagac­ity, and sin­cer­ity. The chil­dren of Terah, the fa­ther of Abra­ham, in ev­ery way met these ex­pec­ta­tions. It was this pos­si­bil­ity of con­tact with these ver­sa­tile chil­dren of Terah that had con­sid­er­able to do with the ap­pear­ance of Ma­chi­venta at Salem, rather than in Egypt, China, In­dia, or among the north­ern tribes.

• slow to give up household gods

93:5.4Terah and his whole fam­ily were half­hearted con­verts to the Salem re­li­gion, which had been preached in Chaldea; they learned of Mel­chiz­e­dek through the preach­ing of Ovid, a Phoeni­cian teacher who pro­claimed the Salem doc­trines in Ur. They left Ur in­tend­ing to go di­rectly through to Salem, but Na­hor, Abra­ham’s brother, not hav­ing seen Mel­chiz­e­dek, was luke­warm and per­suaded them to tarry at Ha­ran. And it was a long time af­ter they ar­rived in Pales­tine be­fore they were will­ing to de­stroy all of the house­hold gods they had brought with them; they were slow to give up the many gods of Mes­o­po­ta­mia for the one God of Salem.

93:5.5A few weeks af­ter the death of Abra­ham’s fa­ther, Terah, Mel­chiz­e­dek sent one of his stu­dents, Jaram the Hit­tite, to ex­tend this in­vi­ta­tion to both Abra­ham and Na­hor: “Come to Salem, where you shall hear our teach­ings of the truth of the eter­nal Cre­ator, and in the en­light­ened off­spring of you two broth­ers shall all the world be blessed.” Now Na­hor had not wholly ac­cepted the Mel­chiz­e­dek gospel; he re­mained be­hind and built up a strong city-state which bore his name; but Lot, Abra­ham’s nephew, de­cided to go with his un­cle to Salem.

93:5.6Upon ar­riv­ing at Salem, Abra­ham and Lot chose a hilly fast­ness near the city where they could de­fend them­selves against the many sur­prise at­tacks of north­ern raiders. At this time the Hit­tites, As­syr­i­ans, Phil­is­tines, and other groups were con­stantly raid­ing the tribes of cen­tral and south­ern Pales­tine. From their stronghold in the hills Abra­ham and Lot made fre­quent pil­grim­ages to Salem.

• found distant relative on Egyptian throne
• shared in spoils of Egyptian military campaigns

93:5.7Not long af­ter they had es­tab­lished them­selves near Salem, Abra­ham and Lot jour­neyed to the val­ley of the Nile to ob­tain food sup­plies as there was then a drought in Pales­tine. Dur­ing his brief so­journ in Egypt Abra­ham found a dis­tant rel­a­tive on the Egyp­tian throne, and he served as the com­man­der of two very suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary ex­pe­di­tions for this king. Dur­ing the lat­ter part of his so­journ on the Nile he and his wife, Sarah, lived at court, and when leav­ing Egypt, he was given a share of the spoils of his mil­i­tary cam­paigns.

93:5.8It re­quired great de­ter­mi­na­tion for Abra­ham to forgo the hon­ors of the Egyp­tian court and re­turn to the more spir­i­tual work spon­sored by Ma­chi­venta. But Mel­chiz­e­dek was revered even in Egypt, and when the full story was laid be­fore Pharaoh, he strongly urged Abra­ham to re­turn to the ex­e­cu­tion of his vows to the cause of Salem.

• kingly ambitions; planned to subdue all Canaan under Salem rule

93:5.9Abra­ham had kingly am­bi­tions, and on the way back from Egypt he laid be­fore Lot his plan to sub­due all Ca­naan and bring its peo­ple un­der the rule of Salem. Lot was more bent on busi­ness; so, af­ter a later dis­agree­ment, he went to Sodom to en­gage in trade and an­i­mal hus­bandry. Lot liked nei­ther a mil­i­tary nor a herder’s life.

93:5.10Upon re­turn­ing with his fam­ily to Salem, Abra­ham be­gan to ma­ture his mil­i­tary proj­ects. He was soon rec­og­nized as the civil ruler of the Salem ter­ri­tory and had con­fed­er­ated un­der his lead­er­ship seven near-by tribes. In­deed, it was with great dif­fi­culty that Mel­chiz­e­dek re­strained Abra­ham, who was fired with a zeal to go forth and round up the neigh­bor­ing tribes with the sword that they might thus more quickly be brought to a knowl­edge of the Salem truths.

93:5.11Mel­chiz­e­dek main­tained peace­ful re­la­tions with all the sur­round­ing tribes; he was not mil­i­taris­tic and was never at­tacked by any of the armies as they moved back and forth. He was en­tirely will­ing that Abra­ham should for­mu­late a de­fen­sive pol­icy for Salem such as was sub­se­quently put into ef­fect, but he would not ap­prove of his pupil’s am­bi­tious schemes for con­quest; so there oc­curred a friendly sev­er­ance of re­la­tion­ship, Abra­ham go­ing over to He­bron to es­tab­lish his mil­i­tary cap­i­tal.

• moved on Lot’s enemy with army of 4000

93:5.12Abra­ham, be­cause of his close con­nec­tion with the il­lus­tri­ous Mel­chiz­e­dek, pos­sessed great ad­van­tage over the sur­round­ing petty kings; they all revered Mel­chiz­e­dek and un­duly feared Abra­ham. Abra­ham knew of this fear and only awaited an op­por­tune oc­ca­sion to at­tack his neigh­bors, and this ex­cuse came when some of these rulers pre­sumed to raid the prop­erty of his nephew Lot, who dwelt in Sodom. Upon hear­ing of this, Abra­ham, at the head of his seven con­fed­er­ated tribes, moved on the en­emy. His own body­guard of 318 of­fi­cered the army, num­ber­ing more than 4,000, which struck at this time.

93:5.13When Mel­chiz­e­dek heard of Abra­ham’s dec­la­ra­tion of war, he went forth to dis­suade him but only caught up with his for­mer dis­ci­ple as he re­turned vic­to­ri­ous from the bat­tle. Abra­ham in­sisted that the God of Salem had given him vic­tory over his en­e­mies and per­sisted in giv­ing a tenth of his spoils to the Salem trea­sury. The other ninety per cent he re­moved to his cap­i­tal at He­bron.

93:5.14Af­ter this bat­tle of Sid­dim, Abra­ham be­came leader of a sec­ond con­fed­er­a­tion of eleven tribes and not only paid tithes to Mel­chiz­e­dek but saw to it that all oth­ers in that vicin­ity did the same. His diplo­matic deal­ings with the king of Sodom, to­gether with the fear in which he was so gen­er­ally held, re­sulted in the king of Sodom and oth­ers join­ing the He­bron mil­i­tary con­fed­er­a­tion; Abra­ham was re­ally well on the way to es­tab­lish­ing a pow­er­ful state in Pales­tine.

93:6.1Abra­ham en­vis­aged the con­quest of all Ca­naan. His de­ter­mi­na­tion was only weak­ened by the fact that Mel­chiz­e­dek would not sanc­tion the un­der­tak­ing. But Abra­ham had about de­cided to em­bark upon the en­ter­prise when the thought that he had no son to suc­ceed him as ruler of this pro­posed king­dom be­gan to worry him. He ar­ranged an­other con­fer­ence with Mel­chiz­e­dek; and it was in the course of this in­ter­view that the priest of Salem, the vis­i­ble Son of God, per­suaded Abra­ham to aban­don his scheme of ma­te­rial con­quest and tem­po­ral rule in fa­vor of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the king­dom of heaven.

93:6.2Mel­chiz­e­dek ex­plained to Abra­ham the fu­til­ity of con­tend­ing with the Amor­ite con­fed­er­a­tion but made it equally clear that these back­ward clans were cer­tainly com­mit­ting sui­cide by their fool­ish prac­tices so that in a few gen­er­a­tions they would be so weak­ened that the de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, mean­while greatly in­creased, could eas­ily over­come them.

93:6.3And Mel­chiz­e­dek made a for­mal covenant with Abra­ham at Salem. Said he to Abra­ham: “Look now up to the heav­ens and num­ber the stars if you are able; so nu­mer­ous shall your seed be.” And Abra­ham be­lieved Mel­chiz­e­dek, “and it was counted to him for righ­teous­ness.” And then Mel­chiz­e­dek told Abra­ham the story of the fu­ture oc­cu­pa­tion of Ca­naan by his off­spring af­ter their so­journ in Egypt.

93:6.4This covenant of Mel­chiz­e­dek with Abra­ham rep­re­sents the great Uran­tian agree­ment be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity whereby God agrees to do ev­ery­thing; man only agrees to be­lieve God’s promises and fol­low his in­struc­tions. Here­to­fore it had been be­lieved that sal­va­tion could be se­cured only by works—sac­ri­fices and of­fer­ings; now, Mel­chiz­e­dek again brought to Uran­tia the good news that sal­va­tion, fa­vor with God, is to be had by faith. But this gospel of sim­ple faith in God was too ad­vanced; the Semitic tribes­men sub­se­quently pre­ferred to go back to the older sac­ri­fices and atone­ment for sin by the shed­ding of blood.

93:6.5It was not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of this covenant that Isaac, the son of Abra­ham, was born in ac­cor­dance with the prom­ise of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Af­ter the birth of Isaac, Abra­ham took a very solemn at­ti­tude to­ward his covenant with Mel­chiz­e­dek, go­ing over to Salem to have it stated in writ­ing. It was at this pub­lic and for­mal ac­cep­tance of the covenant that he changed his name from Abram to Abra­ham.

93:6.6Most of the Salem be­liev­ers had prac­ticed cir­cum­ci­sion, though it had never been made oblig­a­tory by Mel­chiz­e­dek. Now Abra­ham had al­ways so op­posed cir­cum­ci­sion that on this oc­ca­sion he de­cided to sol­em­nize the event by for­mally ac­cept­ing this rite in to­ken of the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Salem covenant.

• 3 celestial beings appeared to

93:6.7It was fol­low­ing this real and pub­lic sur­ren­der of his per­sonal am­bi­tions in be­half of the larger plans of Mel­chiz­e­dek that the three ce­les­tial be­ings ap­peared to him on the plains of Mamre. This was an ap­pear­ance of fact, not­with­stand­ing its as­so­ci­a­tion with the sub­se­quently fab­ri­cated nar­ra­tives re­lat­ing to the nat­u­ral de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah. And these leg­ends of the hap­pen­ings of those days in­di­cate how re­tarded were the morals and ethics of even so re­cent a time.

• shrewd, wealthy business man; not overly pious

93:6.8Upon the con­sum­ma­tion of the solemn covenant, the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek was com­plete. Abra­ham again as­sumed the civil and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship of the Salem colony, which at its height car­ried over one hun­dred thou­sand reg­u­lar tithe pay­ers on the rolls of the Mel­chiz­e­dek broth­er­hood. Abra­ham greatly im­proved the Salem tem­ple and pro­vided new tents for the en­tire school. He not only ex­tended the tithing sys­tem but also in­sti­tuted many im­proved meth­ods of con­duct­ing the busi­ness of the school, be­sides con­tribut­ing greatly to the bet­ter han­dling of the de­part­ment of mis­sion­ary pro­pa­ganda. He also did much to ef­fect im­prove­ment of the herds and the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Salem dairy­ing projects. Abra­ham was a shrewd and ef­fi­cient busi­ness man, a wealthy man for his day; he was not overly pi­ous, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere, and he did be­lieve in Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.

• feared someone would kill him to get Sarah
• fearful and timid after disappearance of Melchizedek

93:9.3Abra­ham be­came fear­ful and timid im­me­di­ately af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek. He with­held his iden­tity upon ar­rival at Gerar, so that Abim­elech ap­pro­pri­ated his wife. (Shortly af­ter his mar­riage to Sarah, Abra­ham one night had over­heard a plot to mur­der him in or­der to get his bril­liant wife. This dread be­came a ter­ror to the oth­er­wise brave and dar­ing leader; all his life he feared that some­one would kill him se­cretly in or­der to get Sarah. And this ex­plains why, on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, this brave man ex­hib­ited real cow­ardice.)

• spiritual leader of all surrounding tribes

93:9.4But Abra­ham was not long to be de­terred in his mis­sion as the suc­ces­sor of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Soon he made con­verts among the Phil­is­tines and of Abim­elech’s peo­ple, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, be­came con­tam­i­nated with many of their su­per­sti­tions, par­tic­u­larly with their prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing first-born sons. Thus did Abra­ham again be­come a great leader in Pales­tine. He was held in rev­er­ence by all groups and hon­ored by all kings. He was the spir­i­tual leader of all the sur­round­ing tribes, and his in­flu­ence con­tin­ued for some time af­ter his death. Dur­ing the clos­ing years of his life he once more re­turned to He­bron, the scene of his ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties and the place where he had worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with Mel­chiz­e­dek. Abra­ham’s last act was to send trusty ser­vants to the city of his brother, Na­hor, on the bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, to se­cure a woman of his own peo­ple as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the cus­tom of Abra­ham’s peo­ple to marry their cousins. And Abra­ham died con­fi­dent in that faith in God which he had learned from Mel­chiz­e­dek in the van­ished schools of Salem.

• Keturah and Hagar were concubines of
• not so old at birth of Isaac

93:9.8The He­brew nar­ra­tives of Isaac, Ja­cob, and Joseph are far more re­li­able than those about Abra­ham, al­though they also con­tain many di­ver­sions from the facts, al­ter­ations made in­ten­tion­ally and un­in­ten­tion­ally at the time of the com­pi­la­tion of these rec­ords by the He­brew priests dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. Ke­tu­rah was not a wife of Abra­ham; like Ha­gar, she was merely a con­cu­bine. All of Abra­ham’s prop­erty went to Isaac, the son of Sarah, the sta­tus wife. Abra­ham was not so old as the rec­ords in­di­cate, and his wife was much younger. These ages were de­lib­er­ately al­tered in or­der to pro­vide for the sub­se­quent al­leged mirac­u­lous birth of Isaac.

• political circumstances facilitated A.’s promotion of Salem teachings in Egypt

95:3.5Egypt was in­tel­lec­tual and moral but not overly spir­i­tual. In six thou­sand years only four great proph­ets arose among the Egyp­tians. Amen­emope they fol­lowed for a sea­son; Okhban they mur­dered; Ikh­na­ton they ac­cepted but half­heart­edly for one short gen­er­a­tion; Moses they re­jected. Again was it po­lit­i­cal rather than re­li­gious cir­cum­stances that made it easy for Abra­ham and, later on, for Joseph to ex­ert great in­flu­ence through­out Egypt in be­half of the Salem teach­ings of one God. But when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies first en­tered Egypt, they en­coun­tered this highly eth­i­cal cul­ture of evo­lu­tion blended with the mod­i­fied moral stan­dards of Mes­o­po­ta­mian im­mi­grants. These early Nile val­ley teach­ers were the first to pro­claim con­science as the man­date of God, the voice of De­ity.

• Jews › believed national history began with A.
• offspring formed nucleus of later Jewish people

96:2.3It was only af­ter the days of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek and Abra­ham that cer­tain tribes of Semites, be­cause of their pe­cu­liar re­li­gious be­liefs, were called the chil­dren of Is­rael and later on He­brews, Jews, and the “cho­sen peo­ple.” Abra­ham was not the racial fa­ther of all the He­brews; he was not even the pro­gen­i­tor of all the Bed­ouin Semites who were held cap­tive in Egypt. True, his off­spring, com­ing up out of Egypt, did form the nu­cleus of the later Jew­ish peo­ple, but the vast ma­jor­ity of the men and women who be­came in­cor­po­rated into the clans of Is­rael had never so­journed in Egypt. They were merely fel­low no­mads who chose to fol­low the lead­er­ship of Moses as the chil­dren of Abra­ham and their Semite as­so­ciates from Egypt jour­neyed through north­ern Ara­bia.

• offspring formed nucleus of later Jewish people

96:5.9When Moses turned over the com­mand of the He­brews to Joshua, he had al­ready gath­ered up thou­sands of the col­lat­eral de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, Na­hor, Lot, and other of the re­lated tribes and had whipped them into a self-sus­tain­ing and par­tially self-reg­u­lat­ing na­tion of pas­toral war­riors.

• Jews › viewed A. as having ordained oral law

121:7.3The scribes, the Phar­isees, and the priest­hood held the Jews in a ter­ri­ble bond­age of rit­u­al­ism and le­gal­ism, a bond­age far more real than that of the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal rule. The Jews of Je­sus’ time were not only held in sub­ju­ga­tion to the law but were equally bound by the slav­ish de­mands of the tra­di­tions, which in­volved and in­vaded ev­ery do­main of per­sonal and so­cial life. These minute reg­u­la­tions of con­duct pur­sued and dom­i­nated ev­ery loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly re­jected one of their num­ber who pre­sumed to ig­nore their sa­cred tra­di­tions, and who dared to flout their long-hon­ored reg­u­la­tions of so­cial con­duct. They could hardly re­gard with fa­vor the teach­ings of one who did not hes­i­tate to clash with dog­mas which they re­garded as hav­ing been or­dained by Fa­ther Abra­ham him­self. Moses had given them their law and they would not com­pro­mise.

121:7.4By the time of the first cen­tury af­ter Christ the spo­ken in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law by the rec­og­nized teach­ers, the scribes, had be­come a higher au­thor­ity than the writ­ten law it­self. And all this made it eas­ier for cer­tain re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews to ar­ray the peo­ple against the ac­cep­tance of a new gospel.

• ancestor of Joseph father of Jesus

122:1.1Joseph, the hu­man fa­ther of Je­sus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a He­brew of the He­brews, al­beit he car­ried many non-Jew­ish racial strains which had been added to his an­ces­tral tree from time to time by the fe­male lines of his pro­gen­i­tors. The an­ces­try of the fa­ther of Je­sus went back to the days of Abra­ham and through this ven­er­a­ble pa­tri­arch to the ear­lier lines of in­her­i­tance lead­ing to the Sume­ri­ans and Nod­ites and, through the south­ern tribes of the an­cient blue man, to An­don and Fonta. David and Sol­o­mon were not in the di­rect line of Joseph’s an­ces­try, nei­ther did Joseph’s lin­eage go di­rectly back to Adam. Joseph’s im­me­di­ate an­ces­tors were me­chan­ics—builders, car­pen­ters, ma­sons, and smiths. Joseph him­self was a car­pen­ter and later a con­trac­tor. His fam­ily be­longed to a long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the no­bil­ity of the com­mon peo­ple, ac­cen­tu­ated ever and anon by the ap­pear­ance of un­usual in­di­vid­u­als who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in con­nec­tion with the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion on Uran­tia.

• Abraham (Old Testament)

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

• born at Ur; left because of sun worship

133:9.2Je­sus was much in­ter­ested in the early his­tory of Ur, the birth­place of Abra­ham, and he was equally fas­ci­nated with the ru­ins and tra­di­tions of Susa, so much so that Gonod and Ga­nid ex­tended their stay in these parts three weeks in or­der to af­ford Je­sus more time to con­duct his in­ves­ti­ga­tions and also to pro­vide the bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to per­suade him to go back to In­dia with them.

• God can raise up children of A. from stones

135:6.7John was a heroic but tact­less preacher. One day when he was preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing on the west bank of the Jor­dan, a group of Phar­isees and a num­ber of Sad­ducees came for­ward and pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism. Be­fore lead­ing them down into the wa­ter, John, ad­dress­ing them as a group said: “Who warned you to flee, as vipers be­fore the fire, from the wrath to come? I will bap­tize you, but I warn you to bring forth fruit wor­thy of sin­cere re­pen­tance if you would re­ceive the re­mis­sion of your sins. Tell me not that Abra­ham is your fa­ther. I de­clare that God is able of these twelve stones here be­fore you to raise up wor­thy chil­dren for Abra­ham. And even now is the ax laid to the very roots of the trees. Ev­ery tree that brings not forth good fruit is des­tined to be cut down and cast into the fire.” (The twelve stones to which he re­ferred were the re­puted memo­rial stones set up by Joshua to com­mem­o­rate the cross­ing of the “twelve tribes” at this very point when they first en­tered the prom­ised land.)

• Jews › believed national history began with A.

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”

• born at Ur; left because of sun worship

142:3.42. The Most High. This con­cept of the Fa­ther in heaven was pro­claimed by Mel­chiz­e­dek to Abra­ham and was car­ried far from Salem by those who sub­se­quently be­lieved in this en­larged and ex­panded idea of De­ity. Abra­ham and his brother left Ur be­cause of the es­tab­lish­ment of sun wor­ship, and they be­came be­liev­ers in Mel­chiz­e­dek’s teach­ing of El Elyon—the Most High God. Theirs was a com­pos­ite con­cept of God, con­sist­ing in a blend­ing of their older Mes­o­po­ta­mian ideas and the Most High doc­trine.

• justified by faith

150:5.3“Sal­va­tion is the gift of the Fa­ther and is re­vealed by his Sons. Ac­cep­tance by faith on your part makes you a par­taker of the di­vine na­ture, a son or a daugh­ter of God. By faith you are jus­ti­fied; by faith are you saved; and by this same faith are you eter­nally ad­vanced in the way of pro­gres­sive and di­vine per­fec­tion. By faith was Abra­ham jus­ti­fied and made aware of sal­va­tion by the teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek. All down through the ages has this same faith saved the sons of men, but now has a Son come forth from the Fa­ther to make sal­va­tion more real and ac­cept­able.”

• Jesus was before A.

157:6.11“We may not yet pro­claim openly that the Son of Man is the Son of God, but it has been re­vealed to you; where­fore do I speak boldly to you con­cern­ing these mys­ter­ies. Though I stand be­fore you in this phys­i­cal pres­ence, I came forth from God the Fa­ther. Be­fore Abra­ham was, I am. I did come forth from the Fa­ther into this world as you have known me, and I de­clare to you that I must pres­ently leave this world and re­turn to the work of my Fa­ther.”

• children of A. do works of A.

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

• children of A. do works of A.
• saw Jesus’ day and was glad

162:7.5“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you who be­lieve the gospel that, if a man will keep this word of truth alive in his heart, he shall never taste death. And now just at my side a scribe says this state­ment proves that I have a devil, see­ing that Abra­ham is dead, also the proph­ets. And he asks: ‘Are you so much greater than Abra­ham and the proph­ets that you dare to stand here and say that whoso keeps your word shall not taste death? Who do you claim to be that you dare to ut­ter such blas­phemies?’ And I say to all such that, if I glo­rify my­self, my glory is as noth­ing. But it is the Fa­ther who shall glo­rify me, even the same Fa­ther whom you call God. But you have failed to know this your God and my Fa­ther, and I have come to bring you to­gether; to show you how to be­come truly the sons of God. Though you know not the Fa­ther, I truly know him. Even Abra­ham re­joiced to see my day, and by faith he saw it and was glad.”

• Jesus was before A.

162:7.6When the un­be­liev­ing Jews and the agents of the San­hedrin who had gath­ered about by this time heard these words, they raised a tu­mult, shout­ing: “You are not fifty years of age, and yet you talk about see­ing Abra­ham; you are a child of the devil!” Je­sus was un­able to con­tinue the dis­course. He only said as he de­parted, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, be­fore Abra­ham was, I am.” Many of the un­be­liev­ers rushed forth for stones to cast at him, and the agents of the San­hedrin sought to place him un­der ar­rest, but the Mas­ter quickly made his way through the tem­ple cor­ri­dors and es­caped to a se­cret meet­ing place near Beth­any where Martha, Mary, and Laz­a­rus awaited him.

• prophets of A. will sit down with gentile believers

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

• Dives cried aloud to

169:3.2“There was a cer­tain rich man named Dives, who, be­ing clothed in pur­ple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splen­dor ev­ery day. And there was a cer­tain beg­gar named Laz­a­rus, who was laid at this rich man’s gate, cov­ered with sores and de­sir­ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s ta­ble; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beg­gar died and was car­ried away by the an­gels to rest in Abra­ham’s bo­som. And then, pres­ently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp and re­gal splen­dor. When the rich man de­parted from this world, he waked up in Hades, and find­ing him­self in tor­ment, he lifted up his eyes and be­held Abra­ham afar off and Laz­a­rus in his bo­som. And then Dives cried aloud: ‘Fa­ther Abra­ham, have mercy on me and send over Laz­a­rus that he may dip the tip of his fin­ger in wa­ter to cool my tongue, for I am in great an­guish be­cause of my pun­ish­ment.’ And then Abra­ham replied: ‘My son, you should re­mem­ber that in your life­time you en­joyed the good things while Laz­a­rus in like man­ner suf­fered the evil. But now all this is changed, see­ing that Laz­a­rus is com­forted while you are tor­mented. And be­sides, be­tween us and you there is a great gulf so that we can­not go to you, nei­ther can you come over to us.’ Then said Dives to Abra­ham: ‘I pray you send Laz­a­rus back to my fa­ther’s house, inas­much as I have five broth­ers, that he may so tes­tify as to pre­vent my broth­ers from com­ing to this place of tor­ment.’ But Abra­ham said: ‘My son, they have Moses and the proph­ets; let them hear them.’ And then an­swered Dives: ‘No, No, Fa­ther Abra­ham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will re­pent.’ And then said Abra­ham: ‘If they hear not Moses and the proph­ets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded even if one were to rise from the dead.’”

• Jews › abrogated Michael’s covenant with A.

175:3.2From this time on the Jews were left to fin­ish their brief and short lease of na­tional life wholly in ac­cor­dance with their purely hu­man sta­tus among the na­tions of Uran­tia. Is­rael had re­pu­di­ated the Son of the God who made a covenant with Abra­ham, and the plan to make the chil­dren of Abra­ham the light-bear­ers of truth to the world had been shat­tered. The di­vine covenant had been ab­ro­gated, and the end of the He­brew na­tion drew on apace.