CrashCourse3

Crash Course in Jewish History -- Part 3

THE WORLD OF ABRAHAM

By Rabbi Ken Spiro

* * *

By understanding the character of Abraham, the “proto-Jew”, one can
understand what Jews are all about.

Jewish history doesn’t happen in a vacuum. No people’s history happens in
a vacuum. So first we have to zoom out and get a little understanding of
where Abraham fits in the world of his time.

Abraham appears at a period of time called the Middle Bronze period,
around the 18th century BCE. (Early civilization is characterized by the
metals they predominantly used and the Middle Bronze period includes the
period of time from 2200 BCE until 1550 BCE.)

Whereas most anthropologists believe that hominids, forerunners of human
beings physically, originated in Africa, human civilization begins in the
Middle East in the Fertile Crescent, which is where Abraham was born.

When we say civilization, we are talking about sophisticated arrangements
of people living together, not just simple agrarian settlements, not just a
few people living in a few huts. About 5,500 years ago in the Middle East,
there occurred an evolution of humanity from hunter/gatherers -- people
who spend their whole day looking for food -- to people who were able to
domesticate livestock. This meant they could raise animals to eat them or
to use them for their milk and their hides, and to plow the land to grow
crops.

Once this occurred, there was a surplus of food, which led to population
growth and people started specializing in types of labor -- you had
craftsmen, scholars, priests and warriors. That, in turn, led to the growth
of
cities.

The earliest civilizations in the world, according to most opinions, began
in
the area called the Fertile Crescent.

THE FERTILE CRESCENT

The Fertile Crescent encompasses the area flowed by the Nile in Egypt,
the Levant (the middle section where Israel is located), and the area flowed
by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers.

The three great rivers contribute mightily to the fertility, and consequent
desirability, of this area. The Nile is an incredible river, the largest
river in
the world. Without the Nile, Egypt would be a desert. In ancient times, 3%
of Egypt was arable land, 97% was desert. Also the Euphrates and the
Tigris Rivers are two tremendous rivers; they run through what is today
basically Iraq and into Turkey, but what historians have dubbed
Mesopotamia, which is Greek for “in the middle of two rivers.”

There is some debate whether the first civilization sprang up in Egypt or in
Mesopotamia (specifically in the section of Mesopotamia called Sumer)
but we can be fairly sure that the first hallmark of civilization --
writing --
originated in the Fertile Crescent.

Writing was a tremendous invention though we take it for granted today. It
began with pictographs. You drew a stick figure and that stood for “man.”
Later those pictures evolved into more abstract symbols which stood for
phonetic sounds, until eventually there came about a system of three
“letters,” each representing a sound and combining together to make a
word that conveyed an idea. (To this day, Hebrew is based on a three-
consonant root system.)

Writing was the single greatest human invention. All the technology of
today depends on the collective accumulation of accurately transmitted
information, which now comes so fast we can’t keep up with it.

“A SPEAKING SOUL”

>From the Jewish perspective the ability to express oneself -- whether
through writing or speech -- personifies what human beings are all about.
We learn that when God created the first human being -- Adam -- He
“breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living
soul.”
(Genesis 2:7) The Hebrew phrase l’nefesh chayah, “living soul,” can also
be translated as “a speaking soul.” (Targum Onkelos)

Of the two earliest civilizations that developed, Egypt is unusual because
it’s surrounded by desert and so it is virtually unapproachable. Egypt as a
civilization survived for close to 3,000 years. This is an incredibly long
period of time for civilization to survive. Why did Egypt survive for so
long?
Because no-one could invade it. It took the Greeks -- specifically
Alexander, the Great -- to finish Egypt off, and then it became a Greek
colony.

Mesopotamia had no such natural defenses. It was a giant flood plain
sitting in the middle of the great migration pattern of all ancient peoples.
Whatever conqueror came out of Asia or out of Europe set foot here. It had
no natural defenses -- no mountains, no deserts -- and it was a very
desirable fertile land.

We see the land changing hands many times and a huge number of
civilizations in this part of the world -- Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans and then, of course, the Islamic invaders.

AT THE CROSSROADS

In this tumultuous place is where Jewish history begins -- at the bottom of
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in the cradle of civilization. This was
the
logical place for civilization to begin in terms of the development of
agriculture and culture. And it’s also a logical place for Abraham to
appear,
because if Abraham is going to affect the world, he has to be at the
crossroads of the ancient migration pathways. If he were born an Eskimo
or an American Indian, all of human history would have been different.

But Abraham was born in Mesopotamia, in particular in a bustling place
called Ur Kasdim, or Ur of the Chaldees, which has been excavated by
archeologists in today’s Iraq.

This was then the center of earliest human civilization, a cosmopolitan
center. And it is from here that Abraham’s journey begins.

NEXT: ABRAHAM’S JOURNEY

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