You have a thing for circumcision ( & weenies) don't you? A bit queer but with you no wonder. Now moving on here's the head Dean/Rabbi from Harvard....... Shaye Cohen
en.wikipedia.org
Abraham is a fiction boyyo, as real as Gandalf in the Hobbit: (and Moses)
The biblical narrative gets going with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12.
Abraham in turn Isaac, in turn Jacob, in turn Joseph and the twelve tribes, this
brings us directly to the people of Israel and the covenant at Sinai. So Abraham
is thought of as the first Jew, the archetype.
Historically speaking, of course, this doesn't make much sense. It's hard to
talk about Jews living around the year 1800 B.C.E. or anytime near that. We
don't have any of the institutions, beliefs, social structures in place that
will later characterize Jews and Jewishness.
So in a mythic kind of way we can
say that Abraham recognizes God and that Abraham launches the process—biological
and social and cultural—that will culminate in the people of Israel, who in turn
will become Jews and the purveyors of Judaism. But to call Abraham Jewish
simplifies things very dramatically.
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