Abraham is not Israel. Believing Gentiles are a type of believing Abraham before His circumcision.
True in that Abraham was the grandsire of Jacob. Jacob became Israel.
Abraham was the father of many nations, or,
'ab hamon goyim .
Abraham was first known as Abram.God changed his name to Abraham. Abraham does not mean, father of many nations. Abraham was the father of many nations.
The name Abraham in the Bible
The name Abraham is applied to only one man in the Bible: the famous son of
Terah, who started out his life as Abram in
Ur of the
Chaldeans (Genesis 11:27) and ended it in
Canaan, as the grandfather of
Jacob, who became
Israel.
The literary function of the character of Abraham obviously far exceeds that of a historical figure (
Matthew 22:32) and his patriarchy obviously has nothing to do with physical descent — that particular obsession came later, spawned by nationalism (
Matthew 3:9). Abraham's patriarchy denotes a shared behavior (
John 8:39) — what we moderns would call an -ism , in essence comparable to the patriarchies of
Jabal and
Jubal, the "fathers" of all who keep life stock, live in tents and play music (Genesis 4:20-21). Jabal and Jubal's physical lineage was cut short by
Noah's flood and their patriarchies, like Abraham's, sum up activity and not physical descent.
It's been famously said that Abraham believed YHWH (and he reckoned that as righteousness; Genesis 15:6). The key-verb is אמן (
'aman), which does not denote simply accepting for true an otherwise unverified statement but rather an active upholding of a standard. Abraham's patriarchy is one of doing; an activity much more fundamental than any particular conviction.
The Biblical narrative does not progress along a temporal axis (following time, like a modern story would) but along a complexity axis (from general to specific). Hence
Adam marks the level that all living things have in common (
Eve was the 'mother of all life', or in modern terms: the biosphere; Genesis 3:20, and the 'original sin' affected the whole of creation;
Romans 8:22), and Noah marks the level of complexity at which the human mind is distinguished from animal behavior (hence 'they knew not until the flood came';
Matthew 24:39, also see
2 Peter 2:12 and
Jude 1:10).
The story of Abraham serves as ultimate result of the destruction of the tower of
Babel. Abraham's story follows the tower's story directly (Genesis 11), as two sides of the same coin. The proverbial tower of Babel manifests the quintessential need of people to gather around an identifying center, whereas Abraham's story is characterized by a divergence away from local centralization. The tower of Babel marks the level of primary state formation and Abraham marks the beginning of international dialogue, the exchange of goods and ideas, and the "centralization" around universal rather than local convictions.
In the New Testament, the tension between Abraham and the tower of Babel is playfully revisited in the relationship between
Jesus (
John 12:32) and
Mary Magdalene (= Mary of God's Tower), whose signature deliverance from seven demons was not a new thing but rather based on a time honored dictum: compare
Luke 8:2 to Proverbs 9:1, Exodus 2:16, Isaiah 4:1 and even
Revelation 1:4.
The name Abraham occurs a total of 73 times in the New Testament;
see full concordance.
4
1
1
