Abraham

Abraham (originally Abram) is presented in Genesis 11–25 as the first of the three Hebrew patriarchs. Born in Ur of the Chaldees and migrating to Haran and then to Canaan at God's call, he received the foundational covenant promise recorded in Genesis 12:1–3 and 15:18. Scripture portrays him as the father of Ishmael (by Hagar) and Isaac (by Sarah) and as a paradigm of faith (Genesis 15:6; cf. Romans 4; Galatians 3; Hebrews 11:8–19). Traditional rabbinic, Christian, and Islamic traditions all trace their spiritual lineage to him, which is why he is sometimes called the patriarch of "the Abrahamic religions." Dates for his life are traditional rather than archaeologically fixed; a commonly cited range in conservative chronologies places him around 2000–1800 BCE, while other scholars regard the patriarchal narratives as set in a literary rather than historically dated framework. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources offer diverging extra-biblical traditions (e.g., the midrashic story of Abraham smashing his father's idols; the Islamic tradition of the Kaaba's foundation). This page surfaces what the Hebrew Bible and standard reference works report without adjudicating the extra-biblical material.