[Reading: Genesis 11:26-12:20]

Biblical scholars often divide the Book of Genesis into two parts: Chapters 1-11 are the “Primeval History,” an attempt to explain human origins, while chapters 11-50 focus on the origins of the Jewish people. The latter history begins with the patriarch Abram (Abraham). Judaism, Christianity and Islam all acknowledge Abraham as “the man of faith” and claim him as their own. It’s why, for example, the efforts of the first Trump administration to promote peace agreements between Israel and other Arab countries were called the “Abraham Accords.”

The Bible presents Abram as the origin of the Jewish people. (I will not get here into discussions about historicity versus legend, etc. Our purpose is to examine the biblical text theologically and as it relates to art.) He is said to be born in “Ur of the Chaldees” (Genesis 11:28, 31), which most scholars consider to be a city in today’s southeastern Iraq.

In Abram’s times (ca. 1900 or 1800 B.C.), it may have been located on what we today call the Persian Gulf, but land shifts in the roughly 4,000 years since then have placed the city farther inland. The Bible says Terah, Abram’s father, took him and his wife Sarai as well as his nephew Lot and moved to Harran (11:31). The text here sometimes confuses people because Lot’s father was named Haran, who predeceased the family’s move to Harran. Scholars today think Harran is a town in today’s southern Turkey (officially renamed Türkiye), just beyond the current Syrian border.

The mobility should not surprise us. As readers may remember the term “Fertile Crescent,” peoples moved along the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys across the region, from what we now call the region around Iraq and Kuwait across Iraq into Syria and today’s Israel. Eventually, they would also find their way on the western end across Sinai into Egypt. Genesis 12, in fact, speaks of Egypt in connection with a famine: Abram and Sarai head to Egypt when famine strikes Canaan. Jacob and his sons would reprise that migration during another famine (and be reconciled with Joseph). Moses would definitively lead the Jewish people out of Egypt. The “great powers” of the ancient world — Egypt, Assyria, Babylon — all grew in those river valleys.

Jewish tradition says that Terah was a merchant who sold idols. Eventually, Abram appears to be convinced of one true God, whom he believes has called him to leave his father’s house and go to the land of Canaan — the name for what we now call Israel. (Remember, the name Israel derives from Abraham’s grandson, still off in the future.) Abram picks up the family and goes.

Bear in mind that we are talking about the ancient Middle Eastern world, where a “family” is not a nuclear family of father, mother and 2.1 children. The term rather fits what we might call today a “clan” (including servants and laborers). So, Abram’s decision in faith to act on God’s call was not just something affecting him or, at most, him and Sarai. Dozens of people’s lives were at stake. God calls Abram in faith to pick up and leave “your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you” (12:1). This is not modern-day America nor is there modern-day transportation. While the region is nomadic, it prized connectedness and roots. Abram, in faith, gave that all up at God’s behest.

Genesis presents Abram as making his way to Canaan. There, near the oak grove of Moreh (12:6), Abram receives a vision from God that he would give him that land (even though it was inhabited). Abram reciprocates and builds an altar there. It is the first of several commitments by God to give him a land.

A word about names. Abraham starts life as “Abram,” and Sarah as “Sarai.” In the Bible, to know someone’s name was to know something about them or their characteristics. (It’s why, wanting to emphasize certain characteristics for their children, Catholic parents would name them after particular patron saints in whose lives those traits were important.) In the times of the Bible and in ancient Israel, a person’s name also included his father’s, e.g., “Isaac ben Abraham,” “Jacob ben Isaac,” “Jesus ben Joseph.”

Individualism was not important; whom you were connected to was. And to change a name indicated both (1) authority over the one whose name was changed and (2) a change of that person’s characteristics or identity. One did not change one’s own name: you didn’t establish your identity. That’s why to change a name was a sign of authority, usually God’s. It’s why God changed “Abram” to “Abraham,” “Jacob” to Israel,” and “Simon” to “Peter.”

Today’s biblical passage is illustrated by the Dutch painter, Pieter Lastman (ca. 1583-1633). He’s probably most remembered today as the teacher of Rembrandt. Lastman, who painted many Old Testament scenes, developed an entire series on Abraham. “Abraham on the Way to Canaan” dates from 1614. It is held by the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Note the focus is on the vision of God: the three figures we see — Abram in the lead, his hands folded in prayer, Sarai sitting on a donkey, and the younger man in blue whom I suspect is Lot — all look toward the grove from which light emerges. God himself dwells in “unapproachable light,” so his face is not seen. The rest of the party is largely nondescript but points to the fact this is a group on the move (although the group seems small in this painting).

As is often the case in paintings of this period, one figure in the painting looks toward the viewer to draw him in. The ram (clearly an allusion to the future episode of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac) has that honor here.

As is typical of Renaissance and Baroque art, biblical episodes are sometimes set in landscapes and costume more appropriate to the artist’s times than the figures’. Abram is clearly dressed as a Mideasterner (which, together with the light of God’s vision, makes clear this is not a bunch of rich Dutch tradesmen going to the next town). But Lot and especially Sarai would seem pretty comfortable in 17th-century Amsterdam society, at least by their dress.

One also has the impression the landscape is more European than Middle Eastern (even though Canaan is a land “flowing with milk and honey”). Artists of Lastman’s era (including Lastman himself) generally went to Italy to study art. It would only be later (I think of Tissot in the 19th century) that artists depicting biblical themes actually went to the Holy Land to get a sense of the topography.