Israel and Humanity - Spiritual Paternity of Abraham
§ 2.
SPERITUELLE PATERNITY OF ABRAHAM.
"We no more be called Abram, saith the Lord, but thy name shall be Abraham, for I will make thee father of many nations naked [1]". There can be no question in that sentence just families or tribes or Israel component of the Ishmaelites and Edomites [2] which the patriarch was to give birth. The promise is made in a way too solemn for that. In the case of Ishmael expression is indeed quite different: "He shall beget twelve princes, says the sacred text, and I will make him a great nation [3] ".
What must we understand by this paternity promised to Abraham? Something much bigger without a doubt. Maimonides says that means he has taught the true faith to the Gentiles, or that all nations are destined to come under its banner, to enter thus into his spiritual family and become his adopted children. The ancient rabbis did not understand otherwise. We read in the Talmud says that the proselyte as an Israelite by birth, by wearing the Temple the first fruits of his fields: "Behold, O God, from the top of your heavenly home, and bless thy people Israel and the land you gave us as thou didst swear to our fathers. " He therefore called Abraham his father, says the Talmud, for Abraham was called by God the father of many nations or, as the Midrash of all nations.
It is impossible to ignore the intimate relationship between the promise to Abraham that other blessings which he is also the subject from God and which gives rise to much controversy: "All peoples on earth will be blessed in you [4] ". Any way that we hear this text, it will prove at least always thought that the sacred writer, already embraced the Hebrew thought the whole horizon of humanity. Therefore there can be no question of narrow interpretation of the fatherhood of Abraham, as if the promise made to him could not, without clashing with the context, include a vast design. Doubtless there is in this promise something more than the idea yet so wide a spiritual fatherhood extends to all peoples, we discover that a human brotherhood, a unity that Israel must be center. But just a little attention to see that the same concept is already implicit in this assurance formed the Hebrew patriarch that all families of the earth would be blessed through him. [5] Of course, for that humanity is to see Israel as a model envied, he would point it had reached a level of greatness, power, material prosperity greater than that of most great empires. This could not return to the aspirations of Judaism, first because all the property owned to a greater or lesser extent by its political and religious enemies could not get through to them for an example of special blessing, then because it has never existed at any time a people who have watched these as the only desirable property. Science, religion, virtue, moral qualities, depending on what each nation according to its degree of culture could hear the words, only allowed to give real value to these temporal advantages and were themselves the property more prominent without which the other ought not to have a sustainable livelihood. It is therefore forced to admit that if Judaism predicted from birth that all peoples of the earth will one day consider him as blessed, he glorified the moral goods above, if not to the exclusion of all others, should be at the forefront in carrying out this blessing. This shows that only in the sense that all people should be proud of to say the son of Abraham and that parenthood is the patriarch promised a spiritual paternity, because the faith which he was the apostle was intended to all mankind.
The Bible also shows us how Abraham understood the blessing that he was the object. Otherwise it means his intercession for Sodom? He does not merely seek the preservation of Lot and his family, he tries to get through the whole country guilty. This chapter of the book of Genesis that everyone reads and admires, without seeking to diminish the significance of the act of the Hebrew patriarch, is certainly no less surprising that the promise made to him that one day all peoples called his children. The conduct of Abraham reveals the true significance of this prediction. [6]
