Summary
The End Of A Cycle

It seems doubtful that Abraham could have known of the account of the creation as it can be read nowadays in the first pages of Bereshith. We have seen that the passages as we now have them must be dated from the sixth or fifth centuries B.C., that is, from a period later than Abraham's by a millennium and a half. In fact he heard the idea of the origins of the universe and of man through the legendary explanations of the Babylonian poem Enuma Elish.

Eden, the garden: by reason of certain material analogies between the Babylonian tradition and the paradise of the Scriptures we can conclude that Abraham certainly possessed some idea of the Edinu of Mesopotamian theology.

The Flood: the numerous cuneiform accounts of the catastrophy enable us to think that the narrative of the great Flood was known throughout the whole of the Valley of the Two Rivers. Abraham could not have been unaware of it, at least in its Mesopotamian form.

The Tower of Babel: in the eyes of the Hebrew shepherds feeding their flocks of sheep on the steppes the ziggurat often appeared as a sacrilegious image: a work of inordinate pride, a proof of the spiritual perversion of the idolaters. The builders of these colossal constructions wished to reach YAHWEH (that was at any rate the explanation of the nomads) by means of a material work.

The End Of A Cycle

From Haran to Shechem, from Shechem to Bethel, from Bethel to Hebron, Abraham seems to have gone through the theological cycle whence were to emerge, later, orthodox Judaism and then Christianity. Abraham's period concludes at Hebron under the Oak of Mamre.

But the patriarch's wanderings were not yet over. There were to be further adventures in which YAHWEH also figured.

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