the tradition that Abraham engaged in astronomical studies

From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 18:24:56 EDT

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    In a message dated 6/25/03 9:39:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time, gmurphy@raex.com
    writes:

    > But Halevi also shows one of the pitfalls of the 2 books metaphor, the idea
    > that
    > the "book of nature" is to be read _before_ the "book of scripture." He
    > made use of the
    > tradition that Abraham engaged in astronomical studies, and that only after
    > this
    > received the call described in Genesis 12. But there is absolutely no
    > biblical support
    > for this notion.

    I found the following in Barnavi's Historical Atlas of the Jewish People:

    1800 BC to 1700 BC - Presumably when Abraham lived. Post Biblical Jewish
    literature ascribes the Patriarch's conversion to an intuition which preceded the
    revelation. "When he was three years old Abraham came out of the cave. He
    reflected: who created heaven and earth and myself? And all through the day he
    prayed to the sun. But in the evening the sun set in the west and the moon rose
    in the east. when he saw the moon surrounded by stars, he said to himself,
    here is the creator of heaven and earth and myself and these stars are his
    ministers and servants. And all through the night he prayed to the moon. In the
    morning the moon set in the west and the sun rose in the east. He said these two
    are powerless. They have one master, it is to Him that I shall pray, before
    him that I shall prostrate myself."

    Harran, where Abraham's kin lived had a temple dedicated to the moon god Sin,
    a god who was also worshipped in UR. The egyptians worshipped a sun god.
    This may be an allusion to the gods of Mesopotamia and Egypt which were both
    rejected by Abraham.

    This is "post-Biblical support" though a source is not given in the text
    beyond that.

    rich



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