Monday’s Passover Treatise on Abrahamic Religions

The Departure of Abraham by Jozsef Molnar, 1850

The twentieth century trope of an Abrahamic triad originated with what I always thought was a hopeful nod to New Age, We Are the World feelgoodism.  

We come from the same origin, the same theological father, so why can’t we all just get along ?

I have never been able to buy into the idea Judaism, Christianity and Islam were mere divergent threads of an identical cloth.  I discovered the distinguished Harvard professor of religion, Jon Levenson, about 13 years ago and was delighted he believed, as I do, Islam does not belong and its claim to Abraham’s heritage is false and unsupportable.

Levenson wrote this essay in 2010 titled The Idea of Abrahamic Religions: A Qualified Dissent and then expanded it into a best-selling book published in 2012.  The book resulting from the ideas in this essay (link is below) is more concise and direct in ultimately rejecting an Abrahamic triumvirate of religions.

Needless to say, groups like this have their work cut out for them. For it certainly seems that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims regard Abraham as the father of their own community alone, a view that is easily explained if we consider the foundational literatures of the three putatively Abrahamic communities. In Judaism, Abraham serves as the first Jew, the biological father of most Jews and the adoptive yet no less real father of those who have converted to the religion of his descendants. For Christians, Abraham has long been “the father of all that believe,” in the words of the apostle Paul (Rom 4:5), who clearly thinks that what those believers believe—and what the patriarch’s life prefigures—is the core message of the gospel. In the Islamic case, as early as the Qur’an, Abraham is emphatically said to be neither a Jew nor a Christian but rather a muslim, one who has submitted to God. In the words of the Muslim scripture itself, “the people who are worthiest of Abraham are those who followed him, together with this Prophet and the believers.” As an imam in Jerusalem put it not long ago, “Abraham is the father of one religion, and that religion is Islam.” That there are now, and have long been, Jews and Christians who make the same statement in behalf of their own religions merits serious thought.

and,

From what I have said so far, one could easily devise a simple contrast between the Jewish and the Christian interpretations of their common father that would go like this: The Jewish understanding of Abraham focuses on the Jewish people, and others are brought in only to highlight the blessedness of Abraham and the family that descends from him. The Christian understanding of Abraham is no less focused on a specific group, in this case the Church, but it conceives of Abraham in an expansive context, as a man who bears a message of universal import, foreshadowing the universal aspirations of the Church for its gospel. Whereas, to revert to Genesis 12:3, the Jews think all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by reference to Abraham, the Christians think that in Abraham all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Though each tradition is particularistic in its own way, Judaism is inward-looking and Christianity outward-looking. But this grand contrast, like so many others involving these two traditions, is much too simple.

plus this,

There is something truly outward-looking and expansive in the story of the man who is promised that he shall be “the father of a multitude of nations,” and the efforts of the three “Abrahamic religions” to associate him exclusively with their own communities cannot altogether obliterate this. But in the case of Jews and Christians, the commonality of the three communities will always be limited by the focus of the book of Genesis on chosenness or election. The very claim that God has graciously singled out a particular people—the people of Israel or the Church—constitutes both a bond and a barrier between these two continuing communities, one that they do not share with Islam. But even in the case of Jews and Christians, to speak of the Abrahamic legacy as only a bond, or as only a barrier, is to simplify matters to the point of falsification. In this instance, as in so many others, the challenge before Jews and Christians alike is to uphold with integrity both the connections and the divisions. Since today the pressure to uphold the connections is vastly greater than the pressure to uphold the divisions, this is, alas, no easy task.

Jon Levenson has gone to great lengths to be accommodating and tolerant here.  His book linked as follows  is less concerned with diplomacy.  The best-selling book is Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam .

RTWDT.