hinduwoman

Why did God choose Abraham to make a covenant with? Why was he so special?

neilgodfrey

He was a man after God's own heart and proved this by his love for orders from above even to the point of suppressing all all natural human (read here "carnal, fleshly") affection so that he was willing to kill his own son - just like God is praised as our saviour for doing the same to his own son! Of course others did the same for their gods in those days but Abraham's god proved himself more powerful then them and swept them into oblivion. If this disturbs the human mind then it shows just how sinful and degraded and far from the divine nature we have fallen.

spin

Why was Bill Gates given the keys to the kingdom?

Right time right place.

Johnny Skeptic

Why do you assume that God chose Abraham? "The Bible says so" is not an argument. The descendants of Abraham had Jesus killed, and the vast majority of Jews in the world since the founding of Christianity have always rejected Christianity.

Toto

I think Neil Godfrey writes ironically.

hinduwoman

So let me rephrase my question:
Is there anything in Jewish literature that discusses why he was chosen?

motorhead

I'd say if this disturbs the human mind, then that human mind is thinking clearly.

gregor

Every story needs a starting point.

Say you're sitting in Panama in 500 BCE and you want to write a hero's tale about how your village came into existence and why you're specially chosen by God. And you must do this when everyone knows that there are existing civilizations north and south of you that are older and more developed than your group of subsistence farmers.

So, you make up a story that explains how the world got to its present situation, and the founder of your village needed to come from somewhere, so why not claim he came from an existing civilzation, was chosen by god, and started a new community.

John Kesler

Although the O.T. never states why Abraham was chosen, I believe that Jewish tradition asserts that it was because Abraham had already discovered the "truth" of monotheism.

The picture portrayed in Genesis is that God, dismayed by the evil in the world (6:5-8), attempted to start over with the only righteous man on earth, Noah, and his family (6:6, 18; 7:1), even though at some point, Yahweh came to realize that man was inherently evil, and so wiping out all humans didn't accomplish anything (8:21). Enter Abraham, who appears to be the cornerstone of Yahweh's new plan to have a relationship with his creation, not by killing off the evildoers so that only the righteous are left, but by blessing others through the righteous Abraham and his descendants (12:1-3).

While the Bible's portrayal of Yahweh may not speak well for his alleged omniscience and/or omnibenevolence, it does at least provide some justification for his choosing Abraham.

Anat

hinduwoman, the most detailed explanation to Abraham's being chosen comes from the Midrash, which is from Mishnaic and Talmudic times (1st to 5th centuries CE). There you can find traditions about Abraham destroying his father's idols (all but one, in whose hands he had placed a stick and claimed that idol had broken the others). or stories about Abraham searching for the true power behind the running of the natural world - he worships the sun, then the cloud that hides the sun, then the wind that moves the cloud, etc, till he concludes there must be one deity that is running the show.

From the Bible, the first thing we hear about Abraham is how he moved with his father and other relatives from Ur to Haran, supposedly on the way to Canaan, when God calls Abraham to complete the journey. Maybe God called others as well, but Abraham was the only one who listened.

(All the above is, of course only from within Jewish tradition as viewed after the finalisation of the book of Genesis and does not necessarily represent the original intent of the authors of various versions of the Abraham story cycle, which itself is of legendary nature and should not be taken as historical, etc)