[NGFP-BookClub] (no subject)

[James Kugel]

        Dear Students:
        
        I wonder if you have any thoughts about an issue raised by this
whole chapter on Abraham. I suppose you could call it the "truth" issue.

        
        The chapter explains how ancient interpreters came to the
conclusion that Abraham was the first monotheist, how he rejected his
own father's idols, how he was saved from a fiery furnace, and so forth.
All these ideas, as I tried to show, really came from the interpreters.
Abraham may have been a monotheist, and Terah an idol-maker, but the
Torah itself certainly doesn't say anything like that (and actually, a
lot of modern biblical scholars doubt it).
        
        So the question is: does it matter that this is not in the Torah
itself? Little children in Jewish day-schools or after-school programs
often come home with crayon drawings of Abraham breaking his father's
idols. And they are all told about how the wicked people of Ur threw
Abraham into the fiery furnace (kivshan ha-esh). If these things are
just the ideas of some ancient interpreters, shouldn't we be
concentrating on what the Torah itself says?
        
        _____________
        James Kugel
        11 Efrayim St.
        93621 Jerusalem
        Israel
        Tel. 972 2 672-2197
        Fax. 972 2 673-3027