Qur’an Says Abraham the Hebrew Begins an Ongoing Jewish Community

The Qur’an points out that “Abraham was not a Jew (Yahuudiyyan) nor a Christian (Nasraaniyyan), but rather a Haniifan. Since Prophet Abraham lived before the Torah was revealed to Israel, he could not have been a Jew who is informed by the revelation of the Torah, as Jews claimed. He could not have been a Christian (as Christians claimed) for the same reason. He existed before the birth of Jesus and the revelation of the New Testament.

Prophet Abraham was an immigrant and a pure monotheist (Haniifan) and he submitted to the will of God (Musliman). “Muslim” here does not mean that he went to the mosque and fasted during Ramadan. It means that he was a generic “small-m” muslim who submitted to the will of God, as do all believing Jews and Christians. So Abraham was not what we would call a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. He was a generic monotheist who set an example for all monotheists. No one can claim him exclusively

The term Hebrew comes from the verb to go over a boundary, like the Euphrates or Jordan river, ie. to be a migrant. Ten generations later the Philistines in Canaan used the term “Hebrews” to refer to the 12 tribes of Israel: “The Philistine commanders asked, “What about these Hebrews?” (1 Samuel 29:3); and Prophet Jonah identified himself to non-Jewish sailers as “a Hebrew” (Jonah 1:9).

The term ivri (the Hebrew) first appears in the Torah, when Prophet Abraham is called “the Hebrew: “And it was told to Abram the Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13) And Prophet Joseph uses the name as both a geographical and an socio-ethnic term: “I was kidnapped from the land of the ivrim” (Genesis 40:15), and “The Egyptians would not eat with the ivrim, since that would be an abomination” (Genesis 43:32)

According to a new Pew Research Center study released on August 19 2024: “Christians are about 30% of the world’s population, the world’s migrants are 47% Christian, according to the latest data collected in 2020. Muslims make up 29% of the migrant population and 25% of the world’s population. Jews, who are only 0.2% of the world’s population and 1% of migrants, are by far the most likely religious group to have migrated, with 20% of Jews worldwide living outside their country of birth compared to just 6% of Christians and 4% of Muslims.

The Prophet Isaiah said: “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he [Abraham] was only one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. (Isaiah 51:1-2) and the Qur’an states: “You have an excellent example to follow in Abraham.” (60:4) and “Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure faith.” (Qur’an 3:95)

The majority of occurrences of the word “Hebrew” are in the books of Exodus and Samuel, where it appears in the disparaging words of those Egyptians and Philistines, who despise Jewish immigrants. The term Yehudi, in the singular, is rare in the Bible. The word appears eight times in the book of Esther, but only twice more elsewhere, in Jeremiah 34:9 and Zechariah 8:23. While the plural version of this term is more common, appearing 65 times in the Bible, 44 of these appearances are in the book of Esther. Jew is clearly a name that developed in the diaspora.

Banu Israel is the best name for Jews because it was the name given to Jacob by God himself and Banu Israel has been use for over 3,000 years.

In Genesis, God establishes two covenants with Abraham. The first is Berit Bein ha-Betarim, “the Covenant of the Pieces” (Genesis 15), and the second is Berit Mila, “the Covenant of Circumcision” (Genesis 17). The Covenant of Circumcision requires Abraham and all future descendants to circumcise all males of the community. In turn, God promises to make Abraham the progenitor of many nations and to be the God of Abraham’s descendants. This is לְדֹרֹתָם לִבְרִית עוֹלָם, “an ongoing generations covenant throughout the ages” (Genesis 17:7).

Prophet Abraham, the Hebrew (Genesis 14:13), was the first, and only prophet, to successfully establish, through the biological descendants of his two sons, Prophet Ishmael and Prophet Isaac, three ongoing monotheistic religions that have lasted into the 21st century: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

What makes Prophet Abraham, “whom God chose to be His friend” (Arabic Qur’an 4:125, Hebrew Bible Prophet Isaiah 41:8, and Greek New Testament Book of James [brother of Jesus] 2:23) so special? For Jews and Christians, Abraham is the first monotheist. But for Muslims, Adam was the first of many thousands of prophets of God, each of whom called upon the people of their own tribe or nation to worship only the One Imageless God. There have also been about 315 messengers, who brought a unique set of laws to their own tribe or nation. Thus God provided humans with Divine guidance and knowledge long before the birth of Abraham.

All prophets Divinely inspired by the one and only God are of course monotheists. Pious believers of any individual prophet should not “discriminate between anyone of His prophets” (Qur’an 2:285 & 4:152) This is why prophet Muhammad said, “Prophets are brothers in faith, having different mothers. Their religion is, however, one.” (Muslim, book #030, Hadith #5836) All prophets have the same father, who is the One Imageless God whose inspiration gives birth to their prophethood.

Prophet Abraham was the first of those we know to receive a written Sacred Scripture. All of the others were among Prophet Abraham’s biological descendants through Ishmael and Isaac. Is being ‘the first’ what makes Abraham so special that his name appears 69 times in the Qur’an, second only to Moses (136 times)? I do not think being ‘first’ is why Abraham plays such an important part in all three Abrahamic religions.

Rather, Abraham is famous for the numerous ways God tested him, especially the two terrible tests of banishing Hagar and his firstborn son Ishmael (Qur’an 2:124 & Genesis 9:9-21); and calling on Abraham to make his son an offering to God. (Qur’an 37:100-113 & Genesis 22:1-24). Most Muslim commentators say the son, unnamed in the Qur’an, was Ishmael. Some Muslims assert it was Isaac. Perhaps both participated in the test at different times, so that each son could produce descendants who in time would become a blessing for other nations of the earth. (Genesis 22:16-18 & Qur’an 4:163)

Abraham’s test with his son became an iconic sign of faith and trust in God’s will, for Jews, Christians and Muslims. In addition to the test of his two sons, Abraham is unique in the numerous prophets God chose from among his own descendants, whose names are recorded in the Bible and the Qur’an.

With the exception of Balaam (and perhaps Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18), all Biblical prophets and most of the 25 prophets named in the Qur’an are descendants of Abraham. “We did grant the Family of Abraham the Book, the Wisdom and a mighty (3 religious communities) kingdom.” (Qur’an 57:26) An insightful verse relating the special virtue of Abraham states, “Abraham was a community”. (Qur’an 16:120) One person as an umma, an ongoing generations people based community.

For 1200+ years after Prophet Moses, the Banu Israel was the only continuing, on-going, monotheistic community in the world. Unlike the other monotheistic communities that rose and fell during those centuries, most, but not all, of Banu Israel remained loyal to the covenant which God had made with them at Mount Sinai (Mount Tur – Quran 28:43-46).

It is hard for many Muslims to understand the intertwined nature of the religion of Judaism with the ongoing nature of the ethnic Jewish People because, although Judaism and Islam are very close in most ways, they differ greatly from each other in their origins: Abraham was an ethnic Hebrew, and a monotheist, but not himself a ‘Jew,’ as the Quran correctly notes; yet Abraham’s descendants through his son Isaac (Arabic Isḥaq) and grandson Jacob/Israel (Arabic Ya’kob/Isra’el) were later to become ethnic Hebrews/religious ‘Jews’: Yehudim—Banu Isra’el.

However, Abraham’s descendants through his son Ishma’el (Arabic Isma’il) would be ethnic Arabs —a separate Semitic people— and later religiously Christians and Muslims. All three groups were in the monotheist tradition, stemming from the pure monotheist, the ‘Friend of God,’ Abraham-the-Hebrew, whom I prefer to call the first ‘Islamic’ Hebrew or the first ‘Muslim’ Hebrew, that is, the first Hebrew monotheist submitted [Arabic ‘islama’: to submit]  to the one God.

Muslims needed only one Prophet and one book. Jews needed dozens of Prophets and many Sacred Scriptures. While Christians, Jews and Muslims should make no disrespectful distinction between any of their prophets or their sacred scriptures, we cannot help but notice that the circumstances and style of the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an as written revelations are very distinct:

The Hebrew Sacred Scriptures are a vast collection (305,358 Hebrew words) of Divinely inspired books written over a period of almost a thousand years, by 48 male prophets and 7 female prophetesses (Talmud Megillah 14a); plus many more anonymous Divinely-inspired historians, poets, and philosophers. The Arabic Qur’an is much shorter (a total of 77,934 Arabic words) recited by only one prophet, during a period of less than two dozen years, and written down by his own personal disciples.