Abram Leaves Chaldea

Abram, having no son of his own, adopted Lot, the son of his brother Haran and the brother of his wife Sarai. He left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and at God’s command went into Canaan; he lived there himself and left it to his descendants. He was a man of great insight, both in understanding everything and in persuading his hearers, and he was not mistaken in his judgments. For this reason he began to have higher ideas of virtue than others had, and he resolved to renew and change the opinion that everyone then happened to hold about God. He was the first who dared to declare that there was only one God, the Creator of the universe; and that as for the others, if they contributed anything to human happiness, each of them gave it only by his appointment and not by their own power. He drew this conclusion from the irregular events seen on land and sea, and from those that happen to the sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies. If these bodies had power of their own, he reasoned, they would certainly see to it that their own movements were regular. But since they do not keep that regularity, they make it plain that, so far as they work together for our benefit, they do it not by their own ability but as servants of the one who commands them, to whom alone it is right to give honor and thanksgiving. [a]

Because of these teachings the Chaldeans and the other peoples of Mesopotamia raised an uproar against him, and he decided to leave that country. At the command of God, and with his help, he came and lived in the land of Canaan. When he had settled there, he built an altar and offered a sacrifice to God.

Berosus mentions our father Abram without naming him, when he says this: “In the tenth generation after the flood there was among the Chaldeans a man who was righteous and great, and skilled in the science of the heavens.” Hecataeus does more than merely mention him: he composed a book about him and left it behind. And Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says this: “Abram ruled at Damascus, a foreigner who had come with an army out of the land beyond Babylon called the land of the Chaldeans. But not long afterward he set out and moved from that country too, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan but now the land of Judea, and there his descendants multiplied; their history I relate in another work. The name of Abram is still famous in the region of Damascus, and a village is shown there named after him, Abram’s Dwelling.” [c]