We’re currently focusing our Torah overview on the study of Abraham.
Why?
Because he’s the man who was chosen and used as an instrument to bring about a chosen people who would become a nation of priests unto the Lord.
Let’s talk a little bit about the world Abraham lived in about 4000 years ago.
Globally, civilization was blooming during this time but how societies operated differed quite drastically depending on the continent and the many different regions clustered inside a given continent.
The area the Bible concerns itself with is Asia and the Middle East.
This brings to mind a very important point.
And that point is that the Bible is…
…NOT a Western book.
And contrary to popular but misguided opinion, the original Messianic faith as well as Judaism is NOT a Western faith or religion.
Today’s so-called Greek-thinking Roman Catholic or protestant faiths are quite a stretch from the original culture of the Bible which was both tribal and nomadic by nature.
During Bible times, when cities did form, they became entities that we would label as “city-states”.
What exactly is a city-state?
A city-state could best be described as a small nation with a defined territory whose boundaries were quite limited.
During the time of Abraham, usually each city-state had its own king and its own unique set of gods.
The whole world (including the Hebrews) were steeped in polytheistic thought at this time.
For those for whom English is not your first language, “polytheism” is the belief in many gods and “monotheism” is the belief in only one god.
Now as you can imagine, there was always constant confrontation between the city-states.
Some of these skirmishes were not so serious and involved only petty theft of another tribe’s possessions such as livestock, idols, food or pastureland.
On a more serious level, sometimes people were stolen to be used as either slaves or servants.
In fact, during this time, the primary way a tribe or nation strengthened its power was by conquering another tribe which instantly added to the number of members of their own tribe.
Increasing one’s tribal population resulted in many benefits such as security, wealth, power and status.
This pattern to increase one’s power via increasing one’s population numbers has been the pattern of mankind since time memorial.
We can see this very same thing being acted out via modern day corporate takeovers in our day and age.
We’ll continue this discussion the next time we meet.
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