Setting: Genesis 11:27
Extra-biblical Sources: Bereishit Rabbah 38:13
When Abram was born to our mother Amathlai, nearly three hundred years had passed since the great flood. I had lived fourteen years and our brother Haran nineteen.
What possessed Amathlai to name him Abram I do not know, for who would imagine that a thirdborn son would become an exalted father? And now the Annunaki punish her for her arrogance in naming him thus, for in marrying Iscah he is now less a father than before. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Amathlai says that Abram was always this way. Content and unperturbed, yet unpardonably skeptical of our religion and at times stubborn beyond all reason. I remember conversing with Haran even when Abram was a young boy, and in turn reasoning with Abram himself, about his troubling habit of questioning the sacred rights of the Annunaki.
He spent much of his time with mother in the ziggurat, but as he grew older he spent more time at father’s idol shop as well, and on hot days when business was practically nonexistent, we would kick a leather ball back and forth between each other and argue about the Annunaki.
Abram must have been no older than fourteen on the day when he kicked the ball too hard and too far and it crashed right into the idols of Nanna, Enlil, and Enki. In the bright noonday sun we could not see into the dark interior of the shop, but what we heard told us that sacred images had been shattered. I confess that my initial reaction was to fear the wrath of Terah when he learned what had happened. But as I entered the shop and gazed at the broken images, I was gripped with fear of the gods as well, and what kind of terrible omen this must be.
Abram was calm, as only he could have been, yet even his nonchalant appearance did not prepare me for the words that came from his mouth. ‘They’re only statues. I can help Haran make more.”
I was expected among the council that afternoon and I rehearsed with Abram over and over the seriousness of the situation. Of the steps we must take to atone for our carelessness and the remorse we must show when discussing this with Terah.
I should have known not to leave him there alone to explain what had happened when Terah returned.
I learned that evening of the plan that Abram had concocted in my absence. He had taken a stick and placed it in the hand of our largest Nanna, and situated him amongst the shattered idols. When Terah had returned and demanded an explanation for the scene, Abram had explained that the gods had been arguing over who was to be king, and that Nanna had taken the stick in his hand and broken the other gods for their insubordination.
In his telling, Terah made no mention of what was spoken next, but later Haran told me of what followed. When told that Nanna had broken the other idols, Terah in his exasperation had gestured toward the statue and blurted out “Do not tell me that Nanna has done this, he is only a statue and has no knowledge.” The blasphemy that Terah had spoken in haste and by accident Abram reiterated with satisfaction, “you deny that these statues have any life, yet you worship them!” And Terah - so I was told - was stunned into silence and fell to the ground, clutching his bowels in despair.
A few months later, a young man came into the shop looking for a plump, attractive fertility goddess to aid his wife in conceiving. Abram was at that time alone in the shop, and when the man entered, Abram asked him how old he was. The man, named Gungunu, responded that he had lived fifty one years. To which, Abram responded, “you are fifty years old and yet you would worship a statue that was made by my brother yesterday?”
To hear Abram tell it, the man left at once in embarrassment and shame. Yet surely he left not in shame but in great distress, and went straight to visit the boy’s mother in the ziggurat. Would that she had been available at that moment instead of performing some sacred rite, for Gungunu was so incensed by what he had experienced that he spoke to the nearest priest that he could find, and a great stir began to arise about the whole situation.
Before long there was a crowd of leading elders and not a few troublemakers outside of Terah’s tent, and discussions lasted late into the night about what should be done with the boy. What good fortune for Abram, to have a leading elder as a father and a much-liked priestess as a mother. For otherwise they might scarcely have preserved his life.
Oh, that we were still young boys who could be defended by our venerable parents. This time, I am afraid, even Terah and Amathlai cannot save us.