Was Abraham a historical person?

Welcome to the forum @Alessio_Rando. My grandmother was from Italy and I am currently trying to learn Latin (Salve!). Also, I recently made the jump from YEC after years of head burying and wrestling with doubts. You can find my story here on the forum. You’ll find plenty of folk with similar stories here and is great that we can add your voice to the mix.

I’m with @jpm on this one:

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dominate so much of later half of Genesis. The details of the lives, the places the go, people they meet, the things they do, it all rings of historical events. That’s why so many make the distInction between Genesis 1-11 and 12 onwards. Gen 1-11 is very much the prologue to the book, grounding it antiquity and introducing key theological themes like blessing, curse, dominion, and sin. In those chapters the camera has a wide angle lens on all humanity. In chapter 12 the story of Israel kicks off in earnest and the narrow lens is focused on Abraham and his direct offspring.

None of that is a smoking gun for historicity, but then there is unlikely to ever be one.

On an aside, as I was transitioning out of YEC I found this collection of blogs really helpful. Especially in unpicking the Humean empirical worldview I’d inherited from Answers in Genesis. Perhaps you might find them useful too.

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