I know several Abrahams. Let me mention three, two living and one dead. Ibrahim A. works on the maintenance staff of Loyola Jesuit College on the outskirts of Abuja in Nigeria. A Jukun from Taraba state in northeastern Nigeria, Ibrahim is a Catholic, although many of his closest relatives belong to Pentecostal churches and some are Muslims. He was not himself a convert to Christianity from Islam; the grandfather after whom he was named was the first Christian in the family.

I have another friend who is also, in a sense, named Abraham, or even Ibrahim. He is Khalil K., a Lebanese Catholic and professor who works on international linkages for the Jesuits’ Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut. In the Arabic tradition—not just the Islamic tradition in Arabic—Abraham or Ibrahim means quintessentially “the friend of God”: Khalil Allah in Arabic. The town known in the Hebrew Scriptures as Hebron, the burial place of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 23), is called in Arabic Khalil. To be named Khalil, then, is to be named after Abraham, “the friend of God,” as he is called (Is 41:8).

There are many Abrahams in this world who use the English form of the Hebrew name Avraham as their first name. For Americans, the most famous Abraham is, of course, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the only American president about whom the judgment of history has remained consistently kind, outside the deep South.

Put to the Test

None of my three Abrahams—Ibrahim, Khalil and Honest Abe—are exact replicas of Abraham, the “friend of God,” but each of them has something in common with Abraham as portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament and the Koran. The one story that all three Scriptures narrate or refer to is the story of how Avraham/Abraham/ Ibrahim was willing, at God’s command, to sacrifice his only son (Genesis 22). Strangely enough, not one of the scriptural traditions tells us what the long-suffering Sarah thought of the patriarch’s obedience, but commentary may make up for that reticence. It is a mind-boggling story. As Søren Kierkegaard reminded us in the 19th century:

God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!” “Ready!” he replied. Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”

We know how the story ends: God provides a ram as a substitute for Abraham’s only son, delivering “the friend of God” from this horror. The New Testament has no need to retell this story of Abraham’s sacrifice, because the New Testament authors regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the word of the Lord, on which they meditated while attempting to come to terms with their experience of Jesus of Nazareth. The references in the New Testament to the story in Genesis 22, succinct as they are, are redolent of the central themes of the Christian proclamation.

In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul refers once, somewhat obliquely, to the Genesis account of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son in the context of Paul’s meditation on the meaning of Christ’s death: “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Rom 8:32). In the letter of James we read that “Abraham our father was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar” (Jas 2:21). The Epistle to the Hebrews cites Abraham among the models of faith: “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it is said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’ He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol” (Heb 11:17-19).

Note that both the Book of Genesis and the New Testament take for granted that the only son offered up by Abraham was Isaac. The Islamic tradition is not so sure of that, although the text of the Koran is not specific. Muslim Koranic commentary normally insists that the son who was to be sacrificed was Isma‘il—Ishmael in the biblical tradition. In a sense the Book of Genesis also portrays Ishmael as the victim of sacrifice, a terrible sacrifice, when he is driven with his mother, Hagar, into the desert (Gn 21: 9-21), but that is not the same as the sacrifice in the land of Moriah.

The Islamic Tradition

Non-Muslims will be less familiar with the Koranic narrative of the sacrifice of Abraham’s only son. I quote it here, with the caution that the Koran uses the royal “We” when God refers to himself. The Koran is very allusive and words have to be inserted parenthetically to make clear in translation to which person reference is made.

Then We gave [Ibrahim] the good tidings of a prudent boy; And when [that boy] had reached the age of running with him, [Ibrahim] said, “My son, I have seen in a dream that I must sacrifice you. Consider now: what do you think?” [The boy] said: “O my father, do what you have been commanded to do. You will find me, God willing, among the steadfast.” Then, when they both had submitted [to God], and [Ibrahim] had thrown [the boy] face down, We called on him: “O Ibrahim, you have proven faithful to the vision! It is just like this that We reward those who do good. Indeed, that was a genuine trial.” Then We ransomed [the boy] with a great victim (Koran 37:100-7).

Once a year, at the conclusion of the great Muslim pilgrimage to This article appears in March 24 2008.