"In the new #biography #Abraham: The First #Jew, Anthony Julius makes the case for the #patriarch as the first “self-authored human being.”
As related in #midrash, Abraham was a man who, through his own reason, determined that there was one #God and challenged those around him to think for themselves. But in a twist, Julius, who has been fascinated by the binding of #Isaac since he first encountered it in a comic strip as a boy, argues against Abraham as a unified personality.
If Abraham 1 was a philosopher and iconoclast, his near-death experience in a furnace at the court of #Nimrod transformed him into Abraham 2, the person of pure faith who first appears to us in #Genesis, heeding the orders of God to leave his home behind. Abraham 2’s inner life ends in terror on Mt. #Moriah, when an angel stays his hand during his near-sacrifice of Isaac. There is no Abraham 3 — unless we count us, his descendants, who contain all his multitudes."
https://forward.com/culture/books/695206/abraham-first-jew-anthony-julius-jewish-lives/