Leaving incomprehensible problems in philology for the ordinary authorised version of our Bibles, we find that Abraham was the son of Terah. The Talmud²⁹ says that Abraham’s mother was Amathlai, the daughter of Karnebo (Bava Bathra, fol. 1, col. 1.) The text does not expressly state where Abraham was born, and I cannot therefore describe his birth-place with that accuracy of detail which a true believer might desire, but he “dwelt in old time on the other side of the flood” (Joshua xxiv, 2 and 3). Abraham was born when Terah, his father, was seventy years of age; and, according to Genesis, Terah and his family came forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and went to Haran and dwelt there. We turn to the map to look for Ur of the Chaldees, anxious to discover it as possibly Abraham’s place of nativity, but find that the translators of God’s inspired word have taken a slight liberty with the text by substituting “Ur of the Chaldees” for “Aur Kasdim,” the latter being, in plain English, _the light of the magi, or conjurors, or astrologers_ is stated by Kalisch to have been made the basis for many extraordinary legends, as to Abraham’s rescue from the flames. In the Talmud P’sachim, fol. 118, col. 1, it is written that “At the time when Nimrod the wicked had cast our Father Abraham into the fiery furnace, Gabriel stood forth in the presence of the Holy one—blessed be He!—and said, ‘Lord of the universe, let me, I pray thee, go down and cool the furnace, and deliver that righteous one from it.’” ²⁹ The quotations are taken from Hershon’s Talmudical Miscellany. Abraham, being born—according to Hebrew chronology, 2,083 years after the creation, and according to the Septuagint 3,549 years after that event—when his father was seventy, grew so slowly that when his father reached the good old age of 205 years, Abraham had only arrived at 75 years, having, apparently, lost no less than 60 years’ growth during his father’s fife-time. St. Augustine and St. Jerome gave this up as a difficulty inexplicable. Calmet endeavors to explain it, and makes it worse. It is surely impossible Abraham could have lived 135 years, and yet be only 75 years of age? “The Lord” spoke to Abraham, and promised to make of him a great nation, to bless those who blessed Abraham, and to curse those who cursed him. I do not know precisely which Lord it was that spake unto Abraham, the Hebrew says it was Jeue, or, as our translators call it, Jehovah, but as God said (Exodus vi, 2) that by the name “Jehovah was I not known” to either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, either the omniscient Deity had forgotten the matter, or a counterfeit Lord had assumed the name. The word Jehovah, which the book of Exodus says Abraham did not know, is nearly always the name by which Abraham addresses, or speaks of, the Jewish Deity.