Abraham

===Palestine origin hypothesis===
The earliest possible reference to Abraham may be the name of a town in the [[Negev]] listed in a victory inscription of Pharaoh [[Sheshonq I]] (biblical [[Shishak]]), which is referred as “the Fortress of Abraham”, suggesting the possible existence of an Abraham tradition in the 10th century BCE.{{sfn|McCarter|2000|p=9}} The orientalist [[Mario Liverani]] proposed to see in the name Abraham the mythical eponym of a Palestinian tribe from the 13th century BCE, that of the Raham, of which mention was found in the stele of [[Seti I]] found in [[Beit She'an|Beth-She'an]] and dating back to 'around 1289 BCE.<ref>The stele reads: «The Apiru of Mount Yarumta, together with the Tayaru, attack the Raham tribe». J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , p. 255. Princeton, 1955.</ref> The tribe probably lived in the area surrounding or close to [[Beit She'an|Beth-She'an]], in [[Galilee]] (the stele in fact refers to fights that took place in the area). The semi-nomadic and pastoral Semitic tribes of the time used to prefix their names with the term banū ("sons of"), so it is hypothesized that the Raham called themselves Banu Raham . Furthermore, many interpreted blood ties between tribe members as common descent from an eponymous ancestor (i.e., one who gave the tribe its name), rather than as the result of intra-tribal ties. The name of this eponymous mythical ancestor was constructed with the patronymic (prefix) Abū ("father"), followed by the name of the tribe; in the case of the Raham, it would have been Abu Raham, later to become Ab-raham, Abraham. Abraham's Journey from Ur to Harran could be explained as a retrospective reflection of the story of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile. Indeed, [[Israel Finkelstein]] suggested that the oldest Abraham traditions originated in the Iron Age (monarchic period) and that they contained an [[Autochthon|autochthonous]] hero story as the oldest mentions of Abraham outside the book of Genesis (Ezekiel 33 and Isaiah 51) do not depend on Genesis 12–26, do not have there indication of a Mesopotamian origin of Abraham, and present only two main themes of the Abraham narrative in Genesis: land and offspring.<ref name=":82">{{cite journal |title=Comments on the Historical Background of the Abraham Narrative: Between "Realia" and "Exegetica" |journal=Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel |url=https://www.academia.edu/29972948 |last1=Finkelstein |first1=Israel |issue=1 |volume=3 |pages=3–23 |last2=Römer |first2=Thomas |year=2014 |doi=10.1628/219222714x13994465496820}}</ref> Yet, unlike Liverani, Finkelstein considered Abraham as ancestor who was worshiped in Hebron, which is too far from Beit She'an, and the oldest tradition of him might be about the altar he built in Hebron.<ref name=":82" />