Abraham Reasoned Past Fire, Water, Earth, and Sun

The Man Who Argued His Way to God

He had already dealt with the idols. He had grown up in his father Terah's workshop, surrounded by carved figures of wood and stone and metal, and he had seen through them early. Idols were made by human hands; what is made by human hands cannot be worshipped by those same hands without absurdity. He smashed them, or arranged for them to smash each other, and he walked away from his father's business.

But the idol question was the easy one. The harder question was what came after the idols. If the carved figures were not gods, was anything? The great natural forces that surrounded him, the fire that consumed everything it touched, the water that quenched fire and nourished the earth, the earth itself that held everything up, the sun that lit the whole world from one end to the other: were any of these the thing he was looking for?

Abraham sat with the question. He worked through it systematically, one element at a time, applying the same logic to each. The Apocalypse of Abraham, composed around 70-150 CE from a lost Hebrew or Aramaic original, preserved what that reasoning looked like from the inside.

The Argument from Fire

Fire first. He looked at what fire could do: it consumed everything it touched, even things that resisted it were eventually overcome, and the things that were easily destroyed were mocked by its power. Fire seemed like a candidate for the supreme principle.

Then he pushed the argument. Fire is conquered by water. What fire is subjected to is greater than fire. So fire cannot be God.

Water. Water conquers fire. Water satisfies the earth, nourishing everything that grows. Water seemed stronger than fire.

Then: water is subjected to the earth. Water flows beneath the earth, is held within it, sinks into it. The earth contains the water. So water cannot be God either.

The earth. It overpowers the nature and fullness of the water. The earth is the container of water, the foundation beneath everything, the thing that holds. Surely this is close.

But the earth is dried up by the sun. The earth tilts toward the sun and away from it, the seasons are governed by the sun's position, the productivity of the earth depends on light and warmth that come from outside it. The earth serves the sun. So the earth is not the highest thing.

The Sun and the Moon and the Night

The sun lights the whole world with its rays. Abraham had a strong feeling about this one. Everything that lives depends on the sun. The sun warms, nourishes, sets the rhythms of growth and rest. If anything in the visible world deserved to be called the supreme principle, the sun had the best claim.

Then night came.

The sun set. The light withdrew. The sky darkened. And in the darkness, a multitude of stars appeared that the sun's light had been hiding. They were there all along, invisible in the day.

Abraham looked at the stars and thought: what sets is not supreme. What depends on timing is not the ground of everything. The sun ruled by day and disappeared. The moon ruled by night and waned. Both of them were moved by something else, governed by something they did not control. They were the most powerful things in his sky, and they were not free.

What Came After the Reasoning

He had eliminated fire, water, earth, sun, moon, and stars. He had worked through the entire visible order and found that each thing in it was subject to something else. The chain of dependence went all the way up but never stopped anywhere he could point to and say: here it rests.

He concluded: there is one who moves all of these but is moved by none of them. There is a governor of the governors. This is what I am looking for.

And then, having reached the conclusion through his own reasoning, he received confirmation from outside himself. A voice from above called to him. Not the conclusion of his logic, which he had already arrived at, but something beyond logic, an address, a summons. You have searched. Now I will show you what you searched for.

The Apocalypse then carries Abraham up through the heavens, through the encounter with Azazel who tries to stop him, through the terrifying presence of the angel Iaoel, through the fire that nearly unmade him. But the reasoning came first. The ascent was granted to a man who had already, by the effort of his own mind, worked his way to the threshold.