Haran, the eldest son of Terah, made his living selling his father's idols to the Chaldeans. His younger brother Abraham refused to worship them. When the Chaldeans came to test both brothers by dipping them in fire—as some nations dip their sons in water—Abraham, who had rejected the idols, walked out unburned. But Haran, who feared the idols and profited from them, was consumed by the flames and died.
When Terah saw that God had delivered Abraham, he abandoned his former religion and followed his son out of Ur. He gave Sarai—also called Yiskah, Haran's daughter whom Terah had raised after her father's death—to Abraham as a wife, and Lot, Haran's orphaned son, as an adopted child. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle compiled from ancient sources and translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, Jerahmeel himself discovered in the writings of Nicolaos of Damascus that an entire neighborhood there was still called "the dwelling-place of Abraham."
When Nimrod had cast Abraham into the fiery furnace, the angel Gabriel volunteered to cool the flames. But God replied: "I am One in My world, and he is one in his—it is fitting for the One to save the one." Yet God promised Gabriel his reward: he would later rescue three of Abraham's descendants. When Nebuchadnezzar threw Hananya, Mishael, and Azariah into his own furnace, Gabriel—the angel who rules over fire—descended to cool the inside while heating the outside, performing a double miracle.
The chronicle also preserves vivid details about the destruction of Sodom and the Dead Sea that formed in its place. Neither fish nor birds can survive there. Its waters are thick as pitch—nothing sinks, and a burning torch floats on its surface until it goes out. Josephus himself reportedly saw Vespasian hurl a man into that sea with great force, only for the water to push him right back up again.