The expression ' Abraham's bosom ' (Lk 10") or
ABRAHAM
ABSOLUTIOlSr
'bosoms' (v.-')* is liardly to be understood as con- veying the idea of an eminent or unusual degree of happiness. It is practically equivalent to ' Para- dise.' And tlie new condition of blessedness in which Lazarus finds himself is pre-eminent only in the sense that it is so striking a reversal of the relations previously existing between Dives and himself. The paralile says nothing of any superior piety or faith exhibited by Lazarus, which might win for him a more exalted position than others. As far as his present and past are concerned, it but sets forth retributive justice redressing for liim and Dives alike the unequal balance of earth. ' Abra- ham's bosom,' like tlie Hades in which the rich man lifts up his eyes, is part of the figurative or pictorial setting of the parable, and indicates no more than a haven of repose and felicity, the home and resting-place of the righteous with Abraham, who is the typical example of righteousness. The parable is on the plane of popular belief, and of set jiurpose employs the imagery which would be most familiar anil intelligible to the hearers, t
In conformity with the general character of St. John's Gospel, the references to Abraham there would seenvto imply a more mystical, less matter of fact and as it were prosaic manner of regarding the great patriarch. He is spoken of in the 8th chapter alone, in the course of a discussion with Jews who are said to be believers in Jesus (v.^'). Here also Abraham is the father of the Jews, and they are his children, his seed ( vv.^'- 39. S6) . and this posi-
tion they claim with pride (vv.^'
It
name and positi(
ever, which Christ declares
belied by their conduct, in that, tliough nomi- nally Abraham's seed, they do not Abraham's works, in particular when they conceive and plot the death of an innocent man (vv.^"- ™). To the charge itself they have no answer, except to reassert their son- ship, in this instance of God Himself (v.'"'), and to repeat the oflensive imputation of demoniacal pos- session (v.''-). But with almost startling abruptness, taking advantage of a phrase quietly introduced, which they interpret to imply freedom from physi- cal death for those who accept Christ's teaching, they interrupt with the assertion that Abraham died ' and the prophets ' (v.=-), in apparent contra- diction to the tenor and assumption of the language which a moment before they had employed. Pro- bably they meant no more than that he and they, like all other men, had passed through the gate of deatli which terminates life on eartli ; and were more intent on gaining a dialectic advantage than on weighing the implications of their own words. But, in spite of them, fcir the few moments that are left the discourse preserves tlie high level of other- worldliness, to which Christ's last words have raised it ; and gives occasion for one of the most striking and emphatic assertions in which He is recorded to have passed beyond the boundaries and limitations of mere earthly experience. Abraham has seen His day (v.*''). And liy silence He con- cedes and affirms the half-indignant, half-con- temptuous and protesting question of the Jews ; He has seen Abraham, and is greater even than their father (vv.*'- "). The climax is reached in v.'*, — in a brief sentence, which, if it did not bear so evidently the stamp of simplicity and truth, would be said to have been constructed with the most consummate skill and the finest toucli of artistic feeling and insight. 'Before Abraham came into being,' — the speaker gathers up and
Chrys. Bom. XL ■
\ On the phrase ' Abrali; . 461 if., and the refert-in : Talm. iii. p. 167 fl.; St. -
I'ri-noh, Pambles'i^, ihlfoot, Hora Hell. !/ir New Testament^ . Cf. also Salmond
utilizes Jewish belief in its past and reverence for its head, — ' I am.' Abraham iyivero; Christ is. Tliu^ «as ( i.m I yed the answer to their question, 'All Ukmi uir:iiiT ?' (v.^') ; and thus was reasserted with ciMpliasis the measureless distance between Himself and the greatest of the Jews, and a fortiori, as it would appear to the company around, of the whole human race.
It is remarkable and suggestive that in the only notice of the patriarch Jacob that is contained in the Fourth Gospel, ch. 45f. lu^ the same question is addressed by the woman of Samaria to Clirist: 'Art thou greater than our father Jacob,'— the Dispenser of the new water with its marvellous properties than the actual giver of the well? It was natural and inevitable that one of the questions that more particularly forced itself upon the attention of His contemporaries should be the relation of the Teacher, who had arisen in their midst and who claimed so great things, not only to the earlier prophets, but to the patriarchs and ancestors of the Jewish nation. See further art. Jacob.
The figure of Abraham, therefore, in the Gospels is idealized, and invested with a simple grandeur as the head and founder of the race in the indis- tinct ages of ttie past, to whom are owing its present privileges, and around whom gather its future hopes. There is, however, no indication of hero-worship, as in the case of the more or less mythical ancestors of other peoples. This conception, moreover, apart from St. John's Gospel, is purely patriarchal. The characteristic Pauline presentation of Abraham as the father of the faithful in a moral and spiritual sense, as the type and pattern of all righteousness and obedience, as it is developed in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, is absent (cf. also He 11™-, Ja •2"-'^). References to the details of his history are not indeed wanting in the remaining books'of the New Testament, but they are all, as it were, with a moral and didactic purpose : Gal i"^^, the two covenants; He 7"'-, Abraham and Melchizedek ; Ro 4'*'- and He 11*- ", faith exhibited in the aban- donment of his fatherland, in the birth and ofl'ering up of Isaac ; Ac l"- '", the same abandonment of his country and the purchase of a tomb from the sons of Emmor in Sycliem ; cf. 1 P 3^ with a possible reference to Gn 18'-.