Aka biography of abraham

A Challenge to Our Faith

The primary focus of this work is history, not theology. If, like me, the reader becomes more aware of the highly advanced and exciting time in human history that Abraham lived, then I will have accomplished the purpose of the book. This being said, the reader may be surprised and at first even threatened by some of the similarities of stories that we will study of ancient Sumer and Akkad with those found in the first five books of the Bible. Our first thought may be that perhaps the Hebrew Scriptures are not the word of God but plagiarized from men in a pagan society. But, as we develop the story of man's search for God, we will find that the ancient concept of deity was man's first attempt at trying to understand the mystical world around him and was but a stepping stone to the final concept of God that all monotheistic religions now share. By exploring these similarities, we do not want to tarnish the lessons the Holy Spirit has revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, but rather to augment their historicity and give greater credence to some of the stories.

Most references in this study will be referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures rather than the Old Testament. This description is in respect to my Orthodox Jewish friends and to the fact that during the development of monotheism we are not primarily looking at these stories from a Christian perspective, but from the perspective of our elder brethren, the Jews, who gave this theology to us. As we will be going back and forth in time when studying the life of Abraham, we will use the name Abraham over Abram in most cases.

INTRODUCTION

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SCRIPTURE

In order to discover the sacred authors' intentions, the reader must take into account the conditions of their times and culture, the literary genres in use at the time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. 3 he p

The book, all 400 pages of it, sticks largely to the script of facts but unlike many other biographies brings Abraham’s journey alive, saturated with anecdotes, narrating the many twists in the tail of Abraham’s life as if the author had been the proverbial fly on the wall at times. Jane manages to find that perfect blend of what story telling should embrace, an embroidery of facts and at times a bit of fiction surely, giving readers of the book ‘Abraham’s People’ the impression of reading a novel rather than a dry story dictated entirely by time lines and actual events. Abraham’s escape route took him to Britain first, still as a young lad, before taking a leap into the unknown when he decided to first go to South Africa in 1901 to join up with his father, working his passage as a ‘grease monkey’ in the engine room before finally making his way to Kenya in 1903 at the age of 20. The first chapters in the book are dedicated to the story of his forefathers, how they came to Lithuania where they first prospered and then suffered under increasingly intolerant rulers, leading up to the days when first his father had to flee for his dear life before, almost one by one, the rest of the family managed to make their getaway. It must have been in those days in Leeds, when a little acorn took root in Abraham’s mind, germinating along the way, taking shape and eventually becoming a vision taking visible shape. His arrival at the port of Mombasa and the rail journey on the ‘Lunatic Express, aka as The Iron Snake’, his stepping off the train in Nairobi, back then but a depot for the railway, around which a town had just started to grow, his first meetings with contemporaries who were part of Kenya’s colonial history, all is meticulously captured by the author. Again it almost appears that Jane Barsby was present or else managed to train her looking glass back in time as she describes how Abraham met with Tommy Woods on arrival in Nairobi, who became a fast friend, or how Abra

Swiss painter, watercolourist and engraver

Louis Ducros aka Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros or Du Cros, as appears on his birth certificate (Moudon, 21 July 1748 – Lausanne, 18 February 1810), was a Swisspainter, water-colourist and engraver, and was a main figure in the 'pre-Romantic' movement.

Biography

Early life

Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe was one of three sons of Jeanne-Marie Bissat and Jean-Rodolphe Du Cros, a writing and drawing master ("maître d'écriture et de dessin") at Moudon and later Yverdon College. He was born in Moudon (canton of Vaud) and not in Yverdon, as often repeated in error in several sources from the earliest days on, an error, no doubt, attributable to the fact that Du Cros, who grew up in Yverdon as a boy, thus considering himself to be "from Yverdon", attached "d'Yverdun" as a kind of epitheton ornans to his name, as did his friends, and biographers... He was educated at the college of Lausanne, where his parents destined him to go into commerce, to no avail. Du Cros preferred to go to Geneva in 1769, to study for 2 years in a private academy under Chevalier Nicolas-Henri-Joseph de Fassin, a painter from Liège formed in the Flemish tradition. It is probable that he left for a voyage to Flanders with his master, in 1771, after which he returned to Geneva, where he came into contact with the banker-collector François Tronchin and the naturalist Charles Bonnet. Ducros became friends with the Genevois painter Pierre-Louis De la Rive, with whom, between 1773 and 1776, he copied Dutch and Flemish paintings (by van Ruisdael, Philips Wouwermans, Nicolas Berghem, ...) from the Tronchin collection and realised watercolours in the Geneva countryside. Sketching and painting en plein air, he became fascinated by the analysis and recording of natural

by

Stefan Bielinski

Spelled and referred to variously (aka Abram Planck), Abraham Isaacse was born in Europe during the early part of the seventeenth century. He arrived in New Netherland during the 1630s. He is regarded as the patriarch of the Verplanck family in America.

By 1635, he is said to have wed the widow Maria Vigne. By 1668, their marriage had produced at least eight children. Maria was dead by 1671. Abraham Isaacse does not seem to have remarried. Instead, he raised the surviving children in the greater Manhattan area although he is said to have spent time in the upper Hudson Valley as well. At this point, we have not been able to place this individual on the historical landscape that became the city of Albany.

After a long and successful life in New Netherland and New York, Abraham Isaacse Verplanck was dead by August 1691 when letters testamentary were issued to Jacob Kipp (his principal creditor) in New York.

Two daughters and a son became Albany residents.

notes

first posted 8/20/13; updated 1/15/14