Who On Earth Today Can Trace Their Lineage to Abraham?

 

 

 

Sarah, Abraham's first wife, was doubtful when angelic visitors declared she would bear a child in her own womb in her old age, but at 90 years old she did so!  She gave birth to Isaac.  People lived pretty long then by our present-day standards; Abraham lived to be 175 years old.  Sarah lived to be 127 years old per Genesis chapter 23.

 

 

 

 

  Abraham is a very popular figure in the view of many of today's largest religions.  This 'man who walked with God in faith' is an appreciated and well thought of historical figure in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish faiths, for instance.  And God made special promises to Abraham.  He rewarded Abraham's faith, and He also had plans which included Abraham's descendants.  Jesus' earthly parents were descended from Abraham as an example, as was King David who the Jews and Christians are familiar with, and as was Muhammad through Ishmael, whose father was Abraham as it confirms both in the Bible and per the Muslim holy writings.  Here is Genesis 15 in the Bible, where God makes a certain covenant promise to Abraham (though his name had not yet been changed by the command of God from Abram {meaning exalted father} to Abraham {meaning father of a multitude}): 

 

After these events, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield,

your very great reward.”

2But Abram replied, “O Lord GOD, what can You give me, since I remain childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3Abram continued, “Behold, You have given me no offspring, so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

4Then the word of the LORD came to Abram, saying, “This one will not be your heir, but one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” 5And the LORD took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.”a

6Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.b

7The LORD also told him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

End Quote

 

  So a promise is made to Abraham that his descendants will basically be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  But did it come true?  How many stars can actually be seen in the night sky by people with normal vision?  God may not have meant it literally, but if He did mean it literally then how many stars is that?  And which people are descended from Abraham in our world today?  Which peoples are actual blood descendants of Abraham?

  Did God make Abraham's descendants as numerous was the stars?  Even a very long time ago the Israelites wandering in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years with Moses counted it as a promise which had already been kept.  Here is proof of that as spoken by Moses from Deuteronomy Chapter 10:

 

¹⁴ To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. ¹⁵ Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and lovedthem, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.¹⁶ Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. ¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. ¹⁸ He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. ¹⁹ And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. ²⁰ Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. ²¹ He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. ²² Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

 

  Well, as to the question of how many stars can be seen in the night sky by people of average vision, there are sources which claim that if you count the total stars in each hemisphere which are visible to the naked eye and add them up you will come up with between 9,000 and 10,000 stars.  So, for a prolific person from almost 4,000 years ago to have 10,000 descendants today is quite possible.  

  But can we determine which people on this Earth actually are Abraham's blood descendants?  The answer is that we cannot presently know the total number, but we can say that certain people groups should be descendants of Abraham.  To speak about which groups those are we must look at the children descended from the wives and concubines of Abraham, of course.  And there were three wives and/or concubines of Abraham mentioned in the Bible.

  First is Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, who was Abraham's first son.  Abraham, about 86 years old at the time, was not married to Hagar when he impregnated her with Ishmael.  But Abraham had a problem:  his actual wife...Sarah, about 76 years old...was very unhappy because God had not given her children.  That is odd because the Almighty Father had promised Abraham descendants as 'numerous as the stars in the sky'.  Yet he and Sarah had no children, and they were becoming very old to have children.  It seemed Sarah was possibly barren. Or perhaps it was Abraham that was infertile.  It was a hard thing for Sarah because women in that time and culture were considered to have been shamed by God in a way if their womb was barren.  So, in her mounting frustration, Sarah pleaded with Abraham to sleep with her Egyptian maid-servant Hagar so that Sarah could claim the child that Hagar might conceive and give birth to as her own and raise it as her own - raise it as if it were Sarah's and Abraham's own child.  That was the idea, anyway.

  So, Hagar became pregnant by Abraham and Ishmael was born and went on in his life to father many children...12 sons, princes who became forefathers of the people of the Arab lands.  It was a human solution to a perceived slowness or perhaps even failure on the part of God to keep His promise to Abraham about having many descendants.  

  But to everyone's surprise Sarah later became pregnant herself when she as very old, about 90.  And when she gave birth, this child was named Isaac.  Isaac grew to manhood and married a woman named Rebecca who gave birth to two sons:  Esau and Jacob/Israel.  And as time went by these boys grew to adulthood and had many sons.  Jacob/Israel was the forefather of the Israelites, from whom the original Jews descend.  Esau's descendants are more of a mystery in our day due to not being so carefully tracked by historians or the Bible.  They were called Edomites at one point in Biblical history but were much reduced by wars as the account given by the Bible moves through the centuries.     

  Back to Abraham!  Abraham's concubine Hagar had been sent away by Abraham, and then his wedded wife Sarah eventually died.  This left Abraham in need of a wife.  So, he married a woman named Keturah and she was quite prolific compared to Hagar and Sarah.  She bore Abraham 6 sons in his old age, as described here in Genesis 15:1-6

Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. ² She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. ³ Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan. The descendants of Dedan were the Asshurim, the Letushim, and the Leummim. ⁴ The descendants of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Enoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were descendants of Keturah. ⁵ Abraham willed all that he owned to Isaac; ⁶ but to Abraham’s sons by concubines Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the East.^[1]

^{End Quote}

   You see the name Midian above in bold type, right?  That son of Abraham and Keturah is believed to be the founder of the people called the Midianites.  In Judges chap 8 there is part of the story of the Israelite named Gideon leading the armies of Israel against the vast horde of the Eastern people identified as Midianites, who had invaded and long oppressed a back-slidden Israel.  This all happen perhaps 500 years after the death of Abraham.  It is mentioned in Judges Chapter 8 verse 10 that there were about 135,000 warriors in this Eastern army called the Midianites which Gideon's forces fought that day and defeated.  So, though most of those particular men were removed from the gene-pool that day by Gideon's army, that gives us some idea of how large a society of Midianite women and children might have been left back in the land of Midian.  And that was around 1300 to1200 B.C. perhaps.  How has the Midianite bloodline grown and spread since then?  

 

  Also from Abraham and Keturah comes Abraham's grandson Sheba through his son Jokshan.  The Ethiopians claimed this Sheba as a founding ancestor.  While you can't accurately estimate how many of today's Ethiopians are actually blood descendants of this Sheba (if the belief that he is a founding ancestor is even true!) there are undeniably a lot of Ethiopians today:  approximately 115,000,000!   

 

  The history of the remaining descendants of Abraham through Keturah is more obscure unfortunately.  But there could certainly be millions of them.  Enough time has elapsed for that to easily occur.  

 

 

  So, to get to the original question, which people in our day, in the year 2020 A.D., know or believe themselves to be descended from Abraham?  Well, those Arab peoples who can trace their lineage to Ishmael are sons and daughters of Abraham.  And the Jews who are also Israelites can do so as well.  (You can convert to the Jewish faith without being of Israelite lineage, so not all 'Jews' are blood descendants of Abraham though most probably are.)  And the sons of Keturah have probably produced many descendants.  

  But let's say the 8 mentioned sons of Abraham were all married to wives by 1800 B.C., so their 'population' would be 16 persons at that time.  If the 'population' doubled about every 150 years, how many people would that be today?  Let's do a rough calculation.

 

  If we figure Abraham's sons as being alive and married in around 1800 B.C., then that would be 38 centuries ago, allowing for about 25 periods of 150 years, so 16 people times (2 {which represents the population doubling} raised to the 25th power) would equal:   536,871,000 people.  But, all save the three most recent generations would have died of old age, so subtract 16 x 2 raised to the 22nd power (so that only the last three generations existed alive), or in other words subtract 67,109,000.  So, the relatives of Abraham, using that formula, would be about 469,762,000 people today.  That is about 1 out of every 14 people on Earth.  But the number could be a lot higher or lower.  I would guess that if God blessed Abraham's descendants, then that would include blessing their fruitfulness, and it would be a higher number in that case, right?

  So, if we can see 10,000 stars in the night sky with un-aided eyes, God easily kept His promise to Abraham, even if you only reckon the Israelite portion of today's Jews.  And as mentioned, the Israelites counted it as a promise from God that had literally already been kept about 3400 years ago if that was the time of their wandering in the Sinai under Moses' lead.  But God may have gone far beyond what He promised, letting the descendants of Abraham become bountifully numerous.  

  God always keeps His promises!