Q&A Abir Qesheth - Question #1
Question: Your site claims that Abir started from Avraham the son of Terah? How was it able to survive for several thousand years?
Answer: A claim of a chain of transmission of information from the time of Avraham to the present era is common in all ancient and modern Israelis/Jewish, Kariate, and Samaritan communities. These three communities descend from ancient Israelis who left a core textual, historical, and archeological trail which is accepted by scholars as being more than ~3,000 years old. Further, it is a proven fact that a large majority of the present day Israelis/Jews descend from said ancient Israelis and the presence of Israelis/Jews has been apparent in every generation from more than 3,000 years ago to the present.
Even with the differences in these groups, what is common between them is that from the time of Avraham to the present there has been an unbroken transmission of traditions and culture surrounding the Creator of all things, Hashem, and the Torah. The most ancient Jewish and even Samaritan communities have always claimed this to be the case without any ancient contradiction to this claim.
Anyone who knows Hebrew and Aramaic as well as having studied the texts of the Jewish sages of the Mishnah and Talmud knows that the claim of Torath Mosheh is that Hashem spoke to all of Am Yisrael at Mount Sinai. After that time Hashem transmitted, by way of Mosheh Rabbeinu, the entire Torah including information from the previous generations that had been known by most Israelis of that time. Included in that information was the histories of Avraham and his time frame which included Avraham’s background.
Before passing away, Mosheh Rabbeinu transcribed 13 Torah scrolls which contained the information that Hashem commanded to be found in a kosher Torah scroll. Further, Mosheh Rabbeinu had transmitted additional information orally to all of the leaders of that generation and this transmission continued throughout history to the present day. See the introduction to the Mishnah Torah, Introduction to the Rambam’s Commentary to the Mishnah, and Ramban’s Commentary on Torah.
Of course for someone who claims, without proof, that Jews and Samaritans do not possess an unbroken transmission of information (oral and written) from the time of Avraham to the present will find our claims about Abir strange because in reality they find the claims of all of Torath Mosheh/Judaism strange. Yet, one thing that these critics will never answer is, “If we can agree that the ancient Israelis had an army then any reasonable person would have to agree that armies throughout history had training. If ancient Israel had an army, sometimes described in the Tanakh, then how is that one can claim that they did not have training in combat?”
Most scholars agree that there are a number of ancient Jewish communities that have preserved traditions, lost to other Jewish communities, some of which are traced back to the 1st Temple Period. See the video below about Yemenite Jews.
The way that these traditions were preserved was by learning, writing, teaching, and putting into practice these traditions daily. Grandfather's taught their children and grandchildren, father's taught their sons and nephews, and teachers of Torah taught their students. Even, when Jews were forced into hiding many Jews were able to keep ancient Jewish traditions in secret by hiding their practices or veiling them. Take into account also that the Hebrew language, categorized as a Afro-Asiatic language, is thousands of years old yet modern day Jews still can read and understand ancient Hebrew writings starting from the age of 3 to 5 years old. This chain of transmission of Torah and its understandings has been a common trait in Jewish communities, world-wide, tramitted from grandfather to son and grandson, father to son, and Rabbi to students.
This is how Abir survived to the present day in certain Jewish communities.