Hello, Abraham?

Another essay from my early college years.

This idea may seem a little radical, but the time has come for desperate measures. I propose that we have a seance. Gather together all sorts of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religious types, call up the spirit of Abraham (and possibly Isaac and Ishmael), and settle this issue once and for all. It won't be easy.

I'm not quite sure how we are going to lure the religious leaders to our gathering. Maybe the undeniable appeal of an all-you-can-eat buffet, or some kind of sham movie premiere would be enough. Who can say thay wouldn't like the chance to hob-nob with the glitterati? I suggest having some tasty snacks on hand to soothe ruffled feathers when out little ruse is discovered. Oh, and nice comfy armchairs.

The calling up Abraham bit is going to be tricky. We will need to find an agnostic medium. He or she can't have an affiliation to any particular religion because that could skew the answers. We need someone who is open to anything. This person also needs to have thick skin because I think that the religious types may have some scathing remarks.

If Abraham can't provide us with any definitive answers, we may need to call upon his children, Isaac and Ishmael. Now, I would assume that there was a fair amount of brotherly competition between the two, but hopefully they could put past differences behind them and fairly answer our questions. If all else fails, we will call upon Sarah and Hagar. Women always have all the dirt. And we all know how women love to gossip.

Settling this issue is fraught with various pitfalls. We don't even know if Abraham existed. In order to ascertain that he is truly Abraham we will need to ask him some questions that only he would know the answers to. That is, if we get a hold of anything at all. Perhaps something like, "What was Sarah's favorite desert flower?" Then we can get to the loaded questions: "Who are the Chosen people?" and "What kind of a god asks you to sacrifice your son anyway, hmmm?"

My professor said that this was "beautifully metaphorical" but I was really just being a smartass.