Hi,

The story of Abraham and Isaac/Ishmael as sacrifice is one which confuses me a lot. Let's look at the contradictions:

****The Story
Islam = Abraham receives the dream to sacrifice his son, Ishmael readily agrees and says that his father will certainly find him of the patient ones. Ibrahim takes with him a rope and a knife, the son tells the father to tie him up so that he won't struggle and make Abraham more upset. Then, Abraham ties him up and blindfolds himself and then does the sacrifice. When he opens his eyes, he sees a dead ram instead and Ishmael next to the ram

Christianity = Abraham receives the dream to sacrifice his only son as a burnt offering. He goes to the place where he is ordered to go, builds an altar, bounds Isaac and lays him on the altar where there is also wood. As soon as he is about to take out his knife and slay the son, an angel intervenes. Abraham looks up in a thicket and finds a ram there so he sacrifices it instead of his son.

****The Sacrifice
Islam = Ishmael was to be sacrificed
Christianity = Isaac was to be sacrificed
Judaism = Isaac was to be sacrificed

****Test of Faith
Islam = The sacrifice is silently interrupted, but when Abraham opens his blindfolded eyes, he sees that he sacrificed a ram and that his son was replaced by the ram (weird, they also changed places and exchanged the ropes that were initially tied to Ishamel)

Christianity = The sacrifice is visibly interrupted as an angel intervenes and Abraham sees a ram in the thicket. However, in verse 22, only Abraham returns. (weird, where did Isaac go? It's later in verses that Isaac comes back on the stage)

Genesis 22:19 (So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelled at Beersheba)

****Existence of Abraham

---------------AGAINST------------
1) The archaeological evidence of Abraham does not exist.
2) In addition, I'll quote Dick Harfield, someone who debated against the existence of Abraham in Quora:

"He could not have travelled from Ur of the Chaldees, because the Chaldean people did not migrate into the region of Ur until over a thousand years later.

He could not have met the Philistine kings, again because the Philistines did not arrive on the Levantine coast until around 1250 BCE, long after the time attributed to Abraham.

The destruction of Sodom is a myth and the city of Sodom never really existed."

----------------FOR--------------------
1) The lineage of Abraham has important personalities such as Jacob and Joseph. Joseph has his very own importance in the Abrahamic religions as he was a renowned interpreter of dreams who was sold in slavery, later to become the second-in-command of Pharaoh.

2) The 12 tribes of Israel existed and were expelled from Israel. Of this we have archeological evidence and third party accounts.

3) The tribes (millions of people) have a tradition that they started from 12 brothers

4) Where did the Christian well at Beersheba come and the Islamic well of Zam zam if Abraham did not exist? Because they are interlinked, Abraham has an important role in these holy well stories because if he didn't exist, there would be no Ishmael and Isaac.

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Here is what bothers me now.

1) If we deny the existence of Abraham, what about his important lineage and what about the events that were predicted by Joseph on the basis of the dreams of Pharaoh? Where did Joseph and Jacob go then if Abraham didn't exist? According to Islam, Moses and many other Islamic prophets came from the lineage of Isaac and Muhammad was the only one who came from Ishmael.

2) Forget the existence. Let's assume Abraham did exist. What about the sacrifice then? If he did murder his son, then where did Jacob and Joseph come from? If he did not sacrifice then what stopped his lunacy suddenly from a non-religious point of view?

What is your view of this story and is there anyone who can solve the puzzle with the help of evidence? Look, I'm not asking you to tell me that we can't say anything about this story because there's always an answer to everything but I'm just not able to crack this code up.