You say after as if there was such a thing as Jewry before Abraham.
Jewish ethnicity did not exist before Abraham. It begins with him and his descendants, first as Hebrews, later as Israelites, and eventually as Jews.
Many scholars associate Abraham with the Amorites, a Semitic-speaking people who migrated from northern Mesopotamia into Syria and Canaan in the early 2nd millennium BCE. This is reflected in both the culture and names described for him in the earliest sources.
correct. i assume you are familiar with the story of jacob, the goat hair pads and such that the mother gave her son and told him to accept the blessing? the goat he slayed and cooked up to feed him? and what that brother... now, i forget... yes, esau. what he did later? this was the line of abraham. israel (jacob) was the good one. their gene line was contaminated with redhead genetics, and if you read Jasher you can read a description of one of the grandsons of Noah who also was red.
to be honest, reading genesis as it is in the catholic canonical version, it almost seems like jacob, later israel, and his mother, were scum. but the apocrypha tell a different story about what happened, in fact, all that trickery with the goatskins and stuff is strangely missing, almost like esau's bloodline had rewritten it...
