There has been a christian community on this site for over 1300 years. It has had a turbulent history over that period but the structure of the Minster as we see it today was completed around 1420, although there have been many other changes inside since then.
In the nineteenth century during the time that Canon Nolloth was vicar many improvements were made to the Minster including Sixty nine of the statues were carved life size in stone by ‘Mr Smith’ and John and Bryant Baker. They were placed in niches on the outside of the minster that were at that time vacant.
The Statue
The statue stands to the right hand side of the West Portal entrance to the Minster. He is near the ground level next to the door with another statue of Eve to his left.
He is portrayed wearing robes, standing upright with his right hand holding a knife. A ram is at his feet on the right hand side.
This scene relates to the incident when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, before finding a ram to sacrifice instead.
Abraham the person
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Abraham (originally
Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews and God; in Christianity, he is the spiritual progenitor of all believers, whether Jewish or non-Jewish; and in Islam, he is a link in the chain of Islamic prophets that begins with Adam (see Adam in Islam) and culminates in Muhammad.
His life, told in the narrative of the Book of Genesis, revolves around the themes of posterity and land. Abraham is called by God to leave the house of his father Terah and settle in the land of Canaan, which God now promises to Abraham and his progeny. This promise is subsequently inherited by Isaac, Abraham's son by his wife Sarah, while Isaac's half-brother Ishmael is also promised that he will be the founder of a great nation. Abraham purchases a tomb (the Cave of the Patriarchs) at Hebron to be Sarah's grave, thus establishing his right to the land; and, in the second generation, his heir Isaac is married to a woman from his own kin, thus ruling the Canaanites out of any inheritance. Abraham later marries Keturah and has six more sons; but, on his death, when he is buried beside Sarah, it is Isaac who receives "all Abraham's goods" while the other sons receive only "gifts".
Most historians view the patriarchal age, along with the Exodus and the period of the biblical judges, as a late literary construct that does not relate to any particular historical era; and after a century of exhaustive archaeological investigation, no evidence has been found for a historical Abraham. It is largely concluded that the Torah was composed during the early Persian period (late-6th century BCE) as a result of tensions between Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and traced their right to the land through their "father Abraham", and the returning exiles who based their counterclaim on Moses and the Exodus tradition of the Israelites"
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The following extract relates to the incident with Abraham and his son Isaac depicted in the statue.
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The Binding of Isaac, or simply
"The Binding" , is a story from Genesis 22 of the Hebrew Bible. In the biblical narrative, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Moriah. As Abraham begins to comply, having bound Isaac to an altar, he is stopped by the Angel of the Lord; a ram appears and is slaughtered in Isaac's stead, as God commends Abraham's pious obedience.
In addition to being addressed by modern scholarship, this biblical episode has been the focus of a great deal of commentary in traditional sources of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."
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