Hello, my name is Mr. Robertson, and I'm really excited to be learning with you today.

I love RE, and we are, today, continuing with our unit with our big question: prophethood.

How are Abrahamic faiths connected through prophets? Today's lesson is all about the prophets Isaac and Ismail.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain the theological reasons for the divergent interpretations of Abraham's test.

I'm really excited about this lesson, and I can't wait to get started with you today.

Now, we have four key words in this lesson.

Our first key word is ancestor.

An ancestor is a person related to you who lived a long time ago.

Our next key word is descendant.

A descendant is your children and any future generations of children that begin from them.

Our third key word is divergent, which means developed in different directions.

And our fourth key word is sacrifice.

Sacrifice means giving up something very important or to kill something as an offering to God.

All of these key words will be used throughout our lesson today.

So our lesson on Isaac and Ismail has three parts.

And in the first part of the lesson, we're going to be understanding Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.

Are you ready to go, theologians? Let's go.

So this lesson is a theology lesson.

We're going to be taking a theological lens to look at Isaac and Ismail.

Theologians are academics and people within religions who study beliefs and use scriptures to help them.

Whether or not you are a member of a religion, you can use theology as a tool to understand the views believers might have based on their holy books.

And in this lesson, we'll use religious texts, and we'll study them like theologians do.

So this is our opportunity to act like theologians and use some of the tools they have.

We can see an image here.

You may have seen an image like this somewhere else.

I wonder if you might know who it is.

This is an image of Abraham, and Abraham is a central figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

One of the most famous parts about Abraham is the story of his test, which we're going to be looking at today.

And this is really important because it's fundamental to the ancestry of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In other words, this story is like an origin story, and it tells the origin of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. So it's a really, really important story to millions of people around the world today.

Now, if we analyse the story of Abraham's test and Abraham's descendants, we can see how it's been interpreted differently in different religions.

There is divergence in the way that Jews, Christians, and Muslims interpret these stories.

And it's this divergence we're going to focus on today.

And then think about, why does it matter? What impact does it have? So I'm gonna start by looking at some sacred text.

We're going to look at the Christian Bible, the Old Testament, which is also the Torah, and we're going to look at a section from Genesis.

It says here, "Now Sarai, Abraham's wife, had born him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar.

So she said to Abraham, 'The Lord has kept me from having children.

Go, sleep with my slave.

Perhaps I can build a family through her.

' Abraham agreed to what Sarai said.

So after Abraham had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.

He slept with Hagar, and she conceived." So we have this text, an extract from the text here talking about Abraham and Sarai.

And what I want you to think about is this: what developments in Abraham's family are shown in these verses? So we can see here, we've highlighted the section, "The Lord has kept me from having children.

Go, sleep with my slave.

Perhaps I can build a family through her." Now, this extract explains and helps us understand that Sarah and Abraham did not currently have children, but they really wanted children.

And so Sarah was thinking of an alternative to conceiving herself because she was worried that she couldn't conceive.

And later on, you see we've highlighted, "He slept with Hagar, and she conceived." So during the time that this text was written thousands of years ago, there was traditions of if a family couldn't have children, someone else being used to conceive that child.

Now Sarai has an Egyptian slave called Hagar, and so Sarai offers Hagar so that Abraham can try and find a child through her.

Now, in modern times, this is all quite not the sort of thing that would really happen, is it, because it's involving slaves and people being offered.

But it's important to understand that within the context that this was written, this was quite normal practise.

And so although it seems quite odd and immoral to us, at the time, this was seen as a legitimate way of pursuing a family.

Later, we discover that the child was called Ismail.

So let's summarise what we've learned so far from that text.

Originally, Abraham was named Abram.

He became Abraham when he created the Covenant with God and he was married to Sarai.

In Genesis 17, God changes their names to Abraham and Sarah.

It's a little confusing, but we have that transition from Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah.

Sarai had not had any children with Abraham.

She gave her Egyptian slave Hagar to Abraham to conceive a child.

So let's test what we've learned so far.

Which of these explains Hagar's relationship with Abraham? Is it A, Sarah believed Abraham preferred Hagar; B, Sarah did not want to have children with Abraham; or C, Sarah believed a relationship between Abraham and Hagar was her only chance for a child? Pause the video and have a think.

Good thinking, theologians.

Yes, it's C, isn't it? Abraham and Sarah could not have children.

Sarah and Abraham wanted children.

The only option they felt was available to them at the time was for Hagar, her slave, and slavery was quite common at that point, to be offered for Abraham to find a child through her.

So Hagar did conceive, and she had a son, and the son was named Ismail.

And this was Abraham's first son.

The Torah and Bible, remember, these are shared text for Jews and Christians, then describe a miraculous pregnancy for Sarah and Abraham.

Let's look at this extract in the book of Genesis, and we also find it in the Torah.

"I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.

I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations, kings of peoples will come from her.

Abraham fell facedown.

He laughed and said to himself, 'Will a son be born to a man at 100 years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90?'" So let's have a think about what's going on in this text.

The question, will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90, that helps us to understand why Jews and Christians would describe Sarah's pregnancy as a miracle.

Now, the Bible and the Torah are full of ancient texts and ancient times.

And so at this early stage of the Torah and the Bible, many of the characters lived to a very long period of time.

And so here you can see Abraham is described as 100 years old and Sarah at 90.

So the possibility, though, having children would've seen quite remote, wouldn't it? And so the Torah and the Bible are explaining here that this birth is a miracle because it was a long time past when people would've expected to be able to have children.

This passage also suggests that Jews and Christians are the descendant of Sarah.

"I will bless her and surely give you a son.

I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations, kings of people will come from her." And so what the Bible and Torah seem to be saying is that Sarah will be the mother of nations.

In other words, she will have a son, and then that son will have more descendants and many of these descendants to come.

And in fact, they will not be ordinary descendants, but they will be kings.

A whole nation of people will come from Sarah.

And so Jews and Christians today would describe themselves as descendants of Sarah.

Let's again summarise what we are saying so far.

The scriptures of the Abrahamic faiths are agreed that Abraham had children with both Hagar and Sarah.

They agree that Ismail was born first to Hagar and that Sarah later gave birth to Isaac.

Let's just check our understanding here because there's been a lot of text to understand.

True or false, Abraham had two sons.

Is that true or is that false? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, theologians.

It's true, isn't it? And it's true because Abraham had a son, Ismail, with Hagar, and she was Sarah's Egyptian servant, and then later, he had a son named Isaac with Sarah.

So he had two sons, Ismail and Isaac.

Okay, I'd like us to try and put some of this information together.

So I have a task I'd like you to carry out.

We're going to think about a family tree.

Now, a family tree, which you may already know, is a way in which we can show how people and their descendants are linked.

So I've got an example for you here.

We have Mark, and we have Isabella, and they are married, and they have had a child named Gabriella.

So we have a horizontal line linking Mark and Isabel together, and now we have a vertical line naming Gabriela.

What I'd like you to do is have a go at constructing a family tree for the characters which we've been looking at today.

So we've got Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, and their descendants.

So I'd like you to have a go at creating your own family tree, please, of these characters.

How would you place Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar together? And can you remember the names of their descendants? Who were the two sons that Abraham had, and can you remember who was the mother of each of those sons? Okay, I'm really looking forward to seeing those family trees.

Off you go.

Well, let's see what your family tree looked like.

Here's the family tree that I've drawn.

I've got Abraham in the middle as the father, and to the left, I've got Hagar.

We've called her a servant.

You might have put slave.

And she had her the first son of Abraham's, which was Ismail.

And then on the other side, we've got Abraham and Sarah, who was his actual wife.

And if you remember, they had a miraculous birth.

And so their son, Abraham's second son, was called Isaac.

So we've got Abraham, Hagar and Sarah, and sons Ismail and Isaac.

Well done, theologians, if you managed to get those correctly.

You're doing an important theological thing here.

You are analysing a text, and you're working out some anthropology of descendants here.

In the second part of this lesson, we're going to be looking at interpretations of Abraham's test.

You can see an image here.

This image has got lots of symbolism in it, and it's going to be a really rich image, which we're going to analyse.

And we're going to analyse it like theologians.

We're going to make some links between what we can see in this image and some of the text and stories that we're looking at.

So a really important story in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the story of Abraham's test.

This is one of the foundational stories of the Abrahamic faiths, and it's really important to understand this story because it's going to unlock so much learning about Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This image represents the story itself.

So I wonder what you can see and what you might infer about the story.

Now, you might already know this story, you might not know this story.

What I'd like you to do is look really, really carefully at that image and think, what might be going on here? Who might some of characters be, and what do you think might be happening? I'm going to pause the video.

I'd like you to talk to your talk partner or have a think for yourself.

So what did you notice? You might have noticed that there's a knife being held here in that person's hand.

You might have noticed that there's a young person kneeling, and you may have speculated that their hands could be tied behind their back.

You might have noticed that there's an angel pointing upwards to the sky, and you might also notice there's a sheep or a ram.

And from this, what might we have inferred? Well, you might have discussed this and thought that, perhaps, the man might have been about to use the knife.

Maybe he was going to kill the boy.

But is the angel interrupting him? Is the angel telling him some extra information before he did that? Let's have a think about what is actually going on in this image.

So the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran all describe this test of Abraham.

As I said, it's a really, really important story.

Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son.

In other words, he was asked by God to kill his son as a sacrifice to God.

Now, the Torah and the Bible say that this son was Isaac.

At the last moment, once Abraham had proven he was willing to do it, in other words, he'd taken Isaac, he'd taken him up to the mountain where he was commanded to go to, he tied his hands behind his back, and he was in the act of actually raising the knife, an angel commanded him to stop.

And you could see the angel arriving on the scene there and pointing to the top to stay, "Stop, God doesn't actually want you to sacrifice His son.

This is actually a test of your commitment to God." Instead, the story goes that a ram, a sheep appeared in the undergrowth, and so that was sacrificed to God, and not the son Isaac.

So why did the angel tell Abraham to stop the sacrifice? Was it A, a test of Isaac's faith; B, a test of Abraham's faith; or C, a test of the angel's faith? I'd like you to pause the video and have a think.

Good thinking, theologians.

Yes, it's B, isn't it? It was a test of Abraham's faith.

Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac.

And the fact that he was willing to do that showed to God, according to these stories, that he was utterly committed to God, and that's why he became the central figure for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Now we're going to look at the same story, but this time, we're going to read what it says in the Quran.

Let me read it for you.

It says, "Then when the boy reached the age to work with him, Abraham said, 'Oh, my dear son.

I've seen in a dream that I must sacrifice you.

So tell me what you think.

' He replied, 'Oh, my dear father.

Do as you are commanded.

Allah willing, you will find me steadfast.

' So here we have a similar story that we find in the Torah and the Bible.

This time it's in the Quran, and so we've got the reference to Allah as the Arabic word for God.

And in this, Abraham has a dream that he has to sacrifice his son, and his son replies, "If that is what Allah," if that's what God wants, "You must do it." When he says you'll find me steadfast, that means that I will be willing to go along with it because if it's God's will, then it must be done.

Now, is there anything in this verse that diverges from the story in the Torah and the Bible? Well, we can think a bit more about that if we look at this verse, which appears a little later, nine verses after that passage.

it says, "We later gave him good news of Isaac, a prophet, and one of the righteous." Now, the word later is really interesting in this because in the Muslim account of Abraham's test, it suggests that the son who was commanded to be sacrificed was not Isaac, but was actually Ismail, because it says we later gave him good news of Isaac.

That suggests that Isaac wasn't actually there at the time.

So that means that the son who Abraham was commanded to sacrifice in the Quran was not Isaac, but was actually Ismail.

This is what we call a divergence.

This passage found in the Torah and the Bible gives a different account.

"He said, 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.

'" Which section of this passage shows that the Torah and the Bible give a different account to the Quran? Read it carefully.

What do you think? Where can we find some evidence? This is what theologians do.

They really carefully look through texts to find evidence.

Yes, it very clearly says here, "Take your only son Isaac." And so therefore, we can see that Isaac is named as the son to be sacrificed, whereas as I was saying earlier, the Quran states the sacrifice happened before Isaac was born, so it must have been Ismail.

And so we are using the tools of theology here to establish divergence between the Abrahamic traditions.

Let's just check our understanding here.

True or false, Muslims believe Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac.

Think about the two texts we've been looking at.

What do you think? Correct, theologians.

It's false, isn't it? And why is it false? Because Muslims belief Ismail is the son Abraham was told to sacrifice.

It's a test from God, as Isaac was not born at the time.

Remember, he uses the word later in the Quran, which Muslims interpret as meaning that Ismail was the first and son that was to be sacrificed.

Okay, let's have a task now.

We're going to think a little bit about what we've been learning.

I'd like you to think about the two statements.

Aisha says the Abrahamic religions share belief about how and why Abraham was tested by God.

And Lucas says the Quran has a different account of the test of Abraham than the Torah and the Bible.

Now, both these statements are true.

Aisha and Lucas are both correct, but I'd like you to think about why they are true.

Think about the two texts that we've been looking at, the Torah and Bible and the Quran.

Can you think about what's being said in them to help provide some evidence to explain why these statements are true? Let's use the tools of theology here.

Let's see if we can show how these texts have been interpreted by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Pause the video.

Off you go, good luck.

Excellent work, theologians.

I can see you've been reading and thinking through those texts very carefully.

So you might have said Aisha correctly mentions that all three religions agree on the how and why Abraham has tested by God because both of the accounts in the Quran and the Bible and Torah talk about God appearing and talking to Abraham and telling him he had to go and sacrifice a son.

They also mentioned the fact that he didn't carry out the sacrifice and that he was stopped at that point because that was a test of his commitment to God.

But Lucas is correct because there's divergence, there's difference between the Torah and the Bible, which very clearly states that Isaac was to be sacrificed in the Quran, which uses the word later, and Muslims interpret that word later to mean that it was Ismail who was due to be sacrificed.

Well done, theologians, if you've managed to get that correct.

So in the final part of this lesson, we're going to be thinking about the continuing impact on the Abrahamic faiths of the Ismail and Isaac divergence.

So as we've been saying, the story of Abraham's test has a significant impact on believers' understanding of their ancestors and shows why he's regarded as a prophet.

This is our diagram, which enables us to think through the ideas of prophethood a bit more.

So we might think about the loyalty that Abraham displays, and his loyalty might be his loyalty to God because he was asked to do something really, really difficult and challenging, to sacrifice his son, but he still tried to do it.

He overcame personal challenges.

If you remember back to the beginning of this lesson, he was quite an old man.

He hadn't had any children.

He wanted some descendants, and so that provoked a challenge for him.

Strength of character, because he was asked to do something really difficult, but he had the strength of character to believe in what he believed in and tried to carry it out.

And his commitment to the will of God, the story of the test really clearly displays that.

So Abraham, through his nature, through his stories, shows lots of the qualities of what makes a prophet according to the Abrahamic traditions.

Which phrase best fills the gap in the sentence? Abraham demonstrated what during his test? A, commit to the will of God; B, that he was able to see the future; or C, love for his son.

Pause the video and have a think.

You are right.

It's A, commit to the will of God.

Let's look again at this image.

Now we've come back to it, you probably can see some features of it, for example, the knife that Abraham is carrying, which is the knife that he was going to use to sacrifice either Isaac or Ismail, depending on the story you're looking at, and the pot, the fire of sacrifice.

Now, this story can have one big impact in that it can unify Jews, Christians, and Muslims who see Abraham as a shared ancestor.

That is why, of course, we talk about the Abrahamic faiths.

They're Abrahamic because they have this common ancestor of Abraham.

Although there are many ways in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have different views and different practises and different ways of praying and living, this idea of a shared ancestor is a point of connection between the three traditions.

But it's also a point of divergence because Muslims see themselves as descendants of Ismail, whereas Jews and Christians believe they're descendants of Isaac.

So all three Abrahamic traditions believe that they have a common ancestor of Abraham.

However, they trace that ancestry through different ancestors.

Muslims trace that ancestry back to Abraham through Ismail, and Jews and Christians trace their ancestry back through Isaac.

So we have both unity and divergence in the same story.

Let's think about what we were saying.

Which of these statements is correct? Is it A, Muslims believe they are descendants of Isaac, while Jews and Christians believe they are the descendants of Ismail; or B, Muslims believe they're descendants of Ismail, while Jews and Christians believe they're descendants of Isaac? Pause the video and have a think.

Yes, correct.

It's B, isn't it? Muslims believe they're descendants of Ismail, while Jews and Christians believe they are descendants of Isaac.

So Izzy's been thinking about this idea of ancestry, and she explains why she thinks it's important for Jews and Christians to learn they're descended from Isaac and for Muslims to think they're descended from Ismail.

Izzy says, "I think it matters for believers to understand their ancestry because it might help individuals feel part of a community.

Instead of seeing themselves only as part of their own family, they can feel a relationship with other members of their religion because they're all descendants of the same person." So Izzy's reflecting on this idea of ancestry, the idea that, as human beings, we have a chain of descendants going back into time.

So we have our immediate families and the people around us, but this idea of people going back through time who we're descended from is a really powerful idea in many cultures all around the world.

And Izzy saying that this idea of ancestry could be helpful and might actually give Jews, Christians, and Muslims a sense of community to think that they're not just human beings living today, but they have this ancestry going back through time and they are all descendants of that original same person, the person of Abraham.

Why might it feel important to believers to know who their ancestors are? Do you agree with any of these pupils, or do you have a different view? So Andeep says, "Knowing where we come from helps us understand who we are." Izzy says, "It might help individuals feel part of a community." And Jun says, "It makes them feel connected to their religious history." I wonder what you think about this idea of ancestors.

Do you agree with any of these statements? Do you think it's important to know who your ancestors are, or do you not think it's important? And why do you think that? You might want to pause the video and talk to those next to you.

You might like to reflect for yourself on this.

I can see you've had some really interesting discussions here.

It's a really interesting big question to think about, the idea of ancestors.

Does it matter? How important is it? We are going to finish with our last task.

We've got some statements here about the idea of ancestry and what we've been thinking about.

Some of these statements are incorrect, some of them are correct.

The ones which are incorrect, I'd like you to identify and rewrite them so they become true.

So A is our first statement.

Abraham is a shared ancestor for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Is that true, or does it need rewriting? B, Isaac is a shared ancestor for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Is that true or does that need, is that true, or does that need rewording? C, Christians are descendants of Ismail.

D, Hagar features in all Abrahamic religions, and E, Muslims are descendants of Isaac.

If you think those statements are true, you can leave them exactly as they are.

If you think they're incorrect, I'd like you to rewrite them to make them true.

Come on, theologians.

I think you can do a brilliant job of this.

You've done so well in thinking through all of these ideas and their texts.

Pause the video and have a think.

Excellent, theologians.

So A is fine, isn't it? We're very happy with that.

Abraham is a shared ancestor for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. B is not correct.

Isaac is a shared ancestor for Jews and Christians, but not Muslims. C is not correct.

Christians are descendants of Isaac, not Ismail.

D is correct.

Hagar features in all Abrahamic religions.

She's the mother of Ismail in all of the traditions.

And E, Muslims are descendants of Ismail, not Isaac.

Well done, theologians, if you manage to get those correct.

Our second task is this.

I'd like you to create a table of points that agree and disagree with Sofia's view.

So Sofia says, "The divergence around which son is sacrificed means the story of Abraham's test does not unite Jews, Christians, and Muslim." I'd like you to think about this.

Do we agree with Sofia or disagree with her? Can you create a table which shows whether we agree or disagree with her? I'd like you to pause a video and have a go.

So you might include some of the points here.

On one hand, you might have agreed with what Sofia was saying because Muslims don't believe they share Ismail as an ancestor with Jews and Christians, so they may not feel as united.

However, you might disagree with what Sofia said as well, because Abraham is still a prophet in all three religions, so the story might unite them.

Abraham is believed to be an ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, even if one of his sons isn't.

And the story about Abraham's faith is important, whatever son it was.

It's still a really important story about what unites and creates this idea of a common ancestor.

On the other hand, you might think there are inaccuracies in each other's holy books, which could cause disagreements.

So let's summarise what we've learned today.

All the Abrahamic religions recognise Abraham as a prophet and believe he was tested by God when asked to sacrifice his son.

The Torah and the Bible state that Abraham's son Isaac was commanded to be sacrificed.

The Quran implies it was Abraham's son Ismail because Isaac was not yet born.

Muslims believe they are descendants of Abraham through his son Ismail.

Theologians, you've done brilliantly today.

We've looked at some complex texts, we've learned how they were interpreted, and we've considered the question of what it means to be a common ancestor.

Well done for your patience today, and I look forward to learning in another lesson with you.

Thank you very much.