'We Can Create Our Own Abraham'

Bruce Feiler's best-selling book of 2001, "Walking the Bible," recounted his journey through the Middle East as he retraced the biblical stories of the Torah. To write his latest book, "Abraham," due out this month from William Morrow, Feiler returned to the Middle East, traveling through dangerous regions in search of the patriarch of the three major monotheistic faiths. In "Abraham," Feiler argues that it is impossible to understand the divisions between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism--and much of current world events--without understanding the world's first monotheist.

After "Walking the Bible" came out, I was very happily working on another biblical trek last summer. Then, at home in New York on September 11, I received a phone call from my brother, saying, "Look outside your window." I watched the towers fall from the home of neighbors I hardly knew. I was mute, like everybody else, for several weeks. Then we began to hear these questions: Why did they hit us? Can the religions get along? We had been told for about a decade that the biggest question facing the world was going to be the battle between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world. Was this that moment? Was this the start of the end of the world?

If you listened closely, one name echoed behind that conversation, and one man stands at the nexus of the three religions that suddenly seem to be at war: Abraham.

So it was 10 days after September 11 that I hit on this idea, that I wanted to understand Abraham. He is largely unknown. I wanted go looking for Abraham, and I wanted to get him into the national conversation as soon as possible.

About a third of "Walking the Bible" is about the early years of Genesis, so I had written a lot about Abraham. In all those years of traveling in the Middle East, in Turkey, Israel, Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere, I had talked to countless Jews, Christians, and Muslims about politics, geography, and faith. One thing I learned in traveling there is that the past is never really that far away. It's always lying just under the sand.

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