Why did Abraham destroy the idols?

Answer 1

A:The well-known story of Abraham discovering monotheism as a young boy is not to be found in The Bible and has no scriptural support. In this midrash Abram (later Abraham), while still a young boy, realised that his father's idols had no power and that there is but one God. To prove his point, Abram smashed all the idols but one, then told his father that the surviving idol had destroyed all the others. Abram's father said the idol had no power to do this because it was only a statue, thereby (according to the midrash) proving Abram's point.

Bruce Feiler (Abraham) says that probably less than one per cent of the stories told about Abraham appear in the Bible, with an explosion of detail beginning to appear in Jewish tradition from the third century BCE onwards. In contrast to the midrash, the Bible itself never credits Abraham with monotheistic beliefs.

Answer 2

Abraham destroyed the idols because he believed in the oneness of God and rejected the worship of multiple idols as a form of polytheism. He wanted to emphasize monotheism and the worship of a single, all-powerful God.