Abraham

The "old Abraham full of years" to whom Shreve compares Sutpen in Absalom! is obviously the Old Testament patriarch (260). That figure is best known as the mythic father of the covenant between God and His chosen people, and as the human father whose faith was so great that he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God's command. Shreve's "Abraham," however, seems entirely his own invention, who - in a quotation that sounds biblical but that Shreve makes up - "raised about me sons to bear the burden of mine iniquities and persecutions" (260).