Nimrod tried to kill Abraham for speaking out against his ruling cult, but Abraham was miraculously saved. Then G-d told him to leave the land of his birth and to travel to "a land which I shall show you." This was the land of Israel, the Holy Land, which G-d gave to Abraham and his descendants as an inheritance, as a place in which to keep all of His commandments in the Torah and thus to be close to Him.
===Abraham studied at the academy of Shem and Eber===
There Abraham studied at the academy of Shem and Eber, and he acquired great wisdom. He traveled with his wife and his flocks and herds, offering hospitality to people and discussing the concepts of divinity with them, each according to his level. Sarah, meanwhile, instructed the women. Abraham wrote books and devoted all his wealth to doing kindness to everyone who needed it. He brought others to the understanding of the the Seven Laws, by which he himself was bound, but his efforts for the spreading of this awareness earned him a much higher reward; his descendants were to be given the privilege of keeping the whole Torah in the Jewish manner.
While the Jews lived on their land, with the Temple in their midst, they had a high level of spiritual awareness. Prophecy was a constant factor in their lives. These centuries also saw the rise of other empires: Greece, with its scientific and artistic excellence, and Persia and Babylon, with highly developed sorcery cults of a kind that has now disappeared. The Greek world produced many truly great thinkers, such as the philosopher Aristotle, but its cult of beauty also led many people to a self-indulgent way of life, immoral and idolatrous.
===Greek influence in conflict with Torah===
Thus, inevitably, through this Gentile Greek influence as well as others, there were elements that came into conflict with Torah and the world of Jewish learning. During the early years of the Second Temple, these forces mounted an all-out campaign to conquer the land of Israel and to force the Jews away from the Torah. These Greeks opposed the Torah as much because of the Seven Laws as from any concern over the life led by the Jews themselves. They wanted to pollute Jewish wisdom with impure concepts to the point where it would lose the capacity to influence non-Jews in favor of Noachide practice. They sent troops into the Holy Temple itself in an attempt to destroy its altars and to contaminate the sacred olive oil used for lighting the lamps. This was no act of random destruction: this oil and its light correspond in the Temple service to the maintaining of pure Torah wisdom.
