Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by Raphael Patai & Robert Graves

Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by Raphael Patai & Robert Graves

Author:Raphael Patai & Robert Graves [Patai, Raphael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00


30

ABRAHAM IN GERAR

(a ) At Gerar, between Kadesh and Shur, Abram again passed off Sarai as his sister. When King Abimelech of Gerar would have enjoyed her, God threatened him with death. Like Pharaoh, Abimelech protested his innocence; but God answered: ‘Nevertheless, make amends by sending Sarai back, and begging Abram to intercede for you!’ This Abimelech did, though reproaching Abram, who said, unperturbed: ‘When the gods caused me to wander abroad, I commanded my wife: “Tell all whom you meet that I am your brother!”—which is the truth.’

King Abimelech gave Abram oxen, sheep, bond-women and a thousand pieces of silver, and invited him to stay at Gerar. Abram then made his intercession and God, who had closed the wombs of all the Gerar women, restored their fertility. 265

(b ) Some say that Michael threatened Abimelech with a sword, and overruled his excuses, arguing: ‘When strangers enter a city, it is proper to offer them food; but improper to inquire after their women. Since you inquired after Sarai, Abram feared that your men might kill him if he acknowledged her as his wife. The guilt must therefore be yours!’

They explain that God not only made the Gerar women barren: He closed up their other secret orifices, and those of the men too, so that at dawn the sorely troubled people met together, complaining: ‘By Heaven, one more night like the last, and we shall be dead!’ 266

***

1 . Gerar was the name of both a kingdom and its capital city. The Land of Gerar lay on the south-western border of Canaan, separating it from Egypt, between Gaza and Beersheba. The city of Gerar was located in or near the Valley of Gerar which is identified by some scholars with modern Wadi Shari‘ah, to the north-west of Beersheba, by others with modern Wadi Ghaza, due west of Beersheba. But the name of the country survived as late as Byzantine times, when Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea called it Geraritica.

2 . The designation of Abimelech as a Philistine king (Genesis XXI. 33–34; XXVI. 1, 8, 18) has been regarded as an anachronism, since the arrival of the Philistines in Canaan is usually assumed to have taken place around 1200 B.C. , whereas Abraham lived in the second half of the fifteenth century B.C. An increasing number of scholars, however, incline to the view that the 1200 B.C. Philistine invasion was not the first (just as Joshua’s was only the concluding phase of a protracted process of Hebrew immigration into Canaan) and that some Philistines may well have been established in Gerar by 1500 B.C.

3 . The original home of the Philistines was Caphtor, which does not necessarily refer to the island of Crete (Keftiu in Egyptian) alone, but rather to the Minoan sphere in general, including the south-west of Asia Minor. Minoan or Caphtorian culture goes back to the third millennium B.C. , and one instance of its early impact on the East-Mediterranean coast is the location in Caphtor of Kothar wa-Khasis’s workshop. He was the divine craftsman known to Greeks of the fourteenth century B.



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