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{"id":68990,"date":"2025-01-09T01:58:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T06:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=68990"},"modified":"2025-01-04T10:19:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-04T15:19:50","slug":"the-abraham-saga-begins-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2025\/01\/09\/the-abraham-saga-begins-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abraham Saga Begins– Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

At this point God says to Abram he needs to do a survey of the whole land which he and his descendants are being given, to the north and the south and the east and the west from Bethel.\u00a0 And the promise is to Abram and his seed forever.\u00a0 Olam in Hebrew can have several meanings. Yes it can be in perpetuity, i.e. forever. But it can also mean \u2018on an ongoing basis without a pre-determined end\u2019. In other words, it need not mean forever, especially if it is part of a conditional promise like the one in 2 Sam. 7.12-16 to David and his descendants.\u00a0 In fact the Davidic line did not continue forever because this was a conditional promise. It was discontinued for centuries, and because of many bad and unfaithful kings.\u00a0 If one looks at Gal. 4, you will see how Paul deals with this remarkable promise to Abram, namely he takes the term \u2018seed\u2019 singular literally, to refer to one descendant\u2014 namely Christ himself.\u00a0 This is his way of dealing with what happened with the previous descendants of Abram broke the covenant.\u00a0 \u00a0But clearly, in this original context when an analogy is drawn between seed and grains of dust, the original intent is for \u2018seed\u2019 to be seen as a collective noun.<\/p>\n

So it is that Abram pulls up his tent stakes, and moves all the way to Hebron, and pitches his tent under the terebinths of Mamre which are said to be in Hebron. A terebinth appears to have been an oak. And apparently there is an evidence of a tree cult focused on a single ancient tree near Hebron. Wikipedia says the following:\u00a0 \u201cModern scholars have identified three sites near Hebron which, in different historical periods, have been successively known as Mamre:\u00a0Khirbet Nimra<\/b>\u00a0(a little excavated Persian and Hellenistic period site),\u00a0Ramat el-Khalil<\/b>\u00a0(the best known site, flourished from the Herodian through the Byzantine period), and\u00a0Khirbet es-Sibte<\/b>. The last one contained an old oak tree identified by a relatively new tradition as the\u00a0Oak of Mamre<\/a> which has collapsed in 2019, and is on the grounds of a Russian orthodox monastery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"