Alice C. Linsley
Terah or Térach (Hebrew: תֶּרַח / תָּרַח, Modern Téraḥ / Táraḥ) is an important figure in biblical history. His name means "priest". Tera/Terah is one of numerous ancient words for priests: korah, harwa, sem, and hekau. Among the Nilotic Luo, Ja'Ter refers to the priest who performs the widow cleansing rituals. Among the Dinka, the word for priest is tier. In Japan, tera refers to a temple priest.
It appears that Terah is a title. It was found among the rulers of the Anu who inhabited the Upper Nile. The title "Tera-netjer" means priest of God/King.
Terah was a son of Nahor, the grandson of Serug. He was the father of Abraham and Sarah, Abraham's half-sister wife, and Haran and Nahor. All are descendants of Arpachshad, the son of Nimrod, the Kushite kingdom builder (Gen. 10).
Terah was a descendant of both Ham and Shem, as their ruling lines intermarried, as shown in the diagram below.
These rulers were a caste. One of the characteristics of castes is endogamy, that is, the practice of marrying only within one's caste. Joseph (Yosef), the son of Jacob (Yacob), married the daughter of a ruler-priest of Heliopolis (Biblical On). The intermarriage of the ruler-priest lines has been verified through kinship analysis of the royal families named in Genesis. Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of these ancient rulers reveals that the lines of Kain and Seth intermarried also, as did the lines of Abraham and Nahor.
Was Terah an idol worshipper?
In Joshua 24:2 we read: "In olden times, your forefathers – Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor – lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods..." and because of this many assume that Abraham was the first of his family to turn from idol worship to iconoclastic monotheism. Of course, this is far from accurate. The Aramean rulers kept ancestor figurines called teraphim. Teraphim belong to the priest caste.
This verse in Joshua must be understood in the context of the iconoclastic Deuteronomist Historian whose account clearly comes from a time long after Terah and Abraham. The Deuteronomist Historian reinterprets the history of Abraham's Horite ancestors in an attempt to strengthen the power of the Jerusalem Temple authorities. As Bernard M. Levinson points out the legal corpus of Deuteronomy conceptualizes the king in a way that rejects all prevailing models of monarchic power held among the ancient Hebrew/Habiru/'Apiru/Abrutu. This shift causes readers of the Old Testament to lose the continuity between the Messianic expectation of Abraham's cattle-herding Nilotic ancestors and the New Testament's understanding of Jesus as King and Messiah, raised on the third day according to the expectation of his Horite Hebrew ancestors.
Tera/Terah means "priest" and there is no substantial evidence that Abraham's father departed from the faith of his ancestors who believed in God Father and God Son, and who hoped for bodily resurrection.
Related reading: Who Were the Kushites?; Royal Names in Genesis; The Genesis King Lists; Why Rachel Didn't Trust Laban; Horite Mounds; Ancient Words For Priests; Early Resurrection Texts
Related reading: Who Were the Kushites?; Royal Names in Genesis; The Genesis King Lists; Why Rachel Didn't Trust Laban; Horite Mounds; Ancient Words For Priests; Early Resurrection Texts
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4 comments:
The whole canon is inspired and has been superintended by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is self-interpreting. We must use our God-given intelligence to sort through the material, context by context.
The thinking and culture was such in Medieval England, that in 1179 at Canterbury Cathedral, Terah (spelled T'Hare) was depicted in stained glass in a distinctly impious style in clothing and posture, unfavorably compared with the other patriarchs and "Ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ" (series of stained glass windows). Notice, also, the obsolete spelling of the name T'Hare (or T'Hara), at a time when the Bible was typically read in Latin, and the English language was in a rapid state of development. Does this suggest more to you in terms of an understanding of the root word of Terah's name, T'Hera being related to Hor/Horim?
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7bdc68d6c1-fc3f-41b5-a14a-6c07cd18a582%7d&oid=630132&ft=*&fe=1
Jonathan, That is very interesting!
In the Middle Ages we find a hardening of the Biblical stereotypes of the righteous and the unrighteous, and Terah was classified with the latter because of Joshua 24:2. The moralistic tendency in the Roman Catholic Church during that time produced much "black and white" thinking. There was, however, some appreciation of the more subtle aspects of the Biblical narratives among scholars.
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