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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > August 1995

Abraham & Yahweh

A case of male bonding

By Philip R. Davies

24 This article will offend some readers. It will jar many more. Why then are we publishing it? Because it makes us think. If we reject the author’s textual analysis, we should know why. In this way, it has the capacity to take us to a deeper level of meaning—our own meaning. The author has a doctorate from Oxford, he is an established biblical scholar, and the article began as a well-received paper at a conference of biblical scholars. It is nothing if not provocative. Our aim is not to shield our readers, but to present them with a […]

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Footnotes

1.

The patriarch’s name is changed from Abram in Genesis 17:5.

2.

The deity is sometimes called Yahweh (usually translated as “the Lord”) and sometimes Elohim (translated as “God”).

3.

In Hebrew the name of the person and the city differ slightly, but the coincidence and the habit of naming lands and cities after persons (or vice-versa) are well attested in the Hebrew Bible; I suspect there is meant to be at least a wordplay here.

Endnotes

1.

The connection between the Babel and Abraham stories has been made by Thomas L. Thompson, The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1987), pp. 79–80.

2.

As argued by David J.A. Clines, in “The Ancestress in Danger,” in What Does Eve Do to Help? and Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1990), pp. 61–84; esp. pp. 71–73.