Terach
Terach (also: Tarah, Tharah, Terah, Hebrew תֶּרַח) is a man named in the Old Testament .
Biblical tradition
Terah, the son of Nahor and a descendant of Noah is the first book of Genesis ( Gen 11.24 to 32 EU ) the father of Abram, who later became Abraham 's.
At the age of seventy, he fathered him and two other sons, Nahor and Haran ( Gen 11.26 EU ), and a daughter Sarai ( Gen 20.12 EU ). At that time the family lived in Ur in Chaldea . After Haran, Lot's father , dies there, Terach sets out from Ur to move to the country of Canaan, about 2000 km away . He sets off with his grandson Lot as well as Abram and Sarai. Abram and Sarai are now married; Marriages between half-siblings were only forbidden in the Law of Moses ( Dtn 27.22 EU ).
When they come halfway to Haran , the family stays there. According to biblical tradition, Terach dies in Haran at the age of 205 ( Gen 11.32 EU ). This is reported before Abram and Lot set out to move on to Canaan.
The age of Abram when he moves on is given as 75 years ( Gen 12.4 EU ). Thus Terach must have been 145 years old at this point in time, since Terach fathered Abram at the age of 70 (Gen 11:26). Terach died at the age of 205 in Haran (Gen 11:32) and thus saw Abram's departure, as the Samaritan Pentateuch also shows.
The interpretation of the martyr Stephen is also important for the Christian tradition, who explains in his speech in the Acts of the Apostles of Luke:
- God appeared to Abra (ha) m already in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, with the order to leave his relatives and to set out for a new land (Acts 7: 1-2). Gen 11 does not describe this, but it represents additional information that makes the move of part of the Terach family from Ur in Chaldea plausible in the first place. According to this, Abram received the commission from God before the time in Haran, but took part of his family with him on the way, even though the head of the clan is mentioned first in Gen 11:31. Gen 12.1ff repeats the solution / separation from kinship that has not yet taken place.
- Acts 7.4 apparently explains that Abra (ha) m left Haran after Terach's death: “So he [Abram] went out of the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And when his father [Terah] died, God brought him from there to this land where you now live ”. Strictly speaking, this passage does not say that Abram left Terach Haran after his death, but rather that it was only when Terach died that Abram came to the land "in which you now live". The death of Terach is therefore not the time of Abraham's departure from Haran in Acts 7.4. It can also be assumed that Stephen actually implemented the required separation from kinship (Gen 12: 1).
filming
In the 1994 film adaptation of The Bible - Abraham , the Italian Vittorio Gassman played Terach.
Web link
- Terah in the Jewish Encyclopedia (English)