[b-hebrew] Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?
Shoshanna Walker
rosewalk at concentric.net
Sat Nov 17 18:03:25 EST 2007
It is the consensus (unanimous as far as I know) among Chazal, that
these refer to the people who he "converted" to the knowledge of G-d.
It is beyond belief that this could be construed as slaves.
Shoshanna
>Genesis 12: 5 tells us that certain people came with Abraham and Lot from
>Harran to Canaan, who almost certainly were not members of the
>immediate family
>of Abraham or Lot: "the souls that they had gotten in Haran". Are these
>people "slaves", who had been "bought" by Abraham and Lot in Harran? Or,
>rather, are these people distant relatives of Abraham's father,
>whose families were
>the social equals of Abraham's father's family, and who were on a long
>caravan trip out to Mesopotamia with Abraham's father's family as
>security guards?
>Here is the JPS1917 translation of Genesis 12: 5:
More information about the b-hebrew
mailing list