Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

somehow this seems to have  got lost along the line

NPL

> Tracing ghost here?
> 
> Try to look at the passage Gen 11:27-32, in the Hebrew text. Land of birth
> of Abraham and his family: Ur kasdim (Gen 11:27). Haran dies there, but
> Haran is not the city of Harran (written with a cheth, not a he like the
> deceased son of Terach). Then Gen 11:28: Terach takes his family, all of
> them, in order to move to the land of Canaan. In Gen 11:30 he reaches as
> far
> as ('ad-) Harran, and settles there and dies there. What is meant by the
> sentence, wayyabo'u 'ad charran? That he went from one city to the next,
> or
> that he reached as far as ... before he settled down?
> 
> On the other hand, what use of this, in the following session Abram moves
> out of Harran with his belongings in 12:5 to get to the Land of Canaan,
> and
> in the next sentence he enters Canaan. Not a word about the travel,  he
> goes
> out and he moves in. Distance is not the concern of the author. 
> 
> The question is, then, is the author rally interested in geography. Can we
> create a geography of, say Northern Mesopotamia on the basis of
> information
> like this. Is the point of the narrative not to bring the herp from one
> place to another place, ignoring the immaterial matters of a real travel?
> 
> NPL
> 
> 
>