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  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Rahab's descendants
  • Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 12:03:27 -0500


This possible mention of Rahab's descendants is interesting. (I note
that NRSV read "Her family" at Joshua 6:25, with "She" in a footnote.)
For according to the tradition preserved in the New Testament in
Matthew 1:5, Rahab was the wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz who
married Ruth (compare Ruth 4:21, 1 Chronicles 2:11). In this case the
line of Rahab's descendants, which may be referred to in Joshua 6:25,
is none other than the royal line of the house of David. But is there
any trace of this tradition in Jewish sources or in anything prior to
the New Testament?

Actually I suppose this descent from a prostitute could even be
alluded to in Psalm 51: it was not David's mother who was a
prostitute, as some have suggested, but a more remote ancestor, but he
feels the shame and defilement as if the guilty one were his own
mother.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: `ad hayom hazeh
Author: <alster AT comandcom.com> at Internet
Date: 08/02/2000 12:00


George Athas wrote:

> Yet, compare Josh 6:25 which states that Rahab the whore lived in Israel
`ad hayyom
> hazzeh. Does this mean that Joshua was written within a generation of
Jericho's
> destruction (if we can at all talk of that)? Or are we saying that an
oral tradition goes
> back to that generation?

Abravanel, interestingly enough, does not comment on this instance. I
would say it was referring to something known at the time of authorship of
this specific story - either this is an oral tradition from Rahab's time,
or the verse is referring to whom he saw as her descendants.

Kol Tuv,
Baruch Alster
Kochav Ya`akov, Israel


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  • Rahab's descendants, Peter Kirk, 02/08/2000

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