Terah

Terah repairs an idol that his son Abraham damaged. He decries Abraham's rejection of their fathers' gods and embrace of a single nameless god.

Context

• Reference: Genesis 11:31

• The descendants of Noah spread out and built cities and civilizations.

• The ninth generation after Noah included the idolmaker Terah.

• His children included Abram, who came to be known as Abraham.

Aftermath

• Terah's family settled in Canaan,# which included much of the land now known as Israel.

Notes

An aged man sits alone, talking to an old friend. His children are gone, having traveled to a new world, changed their names, and developed new ways that the father cannot understand. It's an old story that we've heard before, though usually set in much more recent centuries, with travels over greater distances, though they may not have taken as long.

Most of the features of this story come from older legends. The tale of Abram and the prophets is well known. There are tales that Terah's home was destroyed by fire, and contrasting stories about the relationships of the people within his family. Ur was renowned as a city of astronomers.The names of the idols came from the Apocalypse of Abraham, as quoted in James Kugels' Traditions of the Bible.

I narrowly avoided an error in the storytelling. As written in most English translations, the city to which Terah traveled, as well as that of his father and son, were all "Haran." Fortunately, I double-checked it against the Hebrew, realized that the city was spelled with the letter "khet" rather than the letter "hey," and rewrote that bit.