What does the biblical name Terah mean?

Answer 1

The origin and original meaning of the name Terah is unclear.

Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names suggests tarah which means delay, turn, wander.

The NOBSE Study Bible Name List suggests wanderer.

Brown - Driver - Briggs Theological Dictionary mentions words meaning a white mountain goat (ibex; a goat antelope).

Answer 2

Genesis 11:24-32 contains all mentions of Terah in the Hebrew Scriptures, according to the chapter and verse numbering given them on their inclusion in the Christian "Old Testament".

Terah was the father of Abram as described in Genesis 11:26.

The Hebrew Scriptures do not detail much about the life of Terah, other than his leaving Ur of the Chaldees together with his son Abram, Sarah Abram's wife and Lot, Terah's grandson, son of Terah's son Haran.

The command to get up and leave Ur, a city of the ancient Sumerian Empire of Mesopotamia, is communicated by God to Abram in the book of Genesis. This is a direct command from God, not described in the Book as a prophesy or vision seen by either Abram or his father Terah.

Abram's name was later changed by God to Abraham. The addition of the Hebrew H consonant (×”) to his name, which represents the shortest version of the name of the Hebrew God, was to mark his acceptance of the One Single Almighty God he'd later follow for all of his life, making him the first recorded Monotheist.

Abraham is defined in the Hebrew Scriptures as the first Patriarch, whose descendants were both Israelites, through his son Isaac, by his wife Sarah (the first Matriarch of Hebrew Scripture); and Arabs, through Ishmael, his son by his concubine Hagar.

A 'prophet' in general means someone who 'prophesies' - a person who 'sees a vision' of future events and spreads the word of these future events among other people.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, a Prophet is not one who has his own visions, but rather one who is in direct communication with the God of Israel and receives these visions of the future through a 'voice of God', an Angel of God' or in a dream.

All Prophesies in the Hebrew Biblical Canon refer to events in a future and undefined time, which will be brought about by the Will and/or Power of actions of the God of Israel.

All other prophesies, by ones who claim to represent other regional or varied pagan gods, such as the Baal's, but are not a direct communication from the God of Israel, are defined as 'false prophesies' by "false' prophets.

There are a great number of Prophets in the Hebrew Sciptures. Many have books of The Bible named after them, with the most significant among them being Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

In Islam, the greatest of the prophets is Mohammed, but this is precisely the same definition, because according to the Koran, Mohammed is in direct communication in his Prophesies, with the one Almighty God - referred to in the Koran by the Arabic name of Allah.

Investigation of the earliest manuscripts available of the story of Terah reveals the following:

The oldest original copies of the Book of Genesis are to be found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the late 1940's and early 1950's in caves near Qumeran in the Judean desert.

These Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures were all written on parchment. One non-canonical scroll from these archaeological finds was written in copper, called the "Copper Scroll' and can be found in a museum in Amman, the capital of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.

Scientific dating of the oldest copy of the Hebrew Book of Genesis places their being inscribed close to 2,200 years ago - in the 2nd century BCE - just a few years after their first translation into Greek by 70 Hebrew scholars for the Library of Hellenistic king Ptolemy of Egypt in Alexandria.

This translation into Greek at around 200 BCE is referred to as the "Septuagint" and it is this version of the then-existant Greek translation which was incorporated into the Christian Biblical Canon defined in the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea in Asia Minor, called by Emperor Constantine. To this day, all these books form the "Old Testament" in Bible versions used by Eastern Orthodox Christians, Coptic and Roman Catholic Christians.

During the era of the Christian Reformation, several of the Books of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Septuagint) were removed from the Protestant/Reformist Christian Canon by virtue of an absence of original Hebrew manuscripts for them. They are subsequently referred to by Protestant, or "Reformist" Christians as the "Deuterocanonical" Books, classified among the Apochypha. These same books are also no longer part of the Masoretic Scriptures - the Hebrew Scriptures in modern Jewish Canon.

The oldest parchments among the many copies of the Book of Genesis (Hebrew: "Bereshith") which were found in the Dead Sea scrolls, having been scientifically dated to the first half of the 2nd century BCE; means that they precede the oldest existant Greek versions in existant manuscripts of the Christian Old Testament by over 300 years and precede the oldest existant manuscripts of extracts of stories from the Book of Genesis as they appear in the Islamic Koran, by over 700 years.

Genesis is the oldest of the Monotheistic Holy Books or 'Scriptures' and contains no mention of Terah or Abraham being prophets.

Answer 3

Linguists have long related the name of Terah to a Hebrew root meaning either "moon" or "month". Between 1929 and 1939, a French archaeological mission at Ras Shamrah uncovered numerous Ugaritic tablets from which we learn that the name of the moon god was Terah in North Syria. This fits into another known fact, that the patron god of the biblical Terah's home city of Ur was also the moon-god, there called Nannar.

Some have surmised that the biblical Terah was named after the moon god for reasons of piety. However, the biblical story of Terah's descendants very much show that, in the earliest form of this story, Terah was the moon god and his descendants Laban (Hebrew: White), Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were manifestations of the moon god. With the passage of centuries, they came to be regarded as mortals and the ancestors of the Hebrew people, but they also reflect the times when the Hebrew people worshipped the moon god.

Answer 4

The biblical Terach was the father of Abraham and his siblings..

Answer 5

Nohor was his father and Micah was his mother.

Answer 6

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Start around Genesis 11:24 to get all the details.

Answer 7

Nahor (Genesis 11:24-25)