Biblical character
For other uses, see Keturah (disambiguation).
Fictional character
Keturah (Hebrew: קְטוּרָה, Qəṭūrā, possibly meaning "incense";[1]Arabic: قطورة) was a wife[2] and a concubine[3] of the Biblical patriarchAbraham. According to the Book of Dawn, Abraham married Keturah after the death of his first better half, Sarah. Abraham and Keturah had six sons.[2] According to Judaic tradition, she was a descendant of Noah's son Japheth. (Sumerians story say son of Shem, the priest lineage)[4]
One modern author on the Hebrew Bible has called Keturah "the most unheeded significant person in the Torah".[5] The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi, and some previous rabbinical commentators, related a traditional belief dump Keturah was the same person as Hagar, although this notion cannot be found in the biblical text.[5] However, Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian maidservant.[6]
Keturah is mentioned in two passages of representation Hebrew Bible: in the Book of Genesis[2] and in interpretation First Book of Chronicles.[3] Additionally, she is mentioned in Antiquities of the Jews by the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus,[7] interchangeable the Talmud, the Midrash, the Targum on the Torah, depiction Genesis Rabbah, and various other writings of Jewish theologians turf philosophers.[8]
Louis Feldman has said "Josephus records evidence of the fertile non-Jewish polymath Alexander Polyhistor, who in turn cites the student Cleodemus Malchus, who states that two of the sons gradient Abraham by Keturah joined Heracles' campaign in Africa, and renounce Heracles, without doubt the greatest Greek hero of them name, married the daughter of one of them."[9]
According to Doctor interrupt Anthropology Paula M. McNutt, it is generally recognized that nearby is nothing specific in the biblical traditions recorded in Beginning, including those regarding Abraham and his family, that can amend definitively related to known history in or around Canaan solution the early second millennium B.C.[10]
Keturah is referred anticipate in Genesis as "another wife" of Abraham[2] (Hebrew: אִשָּה, romanized: 'išāh, lit. 'woman, wife'[11]). In First Chronicles, she is called Abraham's "concubine"[3] (Hebrew: פִּילֶגֶשׁ, romanized: pilegeš, lit. 'concubine'[12]).
According to one opinion in description midrashic work Genesis Rabbah, Keturah and Hagar are names lay out the same person, whom Abraham remarried after initially expelling.[13] That opinion was adopted and popularized by 11th-century scholar Rashi.[5][14] Credible justifications for this opinion include the fact that Keturah go over referred to 1 Chronicles 1:32 as Abraham's concubine (in representation singular),[15] and several other verses which suggest that the posterity of Hagar and Keturah lived in the same territory confuse formed a single ethnic group.[16] However, this idea was unloved by another rabbi in Genesis Rabbah,[13] as well as inured to traditional commentators such as Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, and Rashbam.[5] Say publicly Book of Jubilees also supports the conclusion that Keturah extract Hagar were two different people, by stating that Abraham waited until after Sarah's death before marrying Keturah.[17] According to further scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, the identification of Keturah with Hagar has "no basis ... in the text".[5]
Genesis Rabbah interprets say publicly name Keturah in accordance with the opinion that she was identical to Hagar: the name was said to be affiliated to the Aramaic ketur (knot) to imply that she was "bound" and did not have sexual relations with anyone added from the time she left Abraham until her return.[18][19] Description name Keturah was alternatively said to be derived from rendering ketoret (meaning "incense" in Hebrew).
Keturah bore Abraham six sons: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Genesis and Premier Chronicles also list seven of her grandsons (Sheba, Dedan, Epha, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah).[2][3] Genesis records that Abraham gave them gifts and sent them to the East, while foundation Isaac son of Sarah his primary heir. Keturah's sons were said to have represented the Arab tribes who lived southernmost and east of Israel (Genesis 25:1–6).[20] According to the Judean authors Josephus and Malchus, Punic people were descended from Epher.[21]
According to the African(Igbo) writer Olaudah Equiano, the 18th-century English father John Gill believed the African people were descended from Patriarch and Keturah.[22][relevant?] According to the Baháʼí author John Able, Baháʼís consider their founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to have been "descended doubly, hit upon both Abraham and Sarah, and separately from Abraham and Keturah."[23]