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Negotiating (with) the Natives: Ancestors and Identity in Genesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2003

Robert L. Cohn
Robert L. Cohn
Affiliation:
Lafayette College
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Extract

No sooner does the Abraham of Genesis arrive in Canaan than the narrator informs us that “the Canaanite was then in the land” (Gen 12:6). Yet immediately God an-nounces his intention to give this land to Abraham's descendants (v. 7). From the outset of the Abraham narrative, the divine promise of nationhood and territory is haunted by the presence of the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan. Though mostly a silent feature of the landscape, they emerge from time to time to encounter and threaten the first family.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 96 , Issue 2 , April 2003 , pp. 147 - 166
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This essay is a thoroughly revised version of a paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Berlin, July 2002. I am grateful for suggestions received there and from the readers at HTR.