On the first day of the fourth month we appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre. We spoke with him and told him that a son would be given to him from his wife Sarah. Sarah laughed when she heard that we had conveyed this message to Abraham, but when we chided her she became frightened and denied that she had laughed about the message.
Jubilees (also known as Lesser Genesis, Leptogenesis, or the Book of Division) is canonical scripture for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The only complete copies of Jubilees are available in Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic), here used with permission by the Bible Society of Ethiopia.
The names that is transliterated as “Sarai” and “Sarah” in English mean “contentious,” “quarrelsome,” “my princesses” (Sarai) and “princess,” “chieftainness,” “noblewoman” (Sarah) (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )
It is translated in Spanish Sign Language with the sign depicting coins on a headband, referring to women from the Middle East and North Africa who wear a headband decorated with small coins. (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
The name that is transliterated as “Abraham” in English means “father of a multitude,” “father of mercy,” “father of many nations.” (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )
In the vast majority of sign languages, including American Sign Language it is translated with the sign signifying “hold back arm” (referring to Genesis 22:12).
In Vietnamese (Hanoi) Sign Language it is translated with a sign for that demonstrates his new destiny. Previously, he had been called to wander from his home, and the name “Abram” reflected this movement (see here). The new sign name is in one location and stays there, showing Abraham will be given a land to call his own. At this time, Abraham was in the southern part of Canaan, which is shown on the base arm by the location near the elbow. (Source: The Vietnamese Sign Language translation team, VSLBT)
“Abraham” in Vietnamese Sign Language, source: SooSL
In Tira it is transliterated as Abaram. The choice of this, rather than the widely-known “Ibrahim,” as used in the Tira translation of the Qu’ran, was to offset it against the Muslim transliteration which originates from Arabic. (Source: J.A. Naudé, C.L. Miller Naudé, J.O. Obono in Acta Theologica 43/2, 2023, p. 129ff. )
Click or tap here to see two short video clips about Abraham (source: Bible Lands 2012)
