Keturah
Keturah (, "Qəṭūrā", possibly meaning "incense"; ) was a wife and a concubine of the Biblical patriarch Abraham. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham married Keturah after the death of his first wife, Sarah. Abraham and Keturah had six sons. One modern commentator on the Hebrew Bible has called Keturah "the most ignored significant person in the Torah". The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi, and some previous rabbinical commentators, related a traditional belief that Keturah was the same person as Hagar, although this idea cannot be found in the biblical text. The biblical traditions concerning Abraham and related characters are  generally regarded as non-historical by scholars. Sources for Keturah. Keturah is mentioned in two passages of the Hebrew Bible: in the Book of Genesis, and also in the First Book of Chronicles. Additionally, she is mentioned in "Antiquities of the Jews" by the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus, in the Talmud, the Midrash, the Targum on the Torah, the Genesis Rabbah, and various other writings of Jewish theologians and philosophers. Louis Feldman has said "Josephus records evidence of the prolific non-Jewish polymath Alexander Polyhistor, who, in turn, cites the historian Cleodemus Malchus, who states that two of  the sons of Abraham by Keturah joined Heracles' campaign in Africa, and that Heracles, without doubt the greatest Greek hero of them all, married the daughter of one of them." Relationship of Keturah to Abraham. Keturah is referred to in Genesis as "another wife" of Abraham (). In First Chronicles, she is called Abraham's "concubine" (). The discussion of in the Genesis Rabbah includes statements by Rabbi Judah the Prince arguing that Hagar returned to Abraham and was renamed Keturah. Her new name (Keturah means "incense" in Hebrew) is said to refer to the pleasant aroma of incense—symbolic of her  having turned from misdeeds committed during her time away from Abraham. Since Keturah is referred to in First Chronicles as Abraham's concubine (in the singular), some scholars concluded that this was why Keturah was identified with Hagar in the Midrash and the Palestinian Targumim. An alternative interpretation of the name Keturah (based on an Aramaic root meaning "to tie" or "to adorn") is also cited in the Genesis Rabbah to suggest that Hagar did not have sexual relations with anyone else from the time she left Abraham until her return. The theory that Keturah was Hagar was also supported  by the 11th-century scholar Rashi. Biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman dismisses the identification of Keturah with Hagar as "an old rabbinic idea" for which "there is no basis ... in the text", and also notes that the idea was rejected by traditional commentators such as Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, and Rashbam. The Book of Jubilees also supports the conclusion that Keturah and Hagar were two different people, by stating that Abraham waited until after Hagar's death before marrying Keturah. Descendants. Keturah bore Abraham six sons: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Genesis and First Chronicles also list seven of  her grandsons (Sheba, Dedan, Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah). The Book of Genesis records that Abraham gave them gifts and sent them to the East, while making Isaac son of Sarah his primary heir. Keturah's sons were said to have represented the Arab tribes who lived south and east of Israel (). According to the Judean authors Josephus and Cleodemus Malchus, Punic people were descended from Epher, grandson of Abraham and Keturah. According to the African writer Olaudah Equiano, the 18th-century English theologian John Gill believed the African people were descended from Abraham and Keturah. According to the  Baháʼí author John Able, Baháʼís consider their founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to have been "descended doubly, from both Abraham and Sarah, and separately from Abraham and Keturah."