Abstract
Certain NT passages link the promises of 'seed' made to Abraham and David and apply them to the Messiah. This step, however, seems to have been taken already in Jewish thought and exegesis. The term 'seed', usually interpreted in the Targumim and Rabbinic sources generally as a collective, meaning 'sons' (and hence, 'sons of Israel'), can also have an 'individual' meaning, e.g., Isaac, Solomon, Seth. The 'seed of Abraham', interpreted midrashically as the 'seed of David' and hence as the Messiah, is seen as foreshadowed in the promise to Eve (Gen. iii. 15; cf. Gen. iv. 25). In Luke- Acts and Paul this promise is 'actualised' in the person of Jesus because of his 'being raised up' in the Resurrection- event.
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