Mamre (; ), full name "Oaks of Mamre", refers to an ancient religious site originally focused on a single holy tree growing "since time immemorial" at Hebron in Canaan.Niesiolowski-Spano (2016). It is best known from the biblical story of Abraham and the three visitors. He pitched his tents at the site, which is known as the oak or terebinth of Mamre. Modern scholars have identified four sites near Hebron which, in different historical periods, could have been successively known as Mamre: Khirbet Nimra, also known as Ayn Nimreh, (a little-excavated Persian and Hellenistic period site, a hypothetical identification, not proven by any archaeological finds), Ramat el-Khalil, also known as Haram er-Rama (the best known site, flourished from the Herodian through the Byzantine period), Deir Al Arba'een complex, and Khirbet es-Sibte. The last one contained an old oak tree identified by a relatively new tradition as the Oak of Mamre, which collapsed in 2019, and is on the grounds of the Church of the Holy Forefathers and Monastery of the Holy Trinity. There is a rather recent hypothesis (neither archaeologically nor in any other way confirmed) that at the location of Khirbet Nimra, a tree cult predated the biblical narrative.Heyden (2016)
Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, as well as Christian and Jewish sources from the Byzantine period, locate Mamre at the site later renamed in Arabic as Ramat el-Khalil, 4 km north of historical Hebron and approximately halfway between that city and Halhul. Herod the Great initiated the Jewish identification of the site with Mamre, by erecting there a monumental enclosure. It was one of the three most important fairs or marketplaces in Judea, where the fair was held next to the venerated tree accompanied by an interdenominational festival celebrated by Jews, pagans, and Christians alike. This prompted Emperor Constantine the Great to unsuccessfully stop this practice by erecting a Christian basilica there.
Hebrew Bible Names and events Mamre is the site where Abraham pitched tents for his camp and built an altar, following his separation from Lot, his nephew, and where he was brought divine tidings in the guise of three angels who promised that Sarah, his wife, would become pregnant in Genesis 18:1-15.
reports that Abraham settled "near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron".: New International Version The original Hebrew tradition appears, to judge from a textual variation conserved in the Septuagint,Greek: τὴν δρῦν τὴν Μαμβρήν (tēn druv tēn Mambrēn), in Swete's Septuagint, Genesis 13:8, accessed on 28 February 2026 to have referred to a single great oak tree, which Josephus called Ogyges. Mamre may have been an Amorite, a tribal chieftain after whom a grove of trees was named. Genesis connected it with Hebron or a place nearby that city.Pagolu (1998) Mamre has frequently been associated with the Cave of the Patriarchs. According to one scholar, there is considerable confusion in the Biblical narrative concerning not only Mamre, but also Machpelah, Hebron and Kiryat Arba, all four of which are aligned repeatedly.Stavrakopoulou (2011) In Genesis, Mamre is also identified with Hebron itself ().Jericke p.4: Book of Genesis, 23:19; 25:27.Letellier (1995) The Christian tradition of identifying a ruined site surrounded by walls and called in Arabic Rāmet el-Ḥalīl ('Hill of the Friend', meaning: "the friend of God", i.e. Abraham), with the Old Testament Mamre, goes back to the earliest Christian pilgrims in the 4th century CE, and connects to a tradition from the time of Herod (1st century BCE).
In , the text refers to "the terebinth trees of Mamre the Amorite",: New King James Version an ally or friend of Abraham,Alter (1996)Horne (1856) Mamre being the name of one of the three Amorite chiefs who joined forces with those of Abraham in pursuit of Chedorlaomer to save Lot in Genesis 14:13, 24.Mills & Bullard (1998), p. 543.Haran (1985)
The supposed discrepancy is often explained as reflecting the discordance between the different scribal traditions behind the composition of the Torah, the former relating to the Yahwist, the latter to the Elohist recension, according to the classic formulation of the documentary hypothesis.Haran (1985): The third, Priestly, recension excludes any such attachment of Abraham to the Terebinth cult.
Identification There appear to be four main sites which have been known, at different times in history, as Mamre. These are, chronologically: Khirbet Nimra or Ayn Nimreh, an archaeological site next to Hebron and 1.5 km south of Ramat el-Khalil, hypothetically identified by several researchers as the Mamre of Achaemenid Judea and the subsequent Hellenistic period, but not confirmed by any archaeological finds. Ramat el-Khalil, also spelled Ramet el-Khulil, and also known as Haram er-Rama, is the site identified as Mamre in the time of King Herod (1st century BCE), Constantine the Great (4th century CE), and – strongly contested by some – the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (12th–13th centuries CE). Talmudic sources refer to the site as Beth Ilanim or Botnah. The ruins of the Herodian and Constantinian structure also became known in Arabic as Beit el-Khalil "Abraham's House". Deir el Arba'een: a tradition that flourished from the 16th century down to the commencement of the 19th century, now almost forgotten, pointed to the hill of Deir el Arba'een as that of Mamre, relying especially, no doubt, in its inception on the identity of Mamre and Hebron (). The site agrees well with the statement that the cave of Machpelah was "before," i.e. to the East of Mamre (). A magnificent terebinth which stood there was pointed out as that of Abraham. Khirbet es-Sibte (also Ain Sebta), the present-day site of the so-called Oak of Mamre, 2 km southwest of Ramat el-Khalil, has been considered since the 19th century by Christians to be the place where Abraham saw the angels.Jericke p.2. A modern Russian Orthodox monastery is marking the site.
History and archaeology
Khirbet Nimra According to Abel and Jericke among others, Persian and Hellenistic Mamre was located at Khirbet Nimra, 2 km north of the Cave of Machpelah, inside modern Hebron, where a pagan tree cult, supposedly, predates the biblical Abraham narrative.
However, excavations at the archaeological site of Khirbet Nimra on the summit of Jebel Nimra did not prove Abel's supposition that this should be an ancient shrine: the archaeological team found only a Persian administrative building from the 6th–5th centuries BCE, that was later converted into an agricultural center, mainly for the manufacture of olive oil and textiles. The building was apparently destroyed during Alexander the Great's campaign, and was temporarily inhabited by rebels or refugees who had fled Jerusalem during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Abel's (and later Jericke's) hypothesis rests primarily on the linguistically probable assumption that "Nimra" is a corruption of "Mamre". Nonetheless, it seems that "Mamre" was not only an ancient name for Hebron (Gen. 23:19), but referred to the whole wider locality, including the Jebel Nimra mountain, as the Cave of Machpelah is on its western slope, while to its west Nahạl Hebron bisects the city of Hebron.
Besides, Jericke's equation of Khirbet Nimra with a highly hypothetical original tree shrine from the Persian and Hellenistic periods led him to date the story of Abraham at Mamre to the Persian period, which was rejected by the majority of other researchers.
OpenBible.info, run by Crossway Bibles (a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers) rates the claim that Khirbet Nimra is Mamre as "very low confidence".
Ramat el-Khalil Research and analysis The archaeological site of Ramat el-Khalil (Grid Ref. 160300/107200) was first excavated by in 1926–1928, followed by Sayf al-Din Haddad (1977), 'Abd el-Aziz Arjub (1984–1985), and Yitzhak Magen (1986–1988), Magen publishing his findings in 1991 and 2003. Greenberg & Keinan, summarising previous dig reports, list the outstanding components of the site as being a large Roman-era enclosure, a Byzantine church, and a Crusader church.
However, Denys Pringle's analysis of both historical and archaeological sources leads to the firm conclusion that the Crusader-era Church of the Trinity, mentioned by pilgrims in 1170, stood at the foot of a hill, not at its top, and certainly not at Ramat el-Khalil, where the remains of the Constantinian church were found undisturbed by any later building in 1926.
Greenberg and Keinan list the main periods of settlement as Early Roman, Late Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader, with less substantial findings from the Iron Age IIc era (700—586 BCE) and the Hellenistic period. However, Yitzhak Magen, the last to excavate the site, claims that findings previously attributed to the biblical-era kings of the Iron Age, and the Hellenistic Hasmonean dynasty (r. 140 BC to 37 BC), are in fact of far newer date: Byzantine or later.
Bronze Age Early Bronze Age pottery sherds found at the Ramat el-Khalil site may indicate that a cultic shrine of some kind was in use from 2600–2000 BCE,Taylor (1993), p. 92. but there is no archaeological evidence for the site being occupied from the first half of the second millennium down to the end of the Iron Age – that is, very broadly speaking, between 2000 and 600 BCE.
Herod: the enclosure Herod the Great transferred the Mamre tradition 2.5 km to the north, from the site at Khirbet Nimra (see above) to the site at Ramet el-Khalil. This was part of Herod's upgrade of Hebron as a cult centre dedicated to the patriarch Abraham, by erecting two shrines: one at Abraham's tomb, and one at a site he connected to his place of residence, where the patriarch dined under a tree together with the three men. It has been noted that Hebron and Mamre were located in Idumaean territory, that both Jews and Idumaeans regarded Abraham as their common ancestor, and that Herod came from an Idumaean family that had only recently converted to Judaism.Richardson (1996)
The 2 m thick stone wall enclosing an area 49 m wide and 65 m long was constructed by Herod, possibly as a cultic place of worship.Murphy-O'Connor (2008)Robinson (1856) It contained an ancient well, more than 5 m in diameter,Jericke p.?. referred to as Abraham's Well.Heyden (2020)
Josephus: the terebinth Josephus (37 – c. 100) records a tradition according to which the terebinth at Mamre was as old as the world itself (War 4.534). The site was soaked in legend. Jews, Christians and Pagans made sacrifices on the site, burning animals, and the tree was considered immune to the flames of the sacrifices.Adler (2013) Constantine the Great (r. 302–337) was still attempting, without success, to stop this tradition. Josephus's terebinth tree is distinct from the modern Oak of Mamre and stood at a different location.
Late Roman period: Hadrian's temple The Herodian structure was destroyed by Simon bar Kokhba's army, only to be rebuilt by the Roman emperor Hadrian. Hadrian revived the fair, which had long been an important one as it took place at an intersection forming the transport and communications nub of the southern Judean mountains. This mercatus ( or shuq): ) or "fair, market" was one of the sites, according to a Jewish tradition conserved in Jerome, chosen by Hadrian to sell remnants of Bar Kochba's defeated army into slavery. Jerome, in his commentary on the Book of Jeremiah, writes:
Rabbinical tradition The Chazal, the early rabbis, condemned the fairs due to idolatry.Safrai (1994), p. 254 According to the Jerusalem Talmud, Avodah Zarah 1:4:4:
Late Roman festival and Byzantine basilica