MAMBRE (Hebr. Mamré'). — Name of an oak tree located near Hebron (see). There Abraham settled and built an altar (Gen. 13:18), where he learned of the captivity of his nephew Lot (Gen. 14:13), whom he immediately sought to free, and where he received the promise of a son Isaac (ibid. 18:1) through the appearance of three angels. The phrase that M. is opposite Hebron (ibid. 25:9; 49:30) and the designation of M. as the city of Arba (ibid. 35:27) led some to believe that M. was located at Hebron; however, tradition has always placed it further north.
According to Flavius Josephus, the venerable oak was six stades (perhaps should be read sixteen) from Hebron (Ant. Jud. I, 10, 4) and was still visible in the 4th century. Meanwhile, the oak and the nearby well were protected by a large enclosure wall, perhaps begun by Herod the Great and completed under Hadrian, measuring 65.10 m. x 94.35 m.; where pagans, Jews, and Christians came to worship. M. was indeed a much-frequented place, and in 135 Jews taken prisoner were sold into slavery there. At the request of his mother-in-law Eutropia, Constantine had a modest church built within the enclosure, which German excavations have partially brought to light. The large enclosure still rises several meters high, and at the entrance pottery from the 9th–13th centuries B.C. has been found. The place is called Rāmet el-Ḥalīl.
ARCHAEOLOGY. — The vision of Abraham at M. was expressed from the 5th century onward in Christian art.
In Rome, at S. Maria Maggiore, the vision is depicted in two scenes. Above, Abraham hurries toward three figures in sacred garb and nimbed; below, they are seated at table and a calf is offered to them; they predict that Sarah will bear a son (Isaac); Abraham turns to his incredulous wife with a look of reproach (Wilpert, Mosaiken, pl. 10). This second episode is also represented at Ravenna in S. Vitale.
But the vision was also painted at Milan in S. Ambrogio (see Forcella and E. Seletti, Iscrizioni cristiane di Milano anteriori al sec. IX, Codogno 1896, no. 210) and in Spain in a basilica at Saragossa (Prudentius, Dittochaeon, no. 4).
Already in the Vita Constantini (III, 51–63) and in the Itinerarium Burdigalense mention is made of a Christian basilica erected at the site of Abraham’s well. It is then noted in the Madaba map, in the itinerary of Arcadius Adamnanus of 670, by the Byzantine historian Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus of the first half of the 14th century (Hist. eccles. VIII, 30: PG 146, 116), and finally by the Franciscan Quaresmius (1616–25) in his Historica, theologica et moralis Terrae Sanctae elucidatio (2nd ed., II, Venice 1882, p. 577). Excavations promoted by the Görres-Gesellschaft have uncovered the remains of an ancient three-aisled Christian basilica with apse, prothesis, and diaconicon.