The Targum translator corrected fraternal language out of anxiety

Evidence

As long as it was a rumor (“Abram heard”), the semantic slide between “son of his brother” and “his brother” was not significant to Onkelos. So what if what he heard was that his brother, rather than the son of his brother was taken captive? Yet rather than see the second instance of the phrase “Lot, his brother,” as a performative effect, as the production of Lot as brother insofar as he is cared for and saved as a brother, insofar as he is the cause of Abraham’s war-rather than see in the phra.se the biblical affirmation and approval of Lot’s fraternal character-Onkelos chooses to correct the biblical text by restoring the “proper” kinship relations. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 325

Categorization

• XREF: This reading of the brother as performatively produced (not biologically given) connects to the theme of enemies made rather than found throughout this chapter and to the reader’s broader antisemitism-Islamophobia bridge material.