“... This dream is unique to the Genesis Apocryphon and serves an important function in the narrative, explaining the somewhat dubious actions of Abram in the Genesis story. The dream also makes Abram a visionary like Noah earlier in the Genesis Apocryphon. [...] The symbolism of the dream itself seems to come from older traditions concerning Abram and Sarai. The cedar tree is meant to be identified with the patriarch Abram, as the earlier cedar was identified with the patriarch Noah (col. 14, line 9). This cedar, however, is in danger. As Marianne Luijken Gevirtz notes, “The motif of a tree being cut down occurs as a metaphor for disaster, destruction and death in the Hebrew Bible” If the cedar is Abram, then the date palm must be Sarai. In fact, the pairing of these two trees, and the understanding that they symbolize Abram and Sarai, seems to be an old exegetical tradition. The pairing of the trees also occurs in Ps 92:12, “The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” Rabbinic exegesis understood the pair to stand for Abram and Sarai (M. Tanh. Lek Lekha 5; Zohar to Genesis 12; Gen. Rab. 40:1). In the case of the Zohar and Genesis Rabbah, the rabbis tie the psalm verse to the episode of Abram and Sarai in Egypt (Gen 12:10-20). That is exactly the point in the Genesis narrative where the author of the Genesis Apocryphon uses the same symbolism in the dream vision. The Genesis Apocryphon and the rabbinic literature stem from two different exegetical traditions; thus the fact that the same tradition appears in both corpora indicates its age. ...”