[b-hebrew] Nahar

James Read J.Read-2 at sms.ed.ac.uk
Thu Jun 4 18:48:30 EDT 2009


Hi,

just to give the origins of both traditions a fair shout the following  
cut and paste from wikipedia gives a bried summary of the roots of the  
connection to the other Ur:

Eusebius in his Preparation for the Gospel (chapter XVII) preserves a  
fragment of the work Concerning the Jews by the first century BCE  
historian Alexander Polyhistor, which in turn quotes a passage in  
Concerning the Jews of Assyria by the second century BCE historian  
Eupolemus, which claimed that Abraham was born in the Babylonian city  
Camarina, which it notes was also called "Uria". (Such indirect  
quotations of Eupolemus via Polyhistor are referred to as  
Pseudo-Eupolemus.) This site is identified with the Sumerian city of  
Ur located at Tell el-Mukayyar, which in ancient texts was named Uriwa  
or Urima.

James Christian

Quoting "Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevin at bombaxo.com>:

> Yigal Levin asks:
>> But really how old is the tradition? When is it first attested? I
>> have never really looked into it, and would be glad to hear from
>> someone who has.
>
> I write:
> I remember this coming up a few years ago (somewhere out of mind).  As
> I recall, the answer was that this tradition is only attested after
> the city came into Turkish hands.  That's early second millennium.
>
> This is the city formerly known as Edessa, the intellectual center of
> Syriac Christianity.  There's not a hint of the connection of
> Abraham's with the place during Christian times.
>
> I suspect the Urfa/Urhai and variant "ur" sounding names are
> corruptions of the Callirhoe, the nearby river.  But that's just a
> guess.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin P. Edgecomb
> Berkeley, California
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
>



-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.




More information about the b-hebrew mailing list