[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