[b-hebrew] Abraham's origin

JimStinehart at aol.com JimStinehart at aol.com
Fri May 22 17:19:57 EDT 2009


James Christian:
 
Look at the glaring contradiction we see in the Septuagint, which views 
MWLDT as meaning “birth place”.
 
Genesis 11: 28, per Septuagint:  “And Harran died before his father Thara 
in the land in which he was born, in the country of the Chaldeans.”
 
Genesis 24: 4, per Septuagint:  “…‘but you shall go to my country where I 
was born, and to my tribe, and get a wife for my son Isaak from there’”.
 
[The above Septuagint translations are taken from the new Oxford version, 
here:  _http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/01-gen-nets.pdf_ 
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/01-gen-nets.pdf)   Note that the Septuagint, so 
often inaccurate, somehow missed the key word “Ur” at Genesis 11: 28.]
 
On the view that MWLDT means “birth place”, southeastern Mesopotamia is 
Abraham’s native land,  a-n-d  Harran, in faraway northwestern Mesopotamia, is 
also Abraham’s native land.  That makes no sense.
 
Now compare how everything makes perfect sense if MWLDT means “kindred”:
 
Genesis 11: 28, per the English Standard Version :  “Haran died in the 
presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
 
Genesis 24: 4, per ESV:  “…but will go to my country and to my kindred, 
and take a wife for my son Isaac."
 
Now everything makes perfect sense, and there is no contradiction.  Haran 
died in the place where Haran’s kindred/MWLDT were at the time, namely 
southern Mesopotamia.  Genesis 11: 28 says nothing about where any member of Terakh
’s family was born, and does not assert that southern Mesopotamia was 
Abraham’s native land.
 
Years later, Abraham sends his trusted servant back to Harran to get a wife 
for Isaac, because that is where many of Abraham’s kindred/MWLDT were 
living.  Genesis 24: 4 says nothing about where Abraham was born, and does not 
assert that northern Mesopotamia was Abraham’s native land.
 
Note how the context, to which you allude, confirms the meaning here.
 
By the way, I never asserted that MWLDT first came to mean “birth place” 
in modern times.  What I said was, on the contrary, that (i) MWLDT means “
kindred” in Biblical Hebrew, and (ii) MWLDT often means “birth place” in 
modern Hebrew.  You brought up a different issue, which is relevant but not 
addressed by me in my first post:  the Greek Septuagint interprets MWLDT to mean “
birth place”.
 
Note how the Greek Septuagint contradicts itself.  It makes no sense to 
assert that  b-o-t-h  southern Mesopotamia,  a-n-d  northern Mesopotamia, were 
Abraham’s native land.
 
Professor Yigal Levin, noted scholar Gordon Wenham, and BDB, having 
reviewed all of these passages, view MWLDT in the Patriarchal narratives as meaning 
“kindred”.
 
The reason why scholars (such as the scholars cited above) have been 
extremely unwilling (unlike me) to explore the consequences of that linguistic 
fact is that scholars want to hold on to the traditional view that the 
Patriarchal narratives set forth a mythical, contra-factual assertion that the 
native land of Abraham is Mesopotamia.  T’ain’t true!  The Patriarchal 
narratives say nothing of the kind.  The Patriarchal narratives, historically 
accurately, present Canaan as being the native land of the Hebrews, per Genesis 25: 
8.  All of Abraham’s ancestors were born in Canaan.  All but one of Abraham’
s ancestors died, and were buried, in Canaan.  The one and only exception 
as to death and burial was Terakh, who was trying to make it back to his 
homeland of Canaan, but never made it.
 
Given the foregoing reading of the Patriarchal narratives, where MWLDT = “
kindred”, it is no surprise that Hebrew is a virgin pure west Semitic 
language, like Moabite and Ugaritic (and unlike Akkadian and Egyptian).  The 
Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan.  That’s what most modern historians tell us.  
And that’s what the Patriarchal narratives have been telling us for 3,500 
years now.  Ezra had his reasons, under terrible duress, to reinterpret the 
geography of the Patriarchal narratives.  But since Ezra did not change a single 
letter in the text of the Patriarchal narratives itself, we can look at 
that text for ourselves.  Ignore the pointing, ignore II Chronicles, and ignore 
Ezra’s traditional, non-historical view of the Patriarchal narratives in 
general.  The unpointed text of the Patriarchal narratives has pinpoint 
historical accuracy as to these matters, if we will only look at what the 
unpointed text of the last 40 chapters of Genesis actually says.   
 
The key here is to understand, in context, the meaning of the word MWLDT.  
The only way to force the Patriarchal narratives to assert, falsely, that 
the Hebrews were native to Mesopotamia is to refuse to accept that MWLDT in 
the Patriarchal narratives means “kindred”.  If MWLDT in the Patriarchal 
narratives meant “birth place”, then we would have the absurd result of the 
text telling us that  b-o-t-h  southern  a-n-d  northern Mesopotamia were 
Abraham’s native land.  No way!  Not.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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