Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.beitberl.ac.il>]

Dear Ian,
Youwrote:

> The OT/HB is as often right as it is wrong and the rest of the time one
> cannot say. Think about the erroneous picture of the Hittites. What about
> the term Ur of the Chaldeans? The warped view of the Philistines? Ai,
> Jericho and the "conquest"? The conflict between the archaeological
> Jerusalem and that of David and Solomon?

The only problem with Ur of the Chaldees is the groundless identification of 
this city
with Sumerian Urim (Tel el-Mukayer). In one of the volumes of Repertoire 
Geographique
des Textes Cuneiformes that I checked, there were 4 different Urs.
This would explain why the Bible tacks on the word Kasdim (Chaldeans) to Ur - 
to
differentiate between it and the other Urs known to him. In a similar 
fashion, the
Bible distinguishes between Qadesh Barnea, Qedesh Naftali, and Qadesh in the 
Galilee
(and there was also Qadesh on the Orontes).
The only reasons Woolley and later Albright identified Ur Kasdim with 
Sumerian Urim
were that it was called Ur and had been the center of a glorious material
civilization.

If you check closely everything the Bible has to say about Ur Kasdim, you must
conclude that it was situated in Upper Mesopotamia, where Abraham's family 
continued
to reside (in the City of Nahor and Harran) long after he had left. This 
would also
explain very simply why Terah passed through Harran on his way to Canaan (as 
against
Hallo's convoluted explaniation in "The Road to Emar", JCS 15.

Moreover, both the Chaldeans and the Arameans are first mentioned in Middle 
Assyrian
sources as residing in Upper Mesopotamia from the 12th century BCE on.
Serugi (Biblical Serug) is a city in the Balih Valley in the vicinity of 
Harran, also
mentioned from the 12th century on. There are a number of candidates for the 
City of
Nahut - al Nahur, located somewhere in the Habur Triangle and mentioned in 
18th
century OB Mari texts; Nihriya, probably in the Balih Valley, mentioned in 
the same
collection of texts; and Til Nahiri, in the Balih Valley, and mentioned in
Neo-Assyrian texts. Then there's also Til Turah'i, also in the Balih Valley 
and
appearing in NA texts.

My conclusion is that the Patriarchal Traditions originate in the 12th-11th 
centuries
BCE, with the Sitz in Leben being the migration of some Chaldean and Aramean 
clans to
Canaan. This later gave rise to the Patriarchal Narratives
Yours,
Jonathan

--
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl Post Office 44905
Israel