Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Jonathan,

Thanks for a nice meaty post.

>Ian:
>> What about the term Ur of the Chaldeans?
>
>Jonathan:
>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.

I've tried to chase up the part about the Chaldeans but so far to no avail.
I'll leave this in abeyance for the moment. The Aramaean presence as nomads
in the Mari region is well-known, providing us with our first information
about the bani-yamini tribe.

>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.

There have been speculations regarding the area with the rationale that
bit-Adini provides the name behind the Eden tradition, and, as you've
mentioned the Balikh, the same range of speculation puts the name of that
river behind the biblical name Bilhah. There was more, but I can only
retain so much of this kind of stuff!

>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.

Naturally, I find this hopeful, looking at other information in Genesis.
Think for example about the war between the cities of the plain (Sodom et
al.) against such kings as those of Elam and Shinar (as well as one of
Ellasar, which GenAp gives as Capadoccia). Is this a likely scenario in
your mind: kings from distant parts of Mesopotamia in a local squabble in
the Dead Sea zone?

Consider the table of nations in Gen 10. There are names such as Tubal and
Meshekh which are two post-Hittite states, the latter to become known to us
as Phrygia, both appearing sometime after 1000 BCE. Then there is a son of
Kush called Shabtaka, who just so happened to be a pharaoh of the Kushite
dynasty in Egypt of the eighth century. The Philistines a Hamitic people??
(It's interesting that the naughty peoples who were in Palestine before the
emergence of a Hebrew consciousness are Hamitic -- despite, for example,
the "Canaanites"' obvious Semitic background.) There are many more juicy
tid-bits in the table, but the point is that we have a hotch-potch of
traditions being sewn together.

You might find a single rationalisation for the "Ur of the Chaldeans"
phrase, but, taken in context of the various other indications in the book
of Genesis, you seem to be creating an exception to, rather than following,
the rule of distant memories of a patchwork of traditions from various ages
and cultural backgrounds shaped by later cultural, political and religious
needs.


Cheers,


Ian