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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Abraham's origin
  • Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 07:08:03 +0100


Firstly, I'd suggest you reread my original email. Most of what you have said below is irrelevant and only goes to show that you didn't read carefully enough the facts that were presented to and so the major basis of your argument relies on identification of Ur with the Ur way down south east at the bottom of the river.

However, I'm glad to see you've stopped making statements about Abram never being in Mesopotamia which were clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Let me go through some of the key facts again. I know you say that the table of nations is late but you still haven't proved this and even if it was it still provides useful information about the understanding of the geography of its author.

We get this idea of the descendants of Noah going out, raising their own tribe and making a claim to areas of land. Now, of course, nobody really wants to live in the desert because it's darn difficult for you cattle to graze and drink in the desert so most (normal) people settled somewhere in the fertile crescent. The idea we are given in Genesis 10 is that Shem's descendants got the lion's portion of the fertile crescent. Genesis 10:30 tells us that:

And their place of dwelling came to extend from Me´sha as far as Se´phar, the mountainous region of the East.

The idea this gives us is of most of the fertile crescent except the bit the sons of Ham got.

The sons of Ham are: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan or in other words in terms of geography North Africa and Canaan. Just so we don't get confused we are even given the boundaries of the land of Canaan. Genesis 10:19

So the boundary of the Ca´naan·ite came to be from Si´don as far as Ge´rar, near Ga´za, as far as Sod´om and Go·mor´rah and Ad´mah and Ze·boi´im, near La´sha.

Ok. So the basic picture is that Shem's sons get most of the fertile crescent *except* Canaan. So, this is quite strange right? How could the sons of Canaan end up with having one the very best plots of land when Noah said:

Blessed be Jehovah, Shem’s God, And let Ca´naan become a slave to him

These key contextual features are what set the stage the entire story of how Isreal came to occupy Canaan as the rightful owners of it. Now, we can either view this all as accurate history and believe that Yhwh gave Canaan to Isreal. Or we can view this as propaganda made up by the Isrealites to justify their genocide of the Canaanites and take over their land. The only interpretation that absolutely doesn't make any sense whatsoever is to say that the Isrealites already lived there

So, let's get back to the geography that is being painted for us in Genesis 10. We may view Genesis 10 as historical. We may have our reasons for not doing so. But what absolutely cannot be ignored is the factor that the author of Genesis 10, at the time he wrote it, considered it to be a plausible explanation of how the land came to belong to the different families/tribes (whatever you want to call them).

We have already seen the Shem's descendants got virtually all of the fertile crescent except for Canaan. But what is really interesting is the names of his children: E´lam and As´shur and Ar·pach´shad and Lud and A´ram. Or in other words the fathers of the Elamites, the Assyrians, the Arameans...

Now just as the author gives us more detail about Canaan than any other of Ham's lineage he also gives us focus on the line of Arpachshad. This is not coincidence. He's homing in on Arpachshad and Canaan specifically so that we understand where the descendants of Canaan lived and where the descendants of Arpachshad lived. Abram, as portrayed, was clearly from the land of Arpachshad and not from the land of Canaan. That's why he has to send his servant out of the land of Canaan to the land of his relatives to get a wife for Isaac so that Isaac didn't end up marrying a daughter of Canaan. Would Abram want his lineage to be destined to become the slaves of Shem? Clearly not. That's why he wants Isaac to get a wife from Shem's lineage.

And so this brings us on to the bit that you evidently didn't read the last time I wrote it. Tradition places the birth place of Abram in Edessa (modern day Sanliurfa) *not* the Ur in the south east. That's why I put a link of the map for you. So that you could see that Sanliurfa is in Northern Mesopotamia not too far from Harran. In fact, they are so close that if we are to identify Ur Ka$dim with Sanliurfa we can imagine Ur as they city with Harran being a village local to that city. The reason I mentioned Jubilees is because it gives us information which helps with the identification of Ur Ka$dim:

And 'Ur, the son of Kesed, built the city of 'Ara of the Chaldees, and called its name after his own name and the name of his father.

The city, we are told, was named after Ur and after his father, Ka$dim. Now, the Turkish name for Sanliurfa is urfa which may be derived from the Syriac Orhay transliterated in Greek as Orra (you see how we are getting closer to something that resembles Ur?)

In any case, the best way to identify the Ur that we were intended to understand is to reconstruct the territories of Elam, Aram, Asshur and Arpachshad to see in which territory Ur falls.

James Christian







Quoting JimStinehart AT aol.com:


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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