Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

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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