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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: "Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevin AT bombaxo.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Nahar
  • Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:48:30 +0100

Hi,

just to give the origins of both traditions a fair shout the following cut and paste from wikipedia gives a bried summary of the roots of the connection to the other Ur:

Eusebius in his Preparation for the Gospel (chapter XVII) preserves a fragment of the work Concerning the Jews by the first century BCE historian Alexander Polyhistor, which in turn quotes a passage in Concerning the Jews of Assyria by the second century BCE historian Eupolemus, which claimed that Abraham was born in the Babylonian city Camarina, which it notes was also called "Uria". (Such indirect quotations of Eupolemus via Polyhistor are referred to as Pseudo-Eupolemus.) This site is identified with the Sumerian city of Ur located at Tell el-Mukayyar, which in ancient texts was named Uriwa or Urima.

James Christian

Quoting "Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevin AT bombaxo.com>:

Yigal Levin asks:
But really how old is the tradition? When is it first attested? I
have never really looked into it, and would be glad to hear from
someone who has.

I write:
I remember this coming up a few years ago (somewhere out of mind). As
I recall, the answer was that this tradition is only attested after
the city came into Turkish hands. That's early second millennium.

This is the city formerly known as Edessa, the intellectual center of
Syriac Christianity. There's not a hint of the connection of
Abraham's with the place during Christian times.

I suspect the Urfa/Urhai and variant "ur" sounding names are
corruptions of the Callirhoe, the nearby river. But that's just a
guess.

Regards,
Kevin P. Edgecomb
Berkeley, California
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