I’m chasing a rabbit here.
While listening to Heiser’s podcast on Ezekiel 16, he brought up the question of where Abraham’s Ur actually was. The issue arises where Ezekiel slaps down the arrogant attitude of the elders that they descended from Abraham, as if this were some kind of pure, royal bloodline.
God says it wasn’t so: “Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” (Ezekiel 16:3). That’s Abraham and Sarah, respectively. The Hittites we know about. On the one hand, I was taught that the label “Amorite” (Heb. Emori) could point to a specific tribe from mountainous regions. On the other hand, it had originally indicated a type of people who had a peculiar lifestyle of living in tents, wearing skins, migrating often as traders and regarded unfavorably more or less as Gypsies are in the West. See this reference as an example of that idea, based on the meaning of the name itself. It’s related to the term “Aramean” from which we get the name of the Aramaic language. I believe Ezekiel is using the term as a kind of people, not a specific tribe.
Heiser refers to this outline from Cyrus Gordon. Gordon summarizes the material he produced in at least one article which can be found here. Gordon notes that, prior to the late 1800s, everyone already believed that the “Ur” mentioned in English translations of the Bible was located somewhere near the site of Haran. The site had been identified as Urfa (today’s Turkish Sanliurfa) This was based on older archaeology about where evidence of the Chaldeans was found. They were all around northern Mesopotamia until much later than Abraham’s time, becoming the Babylonians. This was all well known up until about 1850.
Along comes C. Leonard Woolley, the first modern archaeologist — carefully excavating and making detailed charts of where everything was found, etc. Woolley identified one of his digs as Ur of Sumeria, way down on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Gordon is too humble to mention it, but he was there at Woolley’s dig and saw it all for himself. Woolley declared this site the “Ur of Chaldees” in reference to Abraham. Gordon rejected that notion and provided a lot of research evidence to support his rejection.
Gordon mentions how references to Urfa as “Ur in Haran” is supported by the rather recent discovery of the Ebla Tablets. He also notes that the biblical narrative describing the journey Abraham had to take to get the Canaan Land does not fit coming from Sumerian Ur. That ancient city is on the west bank of the Euphrates and there was a good route all the way up to the westward turn toward Palestine without having to see Haran at all. Urfa is north of Haran and does require passing through Haran and crossing the Euphrates.
Without dragging you through all the detailed evidence you can read for yourself at the links above, the languages of the time and place would deny that the Chaldeans had ever gotten so far south as Sumer until they had developed into the Babylonians. The names and locations just don’t match up back in Abraham’s time (circa 2200 BC).
There’s also that older scholarship before about 1850, with local traditions that the town of Urfa was Abraham’s birthplace. Notice that in Genesis 24, Abraham refers to the area of Haran as his birthplace. It may not show up in some English translations, but the Hebrew wording indicates he was born there. Please note: rabbinical scholarship prior to the 1800s also places Abraham’s birthplace there. Only in the most recent Jewish references does it move to Sumerian Ur.
If we accept Gordon and Heiser’s contention, this throws into doubt my previous speculation about Terah’s profession (which I also learned from previous research) as connected to the temples of Shin. Instead, the whole clan of the Bible Patriarchs were traders. This is what figures large in Gordon’s original article, where he says:
Abraham comes from beyond the Euphrates, plies his trade in Canaan, visits Egypt, deals with Hittites, makes treaties with Philistines, forms military alliances with Amorites, fights kinglets from as far off as Elam, marries the Egyptian Hagar, etc. His contacts and freedom of movement reflect a sophisticated milieu where an international order (such as the Amarna Age) made such a career and such enterprise possible.
See also this video on YouTube. You can find a bundle of Cyrus Gordon’s articles here.
