@GoodAttention @Bharat Jhunjhunwala I found this - what is this all saying
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1c3qmyu
Ur Kasdim is in the Western Himalayas not Mesopotamia Part II
Abrahamic
In my previous post about this topic (link below) I explained how the 4.2ky event scientifically documented as historical could correlate with the Genesis description of a migration of Abraham's forefathers towards the Indus Valley between 2200BC and 1900BC, starting with Peleg "when the Earth was divided".
I then determined that, if the location of Ur Kasdim was indeed in this location, then Ur Kasdim could be a combination of Sumerian, Sanskrit, and Hebrew, a hypothesis that the word itself portrays the movement from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley by a Semetic people, and describe what would then translate as "The Land of the Khas people". I will add that, while I say Sanskrit, the word itself could be of a different origin, however the point to make is that it is foreign to Hebrew.
The main argument of this post is to discuss why the current consensus that Ur Kasdim is or describes Chaldean Babylon is not supported in the scriptures, with thanks to
u/arachnophilia for engaging with me in discussion and providing sources.
Ur Kasdim or Kasdim Ur? - Whilst kasdim occurs 80 times in the the Hebrew texts, the words "Ur Kasdim" occur only 4 times, 3 in Genesis and once in Nehemiah. In all 4 occurrences the word Kasdim follows Ur as מֵא֣וּר כַּשְׂדִּ֗ים.
It is my belief that a more correct translation to English could read Kasdim-ur, by using "ur" as a loan word meaning "land or place of", rather than the place name Ur. I would appreciate any comments from experts in Hebrew to support whether such a reading could be the case.
When looking at a map of the Indian subcontinent, the suffix "ur" is extremely common, with place names stretching from present day Pakistan down along the western coast of India and into northern Sri Lanka. It is known that the Sumerians and Indus Valley Civilisation had trade and potentially linguistic connections, given how the Indus Valley script cuneiform bear some resemblence and relationship with Sumerian cuneiform (reference below).
The Chaldeans/Kasdim - Taking Ur out of consideration, the remaining 76 occurrences of kasdim within the scripture refer to the Chaldeans as a people or Chaldea as a place. The argument put forward for the current understanding is that, since the verses containing kasdim describe a location or connection to Babylon or Babylonians, Ur Kasdim is therefore also Babylon/Ur.
I believe this is the best/worst example of a confirmation bias mixed with anachronism, by neglecting first that the Chaldeans were foreigners in Mesopotamia, and second ignoring the question of where they came from before they we "famous".
I am not disputing kasdim are the Chaldeans, or that the land of the Chaldeans, or Kasdimah, could then be considered "neo-Babylon", as described in the scriptures of Isaiah and Jeremiah, but that it remains separate from Ur Kasdim/Kasdim-ur, the land of Abram's nativity (Genesis 11:28) and the same place that God brings Abram out of (Neremiah 9:7).
Ur, Urfa, or Western Himalayas? - Given that the city of Ur is west of the Euphrates, to say this is the birthplace of Abram would be in contradiction to
Joshua 24:2 - Y’hoshua said to all the people, This is what Adonai the God of Isra’el says: ‘In antiquity your ancestors lived on the other side of the [Euphrates] River — Terach the father of Avraham and Nachor — and they served other gods'.
I believe it is also important to note that the scriptures assume Euphrates, when in fact it could have been Tigris, which would take a location of Ur or Babylon out of the equation completely, when asking which side of “The River” the ancestors of Abram (Shem onwards) were considered to have lived.
Victor Hamilton, author of
The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 provides 7 reasons to support Urfa, to be the "correct" reference to Ur Kasdim, a town that is both east of the Euphrates and 30km from Harran, which I then critique to support my conclusion also (reference below).
- The journey would have been incredibly long for a family to take at that time [and traveling through Haran was unnecessary to get to Canaan and added many miles].
- There are hundreds of references to the famous Ur in the cuneiform texts, and not once is it called “Ur of the Chaldees.”
- The famous “Ur” could not have been called “Ur of the Chaldees” because the Chaldees were an ethnic group that actually lived around where Urfa (Edessa) was, and did not migrate southeast until long after Abraham.
- Abraham wanted to get a wife for Isaac, and told him to go to his “country” and the land of his birth and get a wife (Gen. 24:4, 7). Yet the servant did not go to the famous Ur, but went to upper Mesopotamia where Haran and Urfa are (Gen. 24). The woman that became Isaac’s wife was Rebekah, and when she sent her son Jacob to get a wife, she sent him to her family in Haran (Gen. 27:43), not way down southeast to the famous Ur.
- A tablet from Ebla refers to “Ur in Haran.”
- The expression “Ur of the Chaldees” occurs four times in the Old Testament (Gen. 11:28, 31; 15:7; Neh. 9:7). Each time the Septuagint translates the word “Ur” with a word for land or region, so the translators of the Septuagint connected the Chaldeans with a region, an area.
- Some of Abraham’s relatives had names that may be connected with sites in northern Mesopotamia.
Points 2, 3, and 6 all support the idea that Sumerian Ur is not the location of Ur Kasdim or has been mistranslated, and I agree with these as I have also discussed above. Point 5 adds weight that a place called Urfa could have existed, in addition to point 7, which I also do not contest as this supports a location that is not Babylon/Ur.
However, his first point, which is correct in saying travelling to Harran from Sumerian Ur before Canaan would have been illogical, falls apart when he describes an "incredibly long" journey, given he neglects to acknowledge that Terah was 75 years old when he has his sons and dies in Harran when is 205.
To say that Terah could leave Urfa and make a 30km trek to Harran but then die because he could not travel any further neglects the 130 year time period (and distance travelled) that the scriptures provide to state when Abram was born and when Terah dies. This is to then also say that the scriptures, and ironically Hamilton, support a far longer journey from a potential Western Himalayan location for Ur Kasdim/Kasdim-ur.
In his fourth point, Hamilton interprets the scriptures incorrectly when saying Abraham sent his servent to "the land of his birth" to get a wife for Isaac.
Genesis 24:4 reads "but that you will go to my homeland, to my kinsmen, to choose a wife for my son Yitz’chak.”
Abraham is referring to his homeland in Harran, which is understandable if we consider he could have spent most of his life at that point at his "father's home" after having left Ur Kasdim. This is to show an error in Hamilton's claim that Urfa is therefore the correct location of Ur Kasdim, whilst still not refuting a potential Western Himalayan location.
What about the camels? - To finally bring a point of reference back to the Western Himalayas. In
Genesis 24:10 Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and all kinds of gifts from his master, got up and went to Aram-Naharayim, to Nachor’s city."
To specify, these were Bactrian camels, a species of camel that originate, as the name suggests, in Bactria, an area adjacent to the Western Himalayas. To support this further I provide an extract from the Biblearcheology website (reference below) that states the following -
"The Hebrew
gamal is closely associated with another Semitic form, the Akkadian
gammalu. Many Akkadian words have their origins in the Sumerian language, and
gammalu is one of the words which contains a Sumerian ancestor in its logograms. Regular usage of Sumerian pre-dates the late views for the domestication of the camel, and it is interesting to note that Sumerian actually has two words for camel, (ANSE.A.AB.BA; ANSE.GAM.MAL), meaning donkey or a$$ of the sea, and donkey or a$$ of the mountains, respectively."
In my next post I will focus on who the Khas people are, how they are connected to Abram and his kinsman, and conclude why God chooses Abram to call out to.
*Edit - Punctuation, wording, and scripture references corrected. Comment about Euphrates added. Terah/Abram age correlation corrected.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1btw9w1
Indus script - Wikipedia
Genesis 11, REV Bible and Commentary
The Date of Camel Domestication in the Ancient Near East
