Abraham and Nimrod; King of Ur of the Chaldees Part VI

 

Abraham and Nimrod, King of Ur of the Chaldees

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

We know the story of Abraham accidently knocking over one of his father's idols.  Terah was an idol-maker and they lived in the large city of Ur, near the Tigris-Euphrates River in Mesopotamia.   Abraham accidently knocked over one of the idols and it broke into pieces.  When his father came home, his father asked who had done this and Abram blamed another idol to which his father laughed and said that, "you know that's false.  They can't do anything.  I make them out of clay."                

Young Avraham was rewarded for his troubles by being cast into a fiery furnace by Nimrod, King of Ur according to another source called the Midrash.  Midrashic literature were Rabbinic books containing biblical interpretations in the spirit of the Aggadic literature ranging from tannaitic times to the 10th century CE.  The Midrash works on finding new meaning in addition to the literal one in the Scriptures.

At the core of this story stands what appears to be a derasha on the name of Abraham’s city, Ur of the Chaldeans (אור כשדים), which was creatively interpreted by some ancient exegetes to mean literally אור, fire or flames. Thus, Gen. 15:7 was understood as saying, "I am the Lord who rescued you from the midst of the fire of the Chaldeans.”

The nature of this fire was, of course, open to various interpretations, and some exegetes, doubtless inspired by the story of Chananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in Daniel (Dan. 3:19-23), interpreted the phrase to mean that Abraham too was saved from a fiery furnace prepared by the Chaldeans to burn him.

Nimrod is mentioned in the Torah in Genesis 10 and in Chronicles I.  It is said in an encyclopedia that he was of Cushite origin and was regarded as a mighty hunter. In the Torah, Nimrod was the son of Cush.  He was a strong ruler whose kingdom comprised Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar (Mesopotamia). 

 From that land, Ashur went forth and built Nineveh, Rehovoth-ir, Calah and Resen between Nineveh and Callah, that is the great city. (Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there was contention in academic circles regarding whether Ashur or Nimrod built the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, since the name Ashur can refer to both the person and the country (compare Genesis 10:8–12 AV and Genesis 10:8–12 ESV).)  Ashur turns out to be a son of Shem, so he was a grandson of Noah of the Flood.  

 This area is a part of today's Iraq.Then it was Assyria.  Nineveh turned out to be the capital of the New Assyrian Empire from about 1100 BCE on.  The Bible can be interpreted to say that Nineveh's founding was to Nimrod but the passage is unclear.  Jonah was sent to Nineveh to persuade its citizens to repent.  There was human sacrifice going on in Ur during Abraham's day, so must have all over the lands then.  

Assyria was poetically known as "the land of Nimrod."  His historical identity with one of the ancient Babylonian kings has not been settled;  after identifications have been made with Gilgamesh and with the Assyrian war-god, Ninurata. The Gilgamesh Epic was the ancient Babylonian creation myth, I believe found on clay tablets at a dig. 

 The Jews lived in Babylon and may have brought this history with them on their return to Jerusalem but they returned in 538 BCE and had been taken to Babylon in 597 or 586 BCE. That's a late period when Moses died in 1271 BCE and is said to have written the first 5 Books we call the five books of Moses.  Genesis was the first of the 5 books.  And so one must understand that they left Ur with Abraham knowing of this history already and passed it onto Moses.     However, the consistent monotheism of the Bible and the crude, pagan polytheism of the Babylonian version is striking.  Moses altered that part of the history.  

It is this extra-biblical tradition associating him with the Tower of Babel that has led to his reputation as a king who was rebellious against God.  Attempts to match Nimrod with historically attested figures have failed. Nimrod may not represent any one personage known to history and various authors have identified him with several real and fictional figures of Mesopotamian antiquity, including the Mesopotamian god Ninurta or a conflation of two Akkadian kings Sargon, his grandson Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BCE), and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BCE).

                                      

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley Kt (1880-1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history. The book below would be more interesting to an architect as it goes into the methods of building a great deal, especially doorways.  It seems that each generation in Ur were building on top of  previous buildings.  The Ziggurat was built here.  
                                          

Ur was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley, an archaeologist,  in  1922 which went on by Woolley and his wife, also an archaeologist.  They found that temples had a place to accommodate the draining of blood in human sacrifices, as that's what was common practice in those days..  Abraham was asked by G-d to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and then was stopped as it was a test of his faith.  Abraham left Ur, possibly because of this practice.                  

B

Ur was the burial site of what may have been many Sumerian royals. The Woolleys discovered tombs of great material wealth, containing large paintings of ancient Sumerian culture at its zenith, along with gold and silver jewellery, cups and other furnishings. The most extravagant tomb was that of "Queen" Pu-Abi. Amazingly enough, Queen Pu-Abi's tomb was untouched by looters. Inside the tomb, many well-preserved items were found, including a cylindrical seal bearing her name in Sumerian. Her body was found buried along with those of two attendants, who had presumably been poisoned to continue to serve her after death. Woolley was able to reconstruct Pu-Abi's funeral ceremony from objects found in her tomb.

Notice that Ur, our Ur, is always labeled as Ur of the Chaldees.  There must have been an Ur that wasn't.  Chaldea or the Chaldeans were a Semitic tribe which migrated to southern Babylonia and adopted the ancient Babylonian culture.  They gained supremacy over the native people and gave their name to the entire area.  They tried to overthrow Assyria, and they finally succeeded in the the 7th century BCE and established an empire extending from Assyria to the Egyptian border.  It was led by Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar.  Then they were conquered in turn by the PERSIANS IN 539  BCE. The Chaldeans were famous for being astrologers and made the term synonymous long after their empire had vanished.  Aramaic has been called Chaldaic or Chaldee, but this in not correct.  In Hebrew, Chaldea is Kasdim.              

The tradition of some Turkish people about Abraham coming from a cave in Turkey might be close, since we find that the people of Ur were from Ham and not Shem.  The people of Turkey carry the Y haplogroup of J2 mainly.   The most common haplogroup in Turkey is J2 (24%), which is widespread among the Mediterranean, Caucasian and West Asian populations. So Ur could have had a native population of mostly J2 men.  What was Terah, of J1, doing there?  Perhaps he had come from a more northern area from the head waters of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers.  Terah and his group would have had to have traveled all the way down the Euphrates River to reach Ur from Turkey's land, 1,740 miles.  They would travel through today's Syria and Iraq to reach Ur.  

A split between the Jewish and the Arabic lineages in both J1 and J2 haplogroups occurred, which is clearly visible on the respective haplotype trees. The data show that a common ancestor of Cohanim (Jewish High Priests) of haplogroup J1 lived 1070+/-170 ybp, while a common ancestor of Cohanim in haplogroup J2 lived 3300+/-400 ybp.  So our J1 Jewish line came out of the J2 line by about 2,000 year difference.  Maybe Abraham caused that break.  

Here is our genealogy as found in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). 

 Descendants of Noah: Cush was the son of Ham.  Cush was the brother of Mizraim, Put and Canaan.  Cush was the father of Nimrod.  The city of Cush was, in Babylonian tradition, one of the 1st cities built after the Flood.  Cush is the region south of Egypt (Nubia and Ethiopia in Hebrew and other ancient languages.  It  extends South from Elephantine and Syene (Assouan) 

1   Noah

.. +Naamah

. 2   Shem--Jews come from 

  .....   3   Elam

.....   3   Asshur

.....   3   Arpachshad b: in 2 years after flood

......... 4   Shelah

.....  3   Lud

.....  3   Aram (Syria)

......... 4   Milkah

............. +Levi

......... 4   Uz

......... 4   Hul

......... 4   Gether

......... 4   Mash

. 2   Ham

.....   3   Cush b: in Cush, Egypt, Nubia,Ethiopia

......... 4   Nimrod

.....  3   Egypt Mizraim

.....  3   Libya-Morocco Put

.....  3   Canaan

. 2   Japheth

Reference:

Tanakh-Old Testament 

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-are-the-semites/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_(Y-DNA)

https://www.nature.com/articles/npre.2010.4206.1#:~:text=The%20data%20show%20that%20a,lived%203300%2B%2F%2D400%20ybp.