Nadene Goldfoot
People in Babylonia and Mesopotamia's religion revolved around Baal, an idol. The world was full of many gods, idols in those days. Humans were also sacrificed to appease these gods. Among the Canaaniate people, Baal meant lord, which was the main god of the sky and fertility, first used for the various local gods, generally represented in the form of a bull or even a man with the main common characteristic of being worshiped as gods of fertility, both of the field and of the womb; these attributes were absorbed by the central deity. After the Israelites entered Canaan, they tended to adopt the deities of the locals, even though their prophets protested. (Think of how many Jews today have joined their gentile friends at their churches on a Sunday and just for prayers). The conflict then was one of the principal themes of the historical accounts of the Book of Kings. Baal was later identified with the Greek Zeus. The "abomination of Desolation" set up in the Temple by Antiochus was that of Baal, called the "Lord of Heaven." Today, baal is a Hebrew word meaning "husband."
Abram/Abraham, born about 1948 BCE, came from a family in Mesopotamia of shepherds. His father was Terah who belonged to an ancient clan originating thousands of years ago we refer to today calling it J1 (dna haplotype). Terah's father was Nahor I. and mother was Iyoska.
Nahor I's father was Seroh or Serug and mother was Milkah A; Serug's father was Reu and mother was Ora. Reu's father was Peleg and his father was Eber and his father was Shelah, and his father was Arpachshad, and his father, finally was the well known SHEM, SON OF NOAH.
Terah had left the city of Ur of the Chaldees group with his oldest son, Abraham and his family; Haran, his other son, and the rest of the family that included his nephew, Lot, son of Abram's brother, Haran, and his family.
Abram and Sarai, his niece as well as wife. Sarai gave birth to Isaac at age 90.(Time was different back then, I believe with the planet expanding out in space more making revolutions around the sun faster???) To be Abram's niece means that her father was Haran, Abram's brother. In those days it did not matter that they were marrying relatives; it just strengthened their DNA. The law has come down to us in that we are not to marry our siblings or our parents, of course. 2nd cousins have often married, and often have no issue.
They married into their families as they did not "know" the other people they ran into, nor did they trust them. Others had strange practices and spoke strange languages.
What is phenomenal is that our history about Terah and his family comes to us through Moses, a descendant of them who led them all out of Egypt after a 400 year period and back to Canaan. Moses was a scribe, learned by Egyptian teachers as one of the Princes of Egypt, who asked the men responsible for the oral history of the group of 603,000 and wrote it all down. G-d is said to have helped them. This is part of the 5 Books of Moses, the opening of the Bible (Tanakh). The Exodus with Moses took place more likely from 1579 to 1700 BCE. Some Rabbis have said it took place 480 years before the 1st Temple of Solomon.
The Chaldees or Chaldea or Chaldeans in Hebrew is Kasdim. It was a Semitic tribe which migrated to Southern Babylonia and adopted the ancient Babylonian culture. They gradually gained supremacy over the native inhabitants and gave their name to the entire area. The fame of the Chaldeans as astrologers made the terms synonymous long after their empire had vanished.
They lived after the days of hunting for food, before agriculture came about. Those older were the Hunter-Gatherers (Mesolithic and Neolithic Eras) The Mesolithic era, roughly spanning from 10,000 to 8,000 BCE, followed the Paleolithic era, while the Neolithic era, or the New Stone Age, generally began around 8,000 BCE and saw the rise of agriculture and settled communities. The Neolithic Period, also known as the New Stone Age, was a period in human history marked by the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled, agricultural societies, starting around 10,000 BCE and ending around 3,000 BCE.
So the history of Abram/Abraham is well within our period of farming as beingwell developed as Babylonia was certainly well developed technically, but people still believed in human sacrifice.
Rabbis figure that the creation of the world we know was 6,000 years ago.
They had heard of the land of Canaan and were traveling, hoping to be going the right way. On this trek they came to the town of Haran where Terah died. It was a trading town. Terah's 2nd son was Haran. Haran below
And Terah took Abram . . . and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees.’ The city Abraham left behind him - a city with good claims to being the oldest in the world - was rediscovered in 1854 by the then British Consul at Basra. But not until the end of World War I was serious excavation undertaken there. The results were so encouraging that four years later a joint British-American expedition, directed by the author of this book, worked on the site. The story of their discoveries made during years of work and covering the successive cities which were built on the site from days far beyond the flood until Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, is here told, and the daily life of the peoples who lived through more than four millennia beside the Euphrates recreated in word and picture.
Terah had been an idolmaker. He made a good living. Ur was like a New York City, big and leading in every way. In our day it has been excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley. When Woolley began work at Dr, little was known about the early civilizations of Mesopotamia. His work at Dr over twelve years, which included the excavation of royal tombs, the discovery of the gold jewelry of Queen PuAbi and the excavation of the famous ziggurat, allowed scholars to reconstruct the civilization of Sumer in the 3rd century B.C.E.
"Excavations at Ur: a Record of Twelve Years' Work". First published in 2010.
The Jewish aggadah (part of the oral law, a sequel of stories and chronicles, sayings of the wise and moral instructions) which depicts Terah as a devout idolator challenged in his beliefs by Abraham. Abraham knew that there was nothing to the idols his father made. They held no magic. One day he had knocked over one that broke and his father had a fit when he arrived home. Abraham had told him that the other idol had knocked this one over, and Terah had laughed and retorted that it had no power; was just created out of clay and wood.
Abram and Sarai had no children so Abram took her handmaid, Hagar and had a son, Ishmael. Hagar was probably Egyptian; not of the family. Later, Sarai conceived and bore Isaac. Abram, being a shepherd, certainly knew how babies were created, having lived with and observed the ways of sheep; and realized that Ishmael would bear characteristics of another man besides Sarai's family characteristics. They came to the point where this showed up in the attitude of Ishmael towards Isaac, which was jealousy, and so to keep the family line pure, sent Ishmael and Hagar back to Egypt. No intermarrying anymore with Hagar and his family. Which makes me wonder if the handmaids of Leah and Rachel; Zilpah and Bilhah, weren't sisters who were connected somehow to the family line; or were not of Egyptian heritage but one of the more friendly neighboring countries.
Isaac at maturity married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel. Bethuel in the Hebrew Bible, was an Aramean man, the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah, the nephew of Abraham, and the father of Laban and Rebecca. So he was part of the family, too. Nahor II (Hebrew: נָחוֹר – Nāḥōr) is listed as the son of Terah, amongst two other brothers, Abram and Haran (v.26,27). His grandfather was Nahor I, son of Serug. Serug was the son of Reu and the father of Nahor, according to Genesis 11:20–23. He is also the great-grandfather of Abraham, thus the ancestor of the Ishmaelites and the Israelites....
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In my records, Isaac and Rebekah were the parents of Jacob (changed his name to Israel, later) and Esau. who were fraternal twins, and were very different from each other in appearance and actions. Jacob became the father of the 12 tribes of Israel and Esau, though born first, was cheated out of his birthright and blessing by Jacob and his mother, became the leader of the Arab nation. At that point he became Jacob's enemy!
Along the way, Abram had a name alteration addition, Ham, making Abraham, verifying overcoming a great decision.We have the history of not carrying through with the sacrificing of his son, Isaac on the coals, ending human sacrifice. This goes along with the additions Moses gives the people making 613 laws they are to abide by that will make their people different from other people culturally to last till the end of days. The testing they are to go through will depend on the strength of following these laws designed to tide them through all the pain and suffering they will experience.
There might be hope for us today as Jacob had fled to the town of Haran and on returning 20 years later, was received affectionately by Esau. Was that real love for his brother or was it a put on?
Israel has been denied their homeland ever since the year 70 CE by the burning down by the Romans who denied them their presence seemingly forever until May 14, 1948 CE. when Israel was born again. The Abrahamic Accords has been created joining some Arabs and Jews together again.
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King David was King of Israel from 1,000 to 960 BCE, known by several religions for his Psalms that he wrote. He was the youngest son of Jesse and was born in Bethlehem. Jesse's father was Obed/Oved; and his father was Boaz, cousin of Naomi, and his father was Salmon with mother Milkah; and Salmon was the father of Boaz and Naomi's father, whose father was Nashone, and his father was Amminadab, whose father was Ram whose father was Hezron, whose father was Perez; whose father was Judah (4th son of Jacob and Leah) whose father was Jacob of the 12 TRIBES !!!
Resource:
edited at 4:11pm 3/25/25
Ur of the Chaldees
Tanakh, the Stone Edition
genealogy I gathered
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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