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.

Discord in Abraham's Tent Over Control of Son Ishmael and Grandson, Esau

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                                                                        Abraham and Isaac
Was Abraham and his father Terah members of Habirus?  They were mercenaries or slaves.  Records of them were found in the Tel el-Amarna tables and in other documents of the 15th-14th centuries BCE.  Many scholars think that the word Habiru is identical with Ivri or Hebrews.  The references are in connection to threat of the Habiru to Canaanite cities and are one of the stages in Israelite conquest of Canaan.  They were said to come from the East.

Jews and many Arabs can trace their ancestry back to the Biblical patriarch, Abraham.  He was the son of Terah.  They lived in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in today's Iraq, and moved to live among the Canaanites and Philistine inhabitants of  Canaan.   There he pitched his tent and lived with his wife, Sarah.   He is known as the Father of Monotheism.  The people of Ur had believed in idol worship which necessitated the move.

Abraham was told by G-d that his seed would inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates," and made a covenant with him.  His first son was Ishmael through Sarah's young handmaid, Hagar.  Ishmael  and his mother were sent away from Abraham's tent due to discord between Hagar and Sarah, who in her old age finally also became pregnant with Isaac. Sarah may have been elderly,  however managed to nurse Isaac, but had been needled by Hagar about this.   Sarah felt that Ishmael was teasing  and picking on Isaac and the two women failed to get along. On Isaac's day of being weaned, probably at age 2, Sarah was very agitated with  Hagar and didn't want Ishmael to inherit anything with Isaac.  After all, Hagar was a slave and of another people, though Abraham had taken Hagar as a wife.  This distressed Abraham so G-d told him that Ishmael would also have a nation but to listen to Sarah.    Hagar, who had gone from slave status to wife, , chosen to be one to carry Abraham's child because of the her bareness  at that time, had become disrespectful  towards, Sarah.  Sarah was  the first and older legal wife and niece of Abraham and G-d told Abraham to listen to her.

 Ishmael and Hagar then went to live in Paran, which was a desert, a wilderness in the Negev.  It was situated NE of the traditional Mt. Sinai, south of Kadesh, extending to the shores of the Gulf of Elath and the Arabah.    Ishmael's daughter, Mahalath,  married his half-nephew, Esau, twin son of Isaac.  Ishmael did meet up with his half brother, Isaac at the funeral of Abraham where they both buried him.  Ishmael is considered the Father of the Arab peoples, making Jews and Arabs "cousins."

The prophesy about Ishmael  by an angel of G-d to Hagar was thus: He shall be a wild-ass of a man;  his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him;  and over all his brothers shall he dwell."  Abraham was 86 years old at the time of his birth.  (Genesis 16:11-12).

In the Jewish version of this event, Isaac is used as the sacrifice that Abraham was told to perform, while in the Muslim version, it is Ishmael.  The two versions do vary in places with the Torah being the oldest version by 2,000 years.   The Torah was written by Moses (1391-1271 BCE). Writing was a skill he learned in Egypt being he was a son of the Pharoah's daughter and raised as a prince.  He had had a thorough education.   Islam's Koran, written by Mohammad (570-632 CE), came about 2,000 later.

 In the Midrash, a section that works on finding new meanings besides the literal ones in the Scriptures in the Talmud, it says that Ishmael's offspring or descendants  were destined to persecute and murder Jews.  G-d responded that he would judge Ishmael only according to his present deeds and not according to what would happen in the future.(Rashi).  The Midrash usually refers to legends and ethics.

Abraham died at age 175 in the year 2123 from Creation (Jewish Calendar). That was 3,650 years ago being that this year is 5773 on the Jewish Calendar.  That makes his death as we would understand it in the year 1,637 BCE.   Ishmael lived for 137 years.  He had been living from Havilah to Shur, which is near Egypt-toward Assyria.  To put this into perspective, Moses (1391-1271 BCE) was Abraham's 3rd great grandson.

Esau was born to Isaac and Rebecca, his first cousin once removed,  and was the elder of  twins with his twin brother being Jacob.  Esau was hairy and Jacob was smooth skinned. Rebecca was told by G-d that two nations were in her womb; two regimes from your insides shall be separated;  the might shall pass from one regime to the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.  Esau had been born red, entirely like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau.  Jacob was born holding onto the heal of Esau, so he was named Jacob.  Esau grew up doing the hunting, a man of the field.  Jacob was a wholesome man, abiding in tents.  Isaac's favorite son was Esau,  but Rebecca loved Jacob more.

 Jacob is later given the name of Israel upon a change in status.  These twins became enemies when Jacob, the younger, became the owner of the birthright from their father which is a firstborn blessing.  The story is that Jacob actually had tricked Esau in getting this over a bowl of porridge.  Esau had come in from hunting and was so hungry that he gave up his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of food instead.  Jacob took that to mean that Esau didn't think much of the honor and responsibility in the first place.

 Of course this is a tale of sibling rivalry that goes on today between siblings, but they usually love each other anyway today.  We read all the time of sibling rivalry in Egypt and Rome where there was no love, only jealousy many times resulting in death.    Esau didn't have any love for his twin for this loss of his and wanted to kill Jacob for it.  Jacob had to move out of the compound and flee to Haran. Haran was the brother of Abraham and father of Lot. He had remained in Ur.  Terah, Abraham's father and Abraham had lived there in a Habiru (Hebrew?)  settlement.  It was a trading town and the center of a moon cult.    He returned home 20 years later and they had an affectionate reunion.   (Gen.35).  The Torah identifies Esau with the land of Edom and Jacob becomes known as Israel.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the leaders of Judaism, are the ones to carry on Abraham's religious thoughts of monotheism.  It wasn't until Mohammad, Islam's prophet,  came into being when he decided to also follow monotheism as he came from pagans worshipping many gods.  The moon god, Allah, was the most powerful one  This is probably why the symbol on their flag is a crescent moon. Muslims face the Kabba in Mecca  when they pray which is very sacred to them. It's a large  cuboid made of near-by granite known as the Sacred House.

Ishmael, by being a child harder to discipline, was "out on the streets" so to speak and not under the tutelage of his father, Abraham, thereby growing up in paganism.  He most likely followed the beliefs of Hagar, who was an Egyptian.  Judaism had a head start on monotheism by a good 2,000 years through Isaac.

If anything, this part of Genesis is a lesson on the seriousness of raising one's children.  By circumstances and prophecy, the whole world is affected by decisions from our ancient ancestors.  I also see a great plan, and that our destiny had some controls at the helm.

Corrected/Edit: 5/26/16 -Hagar was wife, not concubine of Abraham
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanakh (Bible) ARtScroll Series, The Stone Edition, Genesis
 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080703100620AARAvBO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Islamic_Arabia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba
http://www.cogwriter.com/arabprophecy.htm
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/10/following-in-footsteps-of-abraham.html