Thursday, January 6, 2022

Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee on “Olishem” and the Location of “Ur of the Chaldees”

  

. . . one bit of inscriptional evidence creates a possible scenario for understanding Abraham’s journeys. Two inscriptions, from just before Abraham and contemporary to him, attest to an “Ulishem” west of Ebla, somewhat north of Coastal Byblos. (“Inscription of Naram-Sin, the Campaign Against Armanu and Ebla,” in Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, ed. William Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr., The context of Scripture [Boston: Brill, 2003], 2:245. The line reads, “From the Bank of the Euphrates until Ulisum”) . . . Byblos experienced heavy Egyptian influence, while Ebla felt a lighter amount.

 

Towns that were geographically in between these two cities, such as Ulaza, also found themselves in between them in regard to their amount of contact with Egypt (see James P. Allen, “The Historical Inscription of Khnumhotep at Dashur: Preliminary Report,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 352 [2008]: 29-39). While most people think of Ur as a city in southern Mesopotamia, the Book of Abraham may cast some more light on this issue (see the discussion in Stephen O. Smoot, “’In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 [2017]: 7-37, esp. 33-34). While we cannot tell whether UR is indeed in southern Mesopotamia, a possible and tentative scenario could arise from comparing the text of the Book of Abraham and some recent archaeological finds. A group of archaeologists have been excavating an area they think may be Ulishem. If this purported site for Ulishem—which is being excavated in Turkey just west of Ebla—is the “Olishem” of Abraham 1:10, where Abraham was nearly sacrificed (See J.R. Kupper, “Uršu,” Revue d’assyriologie 43 [1949]: 80-82), it would be in a place that was experiencing just the kind of influence described in the Book of Abraham. As Abraham sought to flee from such life-threatening semi-Egyptianized culture, it would make sense for him to travel east to Haran, where the Egyptians had little or no presence. Then, as the Egyptian presence in Canaan lessened, a phenomenon demonstrated by John Gee, Abraham would have been freer to move to Canaan. While this itinerary is only speculation, it is an interesting possibility. (Kerry Muhlestein, “Israel, Egypt, and Canaan,” in From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament Through the Lens of the Restoration, eds., Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021], 201-2)

 

IN UR OF THE CHALDEES

 

Bot the Bible and the Book of Abraham begin his story with him living in Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:27-31; Abraham 1:1, 20). The Hebrew here uses the word kasdîm rather than Chaldeans, which may not be the same thing as the later tribe, the kaldu, which we now equate with the Chaldeans (see also the Targum Jonathan Genesis 11:28, which does not use the term Chaldeans). Based on the Akkadian cognate, we would expect the kasdîm to mean “the conquerors” (The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Volume 8: K, 162). While the tendency has been to put Ur in the south of Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf (H.W.F. Saggs, “Ur of the Chaldees: A Problem of Identification,” Iraq 22 [1960]: 200-209), a number of scholars have argued for a northern location [13]. . . . The Book of Abraham suggests that Ur was not the city Olishem itself but instead associates Ur with a smaller location in the surrounding plain (Engin and Helwing, “The EBA-MBA Transition in the Kilis Plain,” 99-100), distinguished by a “hill called Potiphar’s Hill” that was located “at the head of the plain of Olishem” (Abraham 1:10). Since the “head” of a river refers to its source (Genesis 1:10) (1the usage of the “head” of a valley in Isaiah 28;1, 4 is, unfortunately, unclear. The “head of Lebanon” in Jeremiah 22:6 appears to refer to the highlands), the head of the plain of Olishem probably also refers to the headwaters. Thus, Ur was likely at the northern edge of the plain given the hills, the association with Olishem rather than Aleppo, and the general pattern of drainage. (John Gee, “The Wanderings of Abraham,” in Ibid., 255, 256-57)

 

 

[13] See Douglas Frayne, “In Abraham’s Footsteps,” in The World of the Aramaeans I: Biblical Studies in Honour of Paul-Eugène Dion, ed. P.M. Michèle Daviau, John W. Weve, and Michael Weigl (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 216: “A brief examination of connections between the proper names appearing in the patriarchal Abraham narrative in Genesis11 with ancient northwestern Syrian toponyms suggests a close connection of the homeland of Abraham and his relatives with the city and countryside of Harran.” See also Daniel F. Fleming, “Mari and the Possibilities of Biblical Memory,” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 92, no. 1 (1998): 67: “The Genesis tradition of a north Syrian origin for Abraham and his family is both central to the narrative and difficult to explain in terms of peoples and regional political relations during the lives of the Israelite states, the exiles, or early Judaism.” Finally, Mark W. Chavalas, “Syria and Northern Mesopotamia to the End of the Third Millennium BCE,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible, ed. Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger Jr. (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 126: “The writers of the Bible claimed that their ancestors originated in this area from Harran in the Upper Euphrates region.” (Gee, Ibid., 255-56 n. 13)

 

Further Reading


Stephen O. Smoot, Framing the Book of Abraham: Presumptions and Paradigms (see the section "Olishem")