“Chaldeans” do not seem to have
existed at the southern Ur until much later than Abraham. However, some ancient
texts indicate they were in the north at the time of Abraham. But, the group is
not well understood and what exactly their relationship with Egypt may have
been is unknown—the Book of Abraham tells of a close relationship with peoples
in the “neighborhood” of Harran; in the area of a proposed northern Ur that
relationship can be documented. This would explain Abraham's repidation
on entering Canaan (2:18)—Egyptian influence was almost certainly strong there.
. . . Partly the difficulty stems from the way Chaldean is used. At least two
ancient groups may have had the name applied to them. A northern group, “Kaldu”
and the group post-exilic Jews knew as the “Kasdim” or the group at a southern
Ur. In Joseph Smith's day, either group might be referred to as Chaldean . . . (William
V. Smith, A Joseph Smith Commentary on the Book of Abraham: An Introduction to
the Study of the Book of Abraham [3d ed.; 2009], 27)
Elsewhere (Ibid., 219) Smith quoted an entry in the Anchor Yale
Bible Dictionary from A. R. Millard. I will quote the entire passage (text
Smith quotes in bold):
5. Objections to a 2d Millennium
Context. a. Anachronisms. The texts about Sargon of Akkad are pertinent to the
question of anachronisms in the Abraham stories. In those texts, Sargon is said
to have campaigned to Turkey in aid of Mesopotamian merchants oppressed there.
Documents from Kanesh in central Turkey attest to the activities of Assyrian
merchants in the 19th century B.C., but not much earlier. Therefore the mention
of Kanesh in texts about Sargon and his dynasty is considered anachronistic. At
the same time, the incidents those texts report are treated as basically
authentic and historically valuable (Grayson and Sollberger 1976: 108). The
anachronism does not affect the sense of the narrative. In this light, the
problem of the Philistines in Gen 21:32, 34 may be viewed as minimal. Naming
a place after a people whose presence is only attested there six or seven
centuries later than the setting of the story need not falsify it. A scribe may
have replaced an outdated name, or people of the Philistine group may have
resided in the area long before their name is found in other written sources. Certainly
some pottery entered Palestine in the Middle Bronze Age from Cyprus, the region
whence the Philistines came (Amiran 1969: 121–23). A similar position can be
adopted with regard to the commonly cited objection of Abraham’s camels.
Although the camel did not come into general use in the Near East until after
1200 B.C., a few signs of its use earlier in the 2d millennium B.C. have been
found (see CAMEL). It is as logical to treat the passages in Gen 12:16; 24 as
valuable evidence for the presence of camels at that time as to view them as
anachronistic. Contrariwise, the absence of horses from the Abraham narratives
is to be noted, for horses could be a sign of wealth in the places where he
lived (cf. 1 Kgs 5:6); horses are unmentioned in the list of Job’s wealth (Job
1:3). Ancient Near Eastern sources show clearly that horses were known in the
3d millennium B.C., but only began to be widely used in the mid-2d millennium
B.C., that is, after the period of Abraham’s lifetime as envisaged here (Millard
1983: 43). Comparisons may be made also with information concerning iron
working. A Hittite text tells how King Anitta (ca. 1725 B.C.) received an iron
chair from his defeated foe. Recent research dates the tablet about 1600 B.C.,
yet iron only came into general use in the Near East when the Bronze Age ended
and the Iron Age began, ca. 1200 B.C. Were the Anitta text preserved in a copy
made a millennium after his time, its iron chair would be dismissed as a later
writer’s anachronism. It cannot be so treated; it is one important witness to
iron working in the Middle Bronze Age (Millard 1988). Alleged anachronisms in
the Abraham narratives are not compelling obstacles to setting them early in
the 2d millennium B.C. (A. R. Millard, “Abraham (Person),” in The Anchor
Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman 6 vols. [New York:
Doubleday, 1992], 1:39)
Another quote from The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary Smith
uses is the following:
At the time of Terah and Abram,
the culture of the people of NW Mesopotamia, in the region around Haran, was a
mixture of Hurrian and Amorite elements on a Sumero-Akkadian foundation defined
and illustrated by the Cappadocian tablets, the Mari documents, the Code of
Hammurapi, the OB letters from Babylon, and the Nuzi tablets of the 15th
century B.C. There is no positive evidence for defining the time of the earlier
migration from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran. Moreover, the Chaldeans during the
patriarchal periods seem to be rather nomadic raiders (Job 1:17) who lived near
Haran or Edom; so the traditional site of Ur in S Mesopotamia may be reexamined
as some seek the location near Haran; but the place is not identified yet. (Yoshitaka
Kobayashi, “Haran (Place),” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed.
David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 3:58.)
