. . . The Bible makes several references to God bringing Abraham from
’Ur-Kasdim, translated as “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 11:27, 31; 15:7;
Neh. 9:7). No one in southern Mesopotamia was called a “Chaldean” in Abraham’s
day, but since the story was written much later, we assumed that the author
retrojected a contemporary label to an ancient situation. Some of the texts
imply that Abraham went straight from “Ur of the Chaldees” to Canaan, but the
story in Gen. 11:27-32 says that he moved with his father Terah from Ur-Kasdim
to Haran (now in northeastern Syria), but stopped there, remaining until Terah
died. Genesis 12 picks up the story in Haran, with God’s call for Abraham to
proceed to “the land that I will show you” (12:1).
We know that there were Chaldeans in southern Mesopotamia during the
Neo-Babylonian period, 1000 years after Abraham’s time, and the Babylonians of
that time were also popularly known as Chaldeans. Some ancient sources,
however, suggest that the Chaldeans’ original home was in Anatolia, now a part
of Turkey, before some of them migrated south. (Tony W. Cartledge, “Have we erred on Ur?,” Goodfaith Media, January 6, 2020)
