101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #48:
Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees.
The Myth: And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s
son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with
them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto
Haran, and dwelt there. (Gen. 11:31)
The Reality: Ur of the Chaldees did not exist until about the eighth century B.C.,
about one thousand years after the time of Abraham.
The Mesopotamian city of Ur has a history dating back to at least the third millennium
B.C., but the association of the city with the Chaldees dates to only about the
eighth century B.C. The name Chaldees refers to the“land of the people of Chaldea,”
located just south of Babylon in southern Mesopotamia. Little is known of Chaldea
prior to the eighth century B.C. At this time, it temporarily captured the throne of
Babylon and ruled the entire region, including Ur. From that time on, although it didn’t
rule continuously in Babylon, its name came to be associated with southern
Mesopotamia. In 587 B.C., the Chaldeans conquered the kingdom of Judah and
transferred the Hebrew elite to Babylon.
Confounding the situation further, the biblical Hebrew does not call the city “Ur
of the Chaldees.” The word translated as Chaldees actually reads“chesdim,” meaning
either the “people of Chesed” or “land of Chesed.” The identification of this city with
Chaldea in the King James Version derives from the Greek translation of the Bible,
which used the name Chaldee.
Chesdim appears to be a West Semitic variation of the name Chaldea, and is the
word used in Aramaic for that territory. The Aramaic language came into use in the
Near East during the first millennium B.C. and eventually became the lingua franca of
the region. We have no evidence for the existence of the Arameans prior to about the
tenth century B.C. Some of the last books of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic
and that is almost certainly the language that Jesus spoke.
115