Abraham’s Ur: Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place? - The BAS Library
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Abraham’s Ur: Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place?

By Hershel Shanks

Pope John Paul II is planning a millennium pilgrimage in 2000 that will take him to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Sinai—and Iraq! Why Iraq? Because that is where the patriarch Abraham was born—at Ur. But wait a minute. The Pope may be going to the wrong Ur. Perhaps he should be going to Turkey. More than 40 years ago, Cyrus Gordon, an eminent Biblical scholar and Near Eastern polymath who recently celebrated his 91st birthday, argued that the commonly designated Ur, on the west bank of the Euphrates River in southern Iraq, is not the Ur where Abraham was born.1 […]

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Endnotes

1.

Cyrus Gordon, in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies 17 (1958), p. 28; “Abraham of Ur,” in Hebrew and Semitic Studies (G.R. Driver festschrift) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 77–84; and “Where Is Abraham’s Ur?” BAR 03:02.

2.

One of Terah’s sons (Abraham’s brother) was named Haran. Lot was Haran’s son (and Abraham’s nephew). But in Hebrew the name of the person Haran is spelled differently from the place Haran. The initial letter of the person is heh; of the place, het.

3.

See Seton Lloyd and William Brice, “Harran,” Anatolian Studies 1 (1955), pp. 77–111.

4.

In general, see P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “The Patriarchal Age,” revised by Ronald S. Hendel, in Ancient Israel, ed. Hershel Shanks, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1999).

5.

See, e.g., “Aram-Naharaim” and “Paddan-Aram” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. The entry for Paddan-aram in the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (1996) states that “Haran and perhaps Ur were located in Paddan-aram.”