Endnote 2 – Abraham’s Ur—Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place?

H. W. F. Saggs, although one of Gordon’s critics, agrees on this point. According to Saggs prior to the decipherment of cuneiform, “the traditional and commonly accepted identification” of Abrahamic Ur was the northern site of Urfa; Saggs, “Ur of the Chaldees: A Problem of Identification,” Iraq 22 (1960), p. 200. Nevertheless, there was, Saggs notes, “a divergent tradition, of equal antiquity, taking the city of Abraham as being in South Babylonia,” citing T.G. Pinches, “Ur of the Chaldees,” in A Dictionary of the Bible, ed. by James Hastings (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902). But Pinches acknowledges that “much uncertainty exists as to [Abrahamic Ur’s] identification” and Pinches even acknowledges his own doubts: “Notwithstanding the inherent probability of the identity of the ancient Babylonian Uru (Mugheir [the southern Ur]) with the biblical Ur of the Chaldees, the name is not so near as might be wished.”