The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and BabyloniaPinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Religion
The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia
Pinches, Theophilus G. (Theophilus Goldridge)
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
According to the most trustworthy traditions, therefore, as well as from
the Bible itself, Abraham was of Chaldean or Babylonian origin. If the
city of Urie or Ur be, as he says, that which was also called Camarina,
this would in all probability be the Aramean form of the Arabic _qamar_,
“the moon,” and the name Camarina would be due to the fact that the
Moon-god, Sin or Nannara, was worshipped there. It is also noteworthy that
the city whither the family of Terah emigrated, Haran (in
Assyro-Babylonian, Ḫarran), was likewise a centre of lunar worship, and
some have sought to see in that a reason for choosing that settlement. In
connection with this it may be remarked, that in the Talmud Terah, the
father of Abraham, is represented as an idolater, reproved by his son
Abraham for foolish and wicked superstition.
We see, therefore, from the eleventh chapter of Genesis, that Abraham was
a Babylonian from Ur, now known as Mugheir (Muqayyar), or (better still)
from that part of the country which lay north of Babylon, known by the
non-Semitic inhabitants as Uri, and by the Semitic population as Akkad. As
the family of Terah was a pastoral one, they must have pastured their
flocks in this district until they heard of those more fruitful tracts in
the west, and decided to emigrate thither. And here it may be noted that
they did not, by thus quitting their fatherland, go to swear allegiance to
another ruler, for the sway of the king of Babylon extended to the
farthest limits of the patriarch’s wanderings, and wherever he went,
Babylonian and Aramean or Chaldean would enable him to make himself
understood. He was, therefore, always as it were in his own land, under
the governors of the same king who ruled in the place of his birth.
The name of the patriarch, moreover, seems to betray the place of his
origin. The first name that he bore was Abram, which has already been
compared with the Abu-ramu, “honoured father,” of the Assyrian
eponym-lists (in this place an official by whose name the year 677, the
5th year of Esarhaddon, was distinguished). At an earlier date than this
the name has not been found, and the element _ram_, _ramu_, _rame_, etc.,
seems to be rare. Ranke’s list gives only _Sumu-ramê_, “the name is
established,” or “Sumu (? Shem) is established,” or something similar, but
_ramê_ here is probably not connected with the second syllable of Abram’s
name. The name of Sarah has been compared with the Assyro-Babylonian
_šarratu_, “queen,” but seems not to occur in the inscriptions. Isaak is
also absent, but Ishmael, under the form of _Išme-îlu_ (meaning “(the) god
has heard”) occurs, as well as others in which _îlu_ is replaced by Êa,
Sin, and Addu or Adad (Hadad).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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