Author: BMC Team

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Ur of the Chaldees

Ur

Book of Abraham Insight #4

The opening verse of the Book of Abraham places the story “in the land of the Chaldeans” (Abraham 1:1). Several references to the city of Ur and “Ur of the Chaldees” are also present in the text (Abraham 1:20; 2:1, 4, 15; 3:1). This location is said to be the “residence of [Abraham’s] fathers” and Abraham’s own residence and “country” (Abraham 1:1; 2:3).

The Book of Abraham gives some specific details about Ur and this “land of the Chaldeans” that are not found in the Genesis account (Genesis 11:26–32; 12:1–5). This includes an apparent degree of Egyptian cultural and religious influence in the area (Abraham 1:6, 8–9, 11, 13) and being in or near the vicinity of “the plain of Olishem” (Abraham 1:10).

Where exactly is Abraham’s “Ur of the Chaldees”? For centuries, the traditional location for Muslims, Jews, and Christians was the city of Urfa (modern Sanliurfa in southeast Turkey). In the 1920s, however, the excavations of Sir Leonard Woolley at Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq identified an ancient Sumerian city called Urim or Uru.1 Woolley argued that this site was the location of Abraham’s Ur, not the traditional site in Turkey. Woolley’s argument has since gained widespread acceptance amongst biblical scholars.

Sanliurfa, Turkey, one of the proposed sites for Abraham’s Ur, approximately 94 miles (151 km) east of Gaziantep, Turkey and 30 miles (48 km) north of Harran, Turkey.

While Woolley’s identification of Urim with the biblical Ur has remained popular, other scholars have challenged it. Chief among them has been Cyrus Gordon—a member of Woolley’s excavation team2—who disputed Woolley’s identification on linguistic and archaeological grounds.3 He and a vocal minority of scholars have argued for candidates in northern Syria and southern Turkey as being Abraham’s Ur.

An additional complication besides locating Abraham’s Ur is identifying the ancient “Chaldeans” or “Chaldees” mentioned in both the Book of Abraham and the book of Genesis. Our best current evidence suggests they were a nomadic Semitic tribe from modern Syria who emigrated into Mesopotamia and established a dynasty that came to power as the Babylonian Empire.4 The infamous biblical king Nebuchadnezzar was a descendant of these Chaldeans, and by his time the name Chaldean had become synonymous with Babylonian.5 Unfortunately, we have practically no inscriptional or archaeological evidence for the identity of the Chaldeans before they entered Mesopotamia long after Abraham’s lifetime. We therefore still have large gaps in the archaeological record that do not permit us to say much about the Chaldeans during Abraham’s lifetime.

Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq, another proposed location for Abraham’s Ur, approximately 150 miles (240 km) away from the Persian Gulf.

Latter-day Saint scholars who have approached this question have pointed out that a northern Syrian-Turkish location for Ur is much more favorable for the Book of Abraham than a southern Mesopotamian location.6 For one thing, as mentioned, the Book of Abraham mentions some kind of Egyptian cultural influence or presence in and around Abraham’s homeland of Ur. Abraham’s kinsmen included “the god of Pharaoh” in their worship (along with a “priest of Pharaoh” to carry out the rituals), and practiced ritual human sacrifice “after the manner of the Egyptians” (Abraham 1:6–13). There is presently no evidence for Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia during the lifetime of Abraham (circa 2000–1,800 BC), but there is evidence for Egyptian influence in northern Syria at this time.

Additionally, the proximity of Abraham’s Ur to “the plain of Olishem” is an important geographical detail that works best in a northern as opposed to southern location. The Book of Abraham’s Olishem has been plausibly identified with the ancient city of Ulisum or Ulishum located somewhere in southern Turkey (although the precise location remains debated).7

Taken together, the evidence from the Book of Abraham text and external archaeological and inscriptional sources can reasonably point us in the general direction of modern northern Syria and Turkey as the ancient homeland of Abraham. While there are many questions that scholars still grapple with, enough evidence has surfaced over the years that paints a generally reliable picture of the historical and geographical world described in the Book of Abraham.

Further Reading

Stephen O. Smoot, “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37.

Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Where Was Ur of the Chaldees?” in The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God, ed. H. Donl Peterson and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1989), 119–36.

Footnotes

 

1 Leonard Woolley and Max Mallowan, Ur Excavations (London: The British Museum, 1927–62); Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees (London: E.  Benn., 1929); Leonard Woolley, Abraham: Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins (London: Faber and Faber, 1936); Leonard Woolley, Excavations at Ur: A Record of Twelve Years’ Work (London: E. Benn. 1954); Leonard Woolley and P. R. S. Moorey, Ur “of the Chaldees,” rev. ed. (London: Herbert Press, 1982).

2 Cyrus H. Gordon, A Scholar’s Odyssey (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 35–36. Gordon was skeptical of Woolley’s efforts to “prove” the Bible was true for “well-heeled and God-fearing widows,” feeling that his efforts to link Abraham’s Ur with Tell el-Muqayyar compromised his otherwise “masterful” archaeological abilities.

3 Cyrus H. Gordon, “Abraham and the Merchants of Ura,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 17 (January 1958): 28–31; “Abraham of Ur,” in Hebrew and Semitic Studies, ed. D. Winton Thomas and W. D. McHardy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 77–84; “Where Is Abraham’s Ur?” Biblical Archaeology Review 3, no. 2 (1977): 20–21, 52; Cyrus H. Gordon, “Recovering Canaan and Ancient Israel,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), 4:2784.

4 A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 160–63; Trevor Bryce, Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia (London: Routledge, 2009), 158.

5 Richard S. Hess, “Chaldea,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:886; Bryce, Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia, 159. But see also the cautionary note in Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “Arameans, Chaldeans, and Arabs in Cuneiform Sources from the Late Babylonian Period,” in Arameans, Chaldeans, and Arabs in Babylonia and Palestine in the First Millennium B.C., ed. A. Berlejung and M. P. Streck (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 33, 51, who points out that “relying solely on cuneiform sources from Babylonia, which are relatively abundant, we find no evidence that Nebuchadnezzar considered himself the ruler of Chaldeans and Arameans.” Instead, the Neo-Babylonian dynasty appears to have “adopted an archaizing political vocabulary which harked back to the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon and even to the Old Akkadian period. The perennial and unchanging nature of Babylonian civilization and its Sumero-Akkadian heritage was emphasized, and the reality of a society fragmented along ethnic, tribal, and linguistic lines, as well as by several other factors of social and institutional nature seems to be denied.”

6 John A. Tvedtnes and Ross Christensen, “Ur of the Chaldeans: Increasing Evidence on the Birthplace of Abraham and the Original Homeland of the Hebrews,” in Special Publications of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1985); John M. Lundquist, “Was Abraham at Ebla? A Cultural Background of the Book of Abraham,” in Studies in Scripture—Volume Two: The Pearl of Great Price, ed. Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson (Salt Lake City: Randall Book, 1985), 230–35; Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Where Was Ur of the Chaldees?” in The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God, ed. H. Donl Peterson and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1989), 127–31; Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, ed. Gary P. Gillum, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2000), 234–36, 238, 247; John Gee and Stephen D. Ricks, “Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study,” in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2001), 70–72; Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2009), 418–28; John Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 1 (2013): 34–39.

7 John Gee, “Has Olishem Been Discovered?” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 104–7.

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The Plain of Olishem

Olishem

Book of Abraham Insight #3

The opening chapter of the Book of Abraham mentions a location named “the plain of Olishem” (Abraham 1:10). It isn’t clear from the text whether the plain itself was Olishem, or whether some city or region in the area to which the plain was adjacent was Olishem, or if the plain takes its name from a major city on the plain. In any case, this “plain of Olishem” was near Abraham’s homeland of Ur of the Chaldees according to the Book of Abraham.

In 1985, a Latter-day Saint archaeologist named John M. Lundquist published a pioneering article situating the Book of Abraham in a plausible ancient geographical and cultural environment in northern Mesopotamia.1 Among the points discussed by Lundquist was the plausible identification of Olishem with the ancient place name Ulisum (or Ulishum). Lundquist pointed to inscriptional evidence dating to the time of the Akkadian king Naram-Sin (who reigned circa 2254–2218 BC) which spoke of Ulisum in what is today northern Syria or southern Turkey.2 Scholars have debated the location of this ancient city and at least half a dozen different sites have been proposed over the years.

The toponym U-li-si-im (Ulisum) as it appears in the inscription of king Naram-Sin of Akkad. “Then, from the very mouth of the Euphrates, he smote the river(-bank) as far as Ulisum.” (Foster [1982], 31–32.) Transliteration from Hirsch (1963), 74; facsimile image of text from Gadd and Legrain (1928), Pl. LVI.

Subsequent studies have built upon and strengthened this enticing identification of Olishem in the Book of Abraham as the ancient Ulisum.3 In fact, one non-Latter-day Saint archaeologist working in the area has favorably suggested a possible (though inconclusive) connection between Olishem and Ulisum on linguistic, chronological, and geographical grounds.4 In 2013, excavators at the Turkish site of Oylum Höyük near the Syrian border announced that it was the ancient Ulisum mentioned in the inscription of Naram-Sin and identified it as “the city of Abraham.” Another Latter-day Saint scholar, Egyptologist John Gee, reviewed this evidence uncovered by the Turkish excavators and deemed its confirming significance for the Book of Abraham “promising but not proven.”5

The evidence for the proposed site is not conclusive. There are still gaps in the archaeological and inscriptional record that preclude a definitive identification of the Book of Abraham’s Olishem with Ulisum and with any particular archaeological site. (For one thing, no inscriptional evidence at the site of Oylum Höyük mentions the ancient name of the site.) Nevertheless, the following can be said with a fair amount of certainty:

    1. There is definitely an ancient site with the name Ulisum or Ulishum.
    2. There is no agreement as to the precise location of Ulisum, but it can most likely be identified in a specific general region (southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border). Many scholars are interested in exploring where precisely Ulisum may be in this region.6
    3. Olishem is a name from the Book of Abraham, which matches the phonetics and time period of the known site of Ulishum.
    4. The region of the ancient Ulisum matches well with some geographic interpretations of the Book of Abraham.7
Oylum Höyük in modern Turkey on the Kilis plain, approximately 45 miles (73 km) north of Aleppo, Syria.

Textual and archaeological studies about Ulisum can inform our understanding of the Book of Abraham, and studying the Book of Abraham can in turn inform these textual and archaeological studies because the Book of Abraham provides geographical information about Olishem not available in any other ancient source.

Future discoveries may shed further light on this topic, but for now it can be said that Ulisum is plausible and promising (though not yet definitive) evidence for the Book of Abraham’s Olishem.8

Further Reading

John Gee, “Has Olishem Been Discovered?” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 104–107.

John Gee and Stephen D. Ricks, “Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study,” in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2001), 63–98.

Footnotes

 

1 John M. Lundquist, “Was Abraham at Ebla? A Cultural Background of the Book of Abraham (Abraham 1 and 2),” in Studies in Scripture, Volume Two: The Pearl of Great Price, ed. Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson (Salt Lake City, UT: Randall Book Co., 1985), 225–237.

2 Lundquist, “Was Abraham at Ebla?” 233–234; cf. C. J. Gadd and Leon Legrain, eds., Ur Excavations, Texts I: Royal Inscriptions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928), 74–75, Pl. LVI; Hans Hirsch, “Die Inschriften der Könige von Agade,” Archiv für Orientforschung 20 (1963): 74; Benjamin R. Foster, “The Siege of Armanum,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies 14 (1982): 29.

3 John Gee and Stephen D. Ricks, “Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study,” in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2001), 75–76.

4 Atilla Engin, “Oylum Höyük İçin Bir Lokalizasyon önerisi: Ulisum/Ullis/İllis,” in Armizzi: Engin Özgen’e Armağan, ed. Atilla Engin, Barbara Helwing, and Bora Uysal (Ankara: Asitan Kitap, 2014), 136.

5 John Gee, “Has Olishem Been Discovered?” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 104–107, quote at 106.

6 J. R. Kupper, “Uršu,” Revue d’assyriologie 43 (1949): 80–82; Albrecht Goetze, “An Old Babylonian Itenerary,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 7 (1953): 69–70; Sidney Smith, “Ursu and Haššum,” Anatolian Studies 6 (1956): 35, 37–41; Margarete Falkner, “Studien zur Geographie des alten Mesopotamien,” Archiv für Orientforschung 18 (1957-1958): 31; Alfonso Archi, Paolo Emilio Pecorella, and Mijo Salvini, Gaziantep e la sua regione (Roma: Edizioni dell-Ateneo, 1971), 37–46; Dennis Pardee, “Ugaritic Proper Nouns,” Archiv für Orientforschung 36/37 (1989/1990): 500; Piotr Michalowski and Adnan Mısır, “Cuneiform Texts from Kazane Höyük,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 50 (1998): 53; Atilla Engin, “Oylum Höyük İçin Bir Lokalizasyon önerisi: Ulisum/Ullis/İllis,” 129–49.

7 See the discussion in Stephen O. Smoot, “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37, esp. 33–34.

8 Gee, “Has Olishem Been Discovered?” 107.

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Human Sacrifice

Sacrifice

Book of Abraham Insight #2

The Book of Abraham begins with an account of the biblical patriarch Abraham almost being sacrificed to “dumb idols” and “strange gods” (Abraham 1:7–8). The form of sacrifice practiced by Abraham’s kinsmen in Ur (vv. 8, 13) was said to be “after the manner of the Egyptians” (vv. 9, 11), and indeed a “priest of Pharaoh” was involved in this procedure (vv. 7–8, 10). This suggests that Abraham’s kinsmen had adopted elements of Egyptian practice and incorporated these elements into their local (Chaldean) practice.

This raises the question of whether the ancient Egyptians ever practiced “human sacrifice.”1  While scholars might disagree on what precise terminology to use, there is, in the words of one Egyptologist, “indisputable evidence for the practice of human sacrifice in classical ancient Egypt.”2  Some of the evidence for this practice dates to the likely time of Abraham (circa 2,000–1,800 BC). “The story presented in the Book of Abraham matches remarkably well with the picture of ritual slaying” in Egypt during the same time period, concludes two Egyptologists in a study of this evidence.3

For example, a stone inscription from the eighteenth-century BC decrees that anyone trespassing sacred space reserved only for priests would be burned. This indicates a cultural setting or “milieu in which slaying someone for desecration of sacred space was an accepted practice.”4 A royal inscription from two centuries earlier depicts the Egyptian king as decreeing death upon “children of the enemy” for desecrating a temple. This apparently included punishment by flaying, impalement, beheading, and burning. “[W]hen the sacred house of a god had been desecrated, the Egyptian king responded by sacrificing those responsible.”5

There is also direct archaeological evidence for “human sacrifice” or ritual slaying at an Egyptian fortress at the site of Mirgissa in modern northern Sudan. During the time of Abraham, this site was part of the Egyptian empire and was under Egyptian control. Discovered at the site was “a deposit . . . containing various ritual objects such as melted wax figurines, a flint knife, and the decapitated body of a foreigner slain during rites designed to ward off enemies. Almost universally, this discovery has been accepted as a case of human sacrifice.”6

This view is supported by so-called execration texts, or magical spells used to ward off evil and curse enemies by destroying a wax or clay human effigy (comparable to a voodoo doll).7  It would appear from the evidence uncovered at Mirgissa that on some occasions these magical rituals were performed on actual humans (as opposed to figurines), such as foreigners who were seen as a threat to Egyptian political and social order.8

From this evidence, we can conclude the following about Egyptian “human sacrifice” during Abraham’s lifetime:

  • That it was more or less “ritual” in nature.
  • That it was sometimes undertaken “for cultic offenses” or offenses against Egypt’s gods.
  • That “the pharaoh [was sometimes] involved and the sacrifice [was sometimes] under his orders.”
  • That sometimes these sacrifices were initiated “for rebellion against the pharaoh.”
  • That “the sacrifice could take place both in Egypt proper and outside the boundaries in areas under Egyptian influence.” 9

These details converge remarkably well with the Book of Abraham, offering a plausible historical context for Abraham’s near-sacrifice.

Further Reading

Kerry Muhlestein, “Sacred Violence: When Ancient Egyptian Punishment was Dressed in Ritual Trappings,” Near Eastern Archaeology, 78, no. 4 (2015): 229–235.

Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 (2011): 70–77.

Footnotes

 

1 Past studies have looked at the practice of “human sacrifice” among Mesopotamian and Levantine peoples and the implications for the Book of Abraham. See William James Adams Jr., “Human Sacrifice and the Book of Abraham,” BYU Studies 9, no. 4 (1969): 473–480; Kevin Barney, “On Elkenah as Canaanite El,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 1 (2010): 29–30. See also the discussion in Beate Pongratz-Leisten, “Ritual Killing and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East,” in Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Karin Finsterbusch, Armin Lange, and K. F. Diethard Römheld (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 3–33.

2 Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago, Ill.: Oriental Institute, 1993), 162–63. Egyptologists typically use phrases such as “sacred violence,” “ritual slaying,” “sanctioned killing,” “capital punishment” and the like to avoid the pejorative connotations that arise with the term “human sacrifice.” Whatever it’s called, the practice documented among the ancient Egyptians ultimately involved putting humans to death for transgressing religious and/or political boundaries, sometimes done in a ritualistic or ceremonial manner. See the discussion in Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order: The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011), 5–8; Herman te Velde, “Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt,” in The Strange World of Human Sacrifice, ed. Jan N. Bremmer (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 127–134.

3 Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 (2011): 72.

4 Muhlestein and Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” 73. Compare Harco Willems, “Crime, Cult and Capital Punishment (Mo‛alla Inscription 8),” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 76 (1990): 27–54.

5 Muhlestein and Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” 73.

6 Muhlestein and Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” 73.

7 See Kerry Muhlestein, “Execration Ritual,” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, online at www.escholarship.org.

8 Muhlestein and Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” 74; Velde, “Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt,” 131–132.

9 Muhlestein and Gee, “An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham,” 74.

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Abraham and Idrimi

Abraham by Emily Gordon side-by-side with an image of the statue of Idrimi via the Maxwell Institute.

Book of Abraham Insight #1

The Book of Abraham narrates the life of the biblical patriarch in a first-person autobiographical voice. The book begins: “In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence” (Abraham 1:1). This first-person voice continues throughout the text as if Abraham himself was writing.

When the Book of Abraham was published in 1842, no other texts from a similar time and place were known. The Book of Abraham was unique in that respect. In the last nearly two hundred years, archaeology has uncovered more texts that we can compare with the Book of Abraham.

One such ancient text discovered in 1939 contains strikingly similar features with the Book of Abraham. It too is an “autobiography” in that it narrates a story in the first-person. It speaks of a ruler named Idrimi who lived in ancient Syria—which is in the vicinity of one very plausible candidate for Abraham’s homeland1—not long after the likely time period of Abraham (circa 2,000–1,800 BC).2 “Idrimi’s autobiography compares well with Abraham’s autobiography in both subject and form,” explains scholar John Gee, “even though Idrimi’s autobiography dates about two hundred years later.”3

Although Idrimi’s text is often called an “autobiography,”4 this term might be somewhat misleading. For instance, “we do not know if such ancient autobiographical texts were written by the individuals themselves, dictated to scribes, or ghostwritten by scribes.” While it is “unlikely that Idrimi carved the words on his statue, . . . he may have been directly responsible for the content of the text.”5 This might similarly be the case with the Book of Abraham.6

The parallels between Abraham’s autobiography and Idrimi’s “autobiography” include the following:

  • Both report their journeys through Canaan.
  • Both emphasize that their travel to their new residence was the result of divine inspiration.
  • Both refer back to promises made to their ancestors for whom they have records.
  • Both describe that they worshipped the way that their fathers did.
  • Both deal in covenants.7

The two texts even open in very similar manners:

Book of Abraham (1:1) “Autobiography” of Idrimi
“In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence.” “In Aleppo, my ancestral home . . . I, Idrimi, the son of Ilim-ilimma . . . took my horse, chariot, and groom and went away.”8

The parallels between these two texts and other considerations led Gee to conclude, “The Book of Abraham belongs to the same specific literary tradition as Idrimi’s autobiography.” This, naturally, raises the question, “How did Joseph Smith manage to publish in the Book of Abraham a story that closely matched a Middle-Bronze-Age Syrian autobiography that would not be discovered for nearly a hundred years?”9 The most plausible explanation is that the Book of Abraham belongs to that time period, genre of literature, and part of the world.

Further Reading

John Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 1 (2013): 34–39.

 

Footnotes

 

1 See Stephen O. Smoot, “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37.

2​ John Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 1 (2013): 34–39.

3 Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” 35.

4 See for instance “The Statue of Idrimi,” British Museum, online at www.britishmuseum.org; Tremper Longman III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography: A Generic and Comparative Study (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1991), 62–63; Piotr Bienkowski, “Autobiographies,” in Dictionary of the Ancient Near East, ed. Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 41; Tremper Longman III, “The Autobiography of Idrimi (1.148),” in The Context of Scripture, Volume One: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, ed. William W. Hallo (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 479–481; Ekin Kozal and Mirko Novák, “Alalakh and Kizzuwatna: Some Thoughts on the Synchronization,” in Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslıhan Yener, ed. Çiğdem Maner, Mara T. Horowitz and Allan S. Gilbert (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 297–299.

5 Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” 35.

6 From the ancient point of view it would not have really mattered if an author of a text like Abraham used a scribe to do the physical writing or even influenced textual composition. See the discussion in Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000), 4–9.

7 Paraphrasing Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” 38.

8 So translated by Edward L. Greenstein and David Marcus, “The Akkadian Inscription of Idrimi,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 8 (1976): 67, cited in Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” 37. The opening lines of the Idrimi inscription read in their entirety: “In Aleppo, my ancestral home, a hostile [incident] occurred so that we had to flee to the people of Emar, my mother’s relatives, and stay there. My older brothers also stayed with me, but none of them had the plans I had. So I, Idrimi, the son of Ilim-ilimma, devotee of Im, Ḫebat, and my lady Ištar, lady of Alalaḫ, thinking to myself, ‘Whoever his patrimony is a great nobleman, but whoever [remains] among the citizens of Emar is a vassal,’ took my horse, chariot, and groom and went away.”

9 Gee, “Abraham and Idrimi,” 38.