Historicity of Jesus - 2

[dhu]

A data post, on Abraham from the North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_of_the_Chaldees



Identifying Ur Kaśdim



One of the traditional sites of Abraham's birth is placed in the vicinity of Edessa — Both Islamic tradition and classical Jewish authorities, such as Maimonides and Josephus, placed Ur Kaśdim at various northern Mesopotamian sites such as Urkesh, Urartu, Urfa, or Kutha.



In 1927 Leonard Woolley identified Ur Kaśdim with the Sumerian city of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, where the Chaldeans had settled around the 9th century BCE;[1] Ur lay on the boundary of the region called Kaldu (Chaldea, corresponding to Hebrew Kaśdim) in the first millennium BCE. It was ....



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Islamic tradition



The traditional site of Abraham's birth according to Islamic tradition is a cave in the vicinity of the ancient Seleucid city Edessa, now called Şanlıurfa. The cave lies near the center of Şanlıurfa and is the site of a mosque called the Mosque of Abraham. The Turkish name for the city, Urfa, is derived from the earlier Syriac ܐܘܪܗܝ (Orhāy) and Greek Ορρα (Orrha). The tradition connecting Ur Kaśdim with Urfa is not exclusive to Islam. The 18th C. anthropologist Richard Pococke noted in his publication Description of the East that this traditional identification of Ur Kaśdim with Urfa was the universal opinion within contemporary Judaism.



Scholars [color="#0000FF"][as usual][/color] are skeptical of the identification of Ur Kaśdim with Urfa. Although the origin of the Greek and Syriac names of the city are uncertain, they appear to be based[original research?] on a native form, Osroe, the name of a legendary founder, the Armenian form of the Persian name Khosrau. Similarity with "Ur" would thus be accidental.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haran_%28Biblical_place%29



Ḥaran, Charan, or Charran (Hebrew: חָרָן) is a Biblical place. Haran is almost universally identified with Harran, an Assyrian city whose ruins are in present-day Turkey. In the Hebrew Bible, the name first appears in the Book of Genesis, in the context of Patriarchal times. It appears again in 2 Kings and Isaiah in a late 8th to early 7th century BCE context, and also in the Book of Ezekiel in a 6th century BCE context. In the New Testament, Haran is again mentioned in the Book of Acts, in a recounting of the story in Genesis wherein it first appears.[1]