32 | Genesis 11:26
26 Af ter Te rah had lived 70 years , he became the fa ther of Abram , i Na hor j and Haran .
Abram ’ s Family
27 This is the ac count of Te rah ’ s fam i ly line .
Te rah be came the fa ther of Abram , Na-
11:26 i Lk 3:34 j Jos 24:2
11:27 k ver 31 ; Ge 12:4 ; 14:12 ; 19:1 ; 2Pe 2:7 11:28 l ver 31 ; Ge 15:7 11:29 m Ge 17:15
n Ge 22:20 hor and Ha ran . And Ha ran be came the father of Lot . k 28 While his fa ther Te rah was still alive , Ha ran died in Ur of the Chal deans , l in the land of his birth . 29 Abram and Na hor both mar ried . The name of Abram ’ s wife was Sa rai , m and the name of Na hor ’ s wife was Mil kah ; n she was the daugh ter of Ha ran , the fa ther of both Mil kah and
11:28 Ur of the Chaldeans . The city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia is well known in the literature of the ancient Near East , particularly prominent over the latter half of the third millennium BC . A temple already stood there in the late fourth millennium BC and its ziggurat ( completed later ) is the best preserved from ancient Mesopotamia . An early empire with Ur as its capital existed for about a century at the end of the third millennium BC founded by Ur-Nammu and solidified by his successor , Shulgi .
By some chronological schemes Abraham ’ s time in Ur and Harran coincide with the empire phase . Some have deduced that Abraham was an urbane socialite in this grand center of civilization and that Yahweh ’ s call required a substantial change in lifestyle . Even if it were true that Abraham was born in this highly civilized city , however , we cannot necessarily conclude that he was a city dweller . Ur had its share of herdsmen and farmers as any city did .
Controversy still remains as to why Genesis adds “ of the Chaldeans .” Unfortunately we know little about the history of the Chaldeans at this period . During the midfirst millennium BC the Chaldeans ruled in southern Mesopotamia ( Nebuchadnezzar ), and consequently the Chaldeans are associated with Bab ylon by the prophets Isaiah , Jeremiah and Ezekiel . But prior to this period , the earliest substantial reference to the Chaldeans is in the ninth-century BC inscriptions of Shalmaneser III , when the Chaldeans are located southeast of Bab ylon near Elam .
A vague , earlier reference is in the campaign inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal II , where the Chaldeans are referred to in passing . Their mention in Job 1:17 suggests that they
GENESIS 11
Cosmic History and Mythology
Defining the term “ mythology ” is treacherous . Many formal definitions have been offered , and beyond those , one can find a wide variety of popular conceptions that impede fruitful discussion . Rather than offer yet another definition , it is more productive to identify the function of mythological literature . The mythology of the ancient world encapsulated contemporary thinking about how the world worked and how it came to work that way . It features the gods prominently because the ancients found the answers to their questions about the world in the divine realm . If we describe mythology functionally in this way , we can conclude that our modern mythology is what we call science . That is our culture ’ s way of encapsulating how the world works and how it came to work that way . Contrary to the divine orientation of the ancients , our scientific worldview is naturalistic and empiricist .
Genesis functions in Israelite society the same way that science functions in our culture and the same way that mythology functioned in the rest of the ancient world . Genesis offers an alternative encapsulation of how the world worked and how it came to work that way . Like the rest of the ancient world , it has a divine orientation rather than a naturalistic / empiricist one as is common today . But its view of the situation in the divine realm also makes it distinct from the mythology of the ancient world .
Consequently , studying the mythological literature of the ancient world can help us , whose cultural worldview tends toward empiricism , to make adjustments as we try to understand how a nonempiricist worldview works . The result is that we can be drawn out of the restricted perspectives that come most naturally to us . This is the value of the mythological literature for the study of the Bible . ◆