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. ◆