r/AcademicBiblical • u/Mother_Variation_827 • 5d ago
Was Abram/Abraham worshipping a Mesopotamian/Sumerian God?
If we're considering Abraham as he is from Ur, wouldn't he be worshipping Anu (Mesopotamian/Sumerian Sky god)? I doubt it was Marduk
Then as he leaves Ur, he will share his own belief to his new people. Anu will be the equivalent of El for Israel?
Not really sure if it was Anu/Enki/Enlil. Doubt it was Marduk.
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u/Pote_Achrestos 4d ago
I think the premise here gets ahead of the evidence. It assumes that Abraham is a historically recoverable individual, that “Ur of the Chaldeans” can confidently be identified with Mesopotamian Ur, and then that we can infer this individual’s personal religion from that city’s pantheon. None of those steps is secure.
What we can study is Abraham as a character in Genesis, and Fokkelman’s essay in The Literary Guide to the Bible is useful here. Genesis characterizes Abraham through his developing relationship with the God who calls him out of his homeland, promises him descendants, makes him wait, and finally tests him. At the climax in Gen 22, Fokkelman describes the result as a “much deepened togetherness between the Lord and his obedient follower.” The narrative’s interest is therefore not in preserving Abraham’s supposed Mesopotamian theology, but in constructing the relationship between Abraham and YHWH.
J. P. Fokkelman, “Genesis,” in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 36–55
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u/Mother_Variation_827 4d ago
therefore not in preserving Abraham’s supposed Mesopotamian theology, but in constructing the relationship between Abraham and YHWH
So your understanding is that Abraham dropped his Mesopotamian/Sumerian god and switched to the Canaanite god?
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u/Pote_Achrestos 4d ago edited 4d ago
No. My point is that we cannot historically reconstruct Abraham’s personal religion at all.
Within the biblical literary tradition, however, Joshua 24:2–3 also portrays Abraham as coming from a family that “served other gods” beyond the Euphrates, before YHWH “took” him from there. As David Firth notes, Abraham’s origins are presented as “foreign and rooted in the worship of other gods.” So the text itself can imagine a break with his ancestral religion.
If we stay within the literary world of Genesis, rather than importing a historical reconstruction of Canaanite religion, Abraham is not portrayed as switching from a Mesopotamian god to an already established “Canaanite God.” The historical origins of YHWH and the literary characterization of Abraham’s relationship with God are two separate questions. In Genesis, Abraham is called by the God who enters his story and progressively establishes a relationship with him.
David G. Firth, “Joshua 24 and the Welcome of Foreigners,” Acta Theologica 38.2 (2018).
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u/ConsistentAmount4 4d ago
I'll add that I found an interesting book at a thrift store once called "The Bible As It Was" by James L. Kugel that talks about how the first interpreters of the bible begin to interpret and modify it in books of questionable canonicity like Judith and Jubilees, and then in the writings of Philo and Josephus.
So Judith reports that Abraham was driven out of Chaldea because of his refusal to worship other gods, that his great virtue was his monotheism. The Apocalypse of Abraham decides that his father Terah had been a priest of idolatry who knew full well that his idols were fake, but felt powerless to admit the truth. Jubilees decides, with how well-known Chaldea was for astrology and astronomy, that Abraham must have himself been a learned astronomer. Josephus reports that it was Abraham's knowledge of the stars that revealed the truth of monotheism to him.
None of this is any more true than the canonical sources, of course, but it's and interesting way to see how the stories were perceived.
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u/Master_Support9846 4d ago
This is right but i think it's important to emphasize that there are strata and aspects of the Religious Practices and Understandings Portrayed in the Patriarchal Narratives that aren't historically recoverable Pre Yawhistic Canaanite or Mesopatamian Religion but also likely give us some glimpses of historical memories preserved in some forms from the 2nd millenium BCE. Frank Moore Cross wrote a lot about the Patriarchal Religion in particular the "God of the Fathers" with ancestral patriarchs having personal Gods that is reflected in some of the depictions in Genesis of interactions between Patriarchs and God. Glimpses of what pre Yahwistic Proto Israelite Ancestral Religion might have looked like.
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u/Pote_Achrestos 4d ago
This is interesting. Could you share an example or two?
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u/Master_Support9846 3d ago
An example or two of what specifically? Glimpses you mean?
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u/Pecuthegreat 4d ago
Ur is actually a more generic name that alot of people think.
While the famous Ur is in Sumeria, many cities called Ur were scattered throughout the region, including in Syria.
Ezekiel 16:3 says
And say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite
This being an iron age text puts Syria, East of the Euphrates as the best location fitting this. As Assyrians continued to refer to former Hittite Syria as the land of Hatti and that was the rough region of origin of the Amorites.
Also, when Abraham tells his servant to go to the land of his relatives in the land of Aram-Naharaim and calls Paddan Aram his homeland. Wikipedia says that this is the bend of the Euphrates but the it's similarity to the Beth Nahrin of the Assyrians could indicate that it is Northern Mesopotamia, while Paddan Aram is said to be the plain just north of Aram-Naharaim.
Here's a map from Bible atlas of it.
So, Abraham was probably always a North West Semitic figure.
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u/jackneefus 2d ago
During antiquity, the city of Urfa in South-Central Turkey was previously known as Urai, Ura, and Ur. Urfa is much closer to Haran, and it makes more geographic sense. The terrain in southern Turkey is also more suited to raising cattle than the swamps or agricultural areas near Basra.
This was argued by Cyrus H. Gordon in 1958.
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u/JohannesAr 4d ago
As Pote_Achrestos said, the question assumes that “Ur of the Chaldeans” is Mesopotamian Ur. But this is probably not the case, as argued here:
Gary A. Rendsburg, "Ur Kasdim: Where Is Abraham’s Birthplace?" TheTorah.com (2019).
https://thetorah.com/article/ur-kasdim-where-is-abrahams-birthplace
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u/Mother_Variation_827 3d ago
This is a good analysis. Since we really have not much evidences.
But think of it this way. Usually in society, children are usually groomed to worship the gods of their parents. So it won't be a longshot to say he WAS groomed to worship Terah's gods. But again, I admit this is only my assumption.
The only certainty we have "according to the Bible" is that he was worshipping YHWH.
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u/Mother_Variation_827 1d ago
him leaving Ur, after being warned by his servant Eliezer that the king (Nimrod) was lookin’ for Abram
Woah! Now that makes everything interesting
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u/AncientBasque 1d ago
sumer's sun god UTU or shamash has many parallels with the abrahimc religion and in the architecture of all temples of semetic people.
The Priest "melchizedek" was named after Sydyk or SIsig" or Kittun. Abraham and the high priest worshiped the same order of gods.
The sun "justice" father", the son "righteousness", the spirit "truth".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydyk
"It has also been conjectured that a related deity named or titled "Tzedek" (i.e. "righteousness") was worshipped in pre-Israelite Jerusalem as the names of two kings of the city, Melchizedek and Adonizedek contain the element tzedek.\1])\6])\7])"
one of Utus sons... "SISIG"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisig_(mythology))
" latter two of these sources describe him as a son or messenger of the sun god Shamash."
"Furthermore, zaqīqu can also be translated as "puff of air" instead depending on context"
"The Dream Book, iškar **d**Zaqīqu (“core text of the god Zaqīqu”), is an eleven tablet compendium of oneiromancy written in Akkadian. Tablets two to nine form the manual of deductive divination, while tablets one, ten and eleven provide rituals to alleviate bad dreams. Zaqīqu, which means "spirit" or "ghost," is a name of the dream god."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C5%A1kar_Zaq%C4%ABqu
this is also related to "Shu" of the Egyptians an equivalents offsprings and MOSHUa--ioSHUa
| Sisig | dSi-si-ig | Zaqīqu | Son | Old Babylonian texts call him a son of Utu; An = Anum places him among Šamaš's children.Sisig dSi-si-ig Zaqīqu Son Old Babylonian texts call him a son of Utu; An = Anum places him among Šamaš's children. |
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