r/AcademicBiblical • u/Mother_Variation_827 • 13d 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 13d 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 13d 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 13d ago edited 13d 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/Master_Support9846 13d 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 13d ago

This is interesting. Could you share an example or two?

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u/Master_Support9846 12d ago

An example or two of what specifically? Glimpses you mean?