4. ARCHAEOLOGY AND
ABRAHAM
8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into
a place which he should after receive for an
inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing
whither he went.
9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and
Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God
Hebrews 11:8-16
5. WHO WAS ABRAHAM?
• Father of Isaac and grand-father of Jacob
• Claimed by all three monotheistic religions
• Was a polytheist until a divine encounter
• Had a family
• Was very wealthy (i.e. owned camels)
• Was called to leave his home
• Is central in both Old Testament and New
Testament
6. WHAT CAN WE KNOW ABOUT
ABRAHAM FROM
ARCHAEOLOGY?
•No direct archaeological evidence for
Abraham
•Travel between Ur and Israel was not
unusual
•Nahor and his tribe (Abraham’s brother) is
mentioned in the Cappadocian (19th
century
BC) and Mari Tablets (18th
Century BC)
•The name Abram or Abraham is
mentioned in various tablets
12. THE WORLD OF ABRAM
(Abraham)
(Circa 2000 BC)
Ancient Ziggurat from Ur: the stairway to heaven to worship the moon
goddess. Sumerian god and goddess join together around a sacred
tree.
14. PAGANISM OF ABRAM IN UR
Ur of old
Babylonia
worshipped the
moon god
Stele of Ur-Nammu (ca. 2200 BC),
detail (cf. Frankfort) showing the
crescent moon.
17. ABRAHAM WAS A RICH MAN
• Rich in gold and silver (Gen13:2;
24:35)
• Owned camels
• Acquired property
• Is described as a merchant
• He has much livestock
• He trains an army to rescue Lot
26. ABRAHAM
THE MERCHANT PRINCE
• Finds in Ras Shamra in Syria
• Mentions merchants from Ura
• The City of Ugarit in the Hittite Kingdom
• King of Ugarit complained about the
merchants from Ura
• He restricted the trade of the merchants
• Based on Genesis 42:34; 34:10, and
23:16
28. BIBLICAL VIEW OF ABRAHAM
• He was rich in flocks and herds
• He was influential
• He bought land for his burial
• He traveled extensively
• He was regarded as important by the
princes of Pharaoh and Pharaoh's house
• He equipped an army to save Lot
29. ABRAHAM RESCUES LOT
• Genesis 14 and the coalition of
Mesopotamian Kings
• Lot and his family became a captive as a
result of this war
• Abraham arms and trains some men to
rescue them
• They are successful
30. HISTORICITY OF GENESIS 14
1. Amraphel King of Shinar
2. Arioch (Arriyuk or Arriwuk)
3. Ellasar (Asshur or Larsa)
4. Chedorlaomer (Kudur-Lagamar)
5. Tidal (Tudkhalia)
31. MARI
• Mari (Tell Hariri) was discovered in 1933
• Found a large palace which included a
library and ziggurat
• Akkadian Cuneiform is the language
• Dates between 2700 B.C. and 1700 B.C.
• Mentions about 500 place names
including Hazor (Josh 11:10) and Laish
(Judges 18)
34. KING YAHDUN-LIM OF MARI
• Reigned around 1820 B.C.
• In a letter left an account of a series of
raids into Syria/Palestine
• Needed to enforce submission of local
kings
• Fits well into the Genesis 14 narrative
35. CAVE OF MACHPELAH
• Genesis 23:19
• Same as modern day Hebron
• Burial place and first plot of land that
Abraham bought in Israel
• Bought originally for Sarah but was used
for Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah,Jacob
and Joseph.
• Herod the Great built a monument in
Hebron
36. GENESIS 23:19
And after this, Abraham buried
Sarah his wife in the cave of the
field of Machpelah before Mamre:
the same is Hebron in the land of
Canaan.
40. ABRAHAM’S EFFECT TODAY
• Israel’s independence --1967
• Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defense
• Exploring the mysterious cave
• 700 years since last exploration
• Young 12 year old Michal
• Secrets revealed
• Disappointment…
Notas del editor
Welcome
Prayer requests
Prayer
review
Abraham is mentioned over 300 times in the Bible
Mari Tablets
The Mari Tablets belong to a large group of tablets that were discovered by French archaeologists in the 1930s. More than 25,000 tablets in Akkadian were found in the Mari archives, which give information about the kingdom of Mari, its customs, and the names of people who lived during that time. More than 8,000 are letters; the remainder includes administrative, economic, and judicial texts. The tablets, according to Andre Parrot, "brought about a complete revision of the historical dating of the ancient Near East and provided more than 500 new place names, enough to redraw or even draw up the geographical map of the ancient world."[3] Almost all of the tablets found were dated to the last 50 years of Mari's independence (ca. 1800-1750 BC), and most have now been published. [4] [5] [6] [7] The language of the texts is official Akkadian but proper names and hints in syntax show that the common language of Mari's inhabitants was Northwest Semitic. Contemporary archives have been found, among others, in Tell Leilan in the Upper Khabur area and Tell Shemshara in the Zagros Mountains.[8]
Helpful supplementary information about customs, cultures, cities, religions, writings, etc.. , are provided by archaeology.
Abraham is mentioned over 300 times in the Bible
Old Testament critics of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were very skeptical of the greatness of Abraham, his possessions, and his faith. Many liked to describe him as an ignorant Arab sheik living in a nomadic state. For such a one it meant nothing to move from Ur to Haran and then on to Palestine. It involved no sacrifice. He merely pulled up stakes and moved on to better grazing lands.
The reason I mention Cyrus Gordon is that this on step away from the higher critical view that he was a migrant Arab sheik and he based his view at least partially on Archaeological finds.
Ura was in the Hittite empire.
It seems that the King of Ugarit (ancient name of Ras Shamra) complained to the Hittite king at Boghaz-koi (near modern Ankara, Turkey) about the activities at Ugarit of Hittite merchants from Ura (somewhere in Hittite territory) whence came many of the Hittite merchants. The Hittite king replied by ordering Ura merchants to carry on trade at Ugarit only in the summer, to leave Ugarit in the winter, and forbidding them to own real estate at Ugarit. Gordon feels that the Hebrew patriarchs fit into the general context of merchant activity indicated by the Ugarit literature, and he calls to our attention several Biblical references which indicate that the patriarchs were merchants. Joseph told his brethren that if they could prove their honest intentions, they would be permitted to trade in the land (Gen. 42:34). The Shechemites gave permission to Jacob's household to "dwell and trade" and "acquire real estate" in their territory (Gen. 34:10). So the Shechemites gave the Hebrew merchants rights denied by the Hittite king. In Genesis 23 Abraham was permitted to buy land from Ephron the Hittite for 400 shekels of silver-called 'current money with the merchant" (v. 16).
So Gordon concludes that "the patriarchal narratives, far from reflecting Bedouin life, are highly international in their milieu, in a setting where a world order enabled men to travel far and wide for business enterprise. . . . Abraham comes from beyond the Euphrates, plies his trade in Canaan, visits Egypt, deals with Hittites, makes treaties with Philistines, forms military alliances with Amorites, fights kinglets from as far off as Elam, marries the Egyptian Hagar, etc."2
Another problem with this view is that the Ras Shamra date to between 1450-1200 BC which is a lot later than Abraham.
GENESIS 14 None of the invading kings or events mentioned in Genesis 14 have been identified or confirmed from archaeological evidence, but circumstantial evidence in extra- biblical sources does shed light on this text and supports its historicity. There is no reason to treat it as fiction, as many scholars do.1 'Amraphel king of Shinar" (i.e., southern Mesopotamia) is no longer identified, as he once m with Hammurabi of Babylon, but the area from which Amraphel is said to have come, Shinar, is Babylonia.2 The name Arioch is rendered as Arriyuk or Arriwuk in eighteenth- through fifteenth- century texts discovered at Mari3 and Nuzi4 in Mesopotamia. Both of these place-names are listed on "Mapl* Ellasar may represent either Asshur or larsa, a city in southern Mesopotamia.
Chedorlaomer, the Hebrew version of Kudur-Lagamar, is comprised of known Elamite elements. Kudur means "servant of and is included in the names of five other Elamite kings, and Lagamar was an Elamite goddess. Thus Chedorlaomer may be interpreted as servant of Lagamar." Tidal is a form of Tudkhalia, the name of five Hittite kings who perhaps all lived later than this king. His title, "king of nations," essentially means that he was the principal chief of a loose confederation of tribes, reflecting the decentralized nature of Antatolian politics in the nineteenth through eighteenth centuries b.c Contemporary records trace similar Mesopotamian confederations that formed after the fall of the Ur III Dynasty (c. 2000 B.c.) and before King Hammurabi rose to power (c. 1750 B.C.) Immediately thereafter Assyria and Babylon controlled the region. Curiously, King Yahdun-Lim of Mari (c. 1820 b.c.) left behind an account of a series of raids he made into Syria-Palestine in order to enforce the submission of local kings to himself, and this record is quite similar to what we see in Genesis 14. This does not mean that the Biblical episode and the raids conducted by Yahdun-Lim are one and the same, but it does make the point that the Biblical narrative fits in well with what we see in the history of the time.
The Mari Tablets belong to a large group of tablets that were discovered by French archaeologists in the 1930s. More than 25,000 tablets in Akkadian were found in the Mari archives, which give information about the kingdom of Mari, its customs, and the names of people who lived during that time. More than 8,000 are letters; the remainder includes administrative, economic, and judicial texts. The tablets, according to Andre Parrot, "brought about a complete revision of the historical dating of the ancient Near East and provided more than 500 new place names, enough to redraw or even draw up the geographical map of the ancient world
Curiously, King Yahdun-Lim of Mari (c. 1820 b.c.) left behind an account of a series of raids he made into Syria-Palestine in order to enforce the submission of local kings to himself, and this record is quite similar to what we see in Genesis 14. This does not mean that the Biblical episode and the raids conducted by Yahdun-Lim are one and the same, but it does make the point that the Biblical narrative fits in well with what we see in the history of the time.
GENESIS 23 Until his wife's death Abraham wandered through Canaan as a nomadic herdsman.' Needing a burial plot for Sarah, he purchased his first small slice of the vast territory God had promised his descendants (Ge 15:18). The purchase included the burial cave and the field in which it was located, both known as Mach- pelah and located in Hebron2 (see "Map 1" in the back of this Bible). The writer of Gen- esis carefully noted that Sarah, Abraham
(25:9-10) and Isaac (35:27-29) were all buried in this cave. Later, upon his death- bed in Egypt, Jacob/Israel instructed that his bones were to be brouaht to Cana, and buried at this location along with those of his grandfather (Abraham), grandmother
(Sarah), father (Isaac), mother (Rebekah) and wife (Leah). See 49:29 32; 50:13. Not surprisingly, the Israelites remem- bered this cave throughout the ages. A monumental enclosure was built over the site during the days of Herod the Great/ This beautiful 200 by 110 foot (61 x 33i m) struc- ture, bearing a remarkable architectural simi- larity to Herod's temple mount in J6niS3 km: is still intact today. Inside it, above ground, six large, medieval cenotaphs (empty tombs serving as monuments) commemorate the patriarchs and matriarchs buried there. A Byzantine church later construe^ inside this enclosure has been converted back and forth from church to mosque following successive chang Jle (and thereby of religion) in the area. During the fourteenth century a.d. Muslims sealed the subterranean structures beneath the compound but clandestine investigations have since been carried out. One twentieth century examination, under the direction of Israels Moshe Dayan, involved the nighttime lower «f a twelve-year-old girl, equipped with a«mera, into the tomb area! Investigators the existence of a staircase, a long hallway and a simple room.
This fairly summarizes our knowledge of the underground cave system until Israel captured the site in 1967.
In that year the late Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s Minister of Defense, and an amateur archaeologist and antiquarian,i exercised his authority to explore the sacred cave of Machpelah. None could enter at “B” on the plan where the Frankish monks had lowered Arnoul, and where Benjamin of Tudela and others had entered by means of steps, because four iron pegs now held in place the stone (or stones) wedged over the opening. Accordingly, the cave was entered by the shaft under the stone cupola that sits on the opposite side of the mosque (“A” on the plan). In his popular work Living with the Bible, Dayan says that he attached a rope to a young girl named Michal who then slid through the narrow shaft opening at point “A.”j The upper part of the circular opening is cut through a marble slab only about 11 inches in diameter. The lower part of the shaft is cut through the rock and is considerably wider—24 inches. This rock shaft is about three feet deep. The bottom of the rock shaft creates a hole in the ceiling of the carve below. The floor of the cave is 12 or 13 feet below. Michal found the room to be nearly square, however, measuring 9.65 feet by 9.26 feet. This is the large room at the end of the long corridor that Arnoul had entered 850 years earlier from the other end. Arnoul had said this room was large enough to hold 30 people and described it as round like a basilica. Apparently Arnoul was referring to the ceiling rather than the walls of the room. The ceiling, which is octagonal, easily looks round.25 The walls of the room go straight up for about four and a half feet; then they begin to arch. A vault is built on top of the two longer walls. The floor is paved with stone tiles.
On the southeastern wall of this room a sunken step leads down to a doorway—the doorway to the long corridor that leads to the stepped entrance to the cave system. This corridor is indeed narrow—less than two feet wide—but that is wider than Arnoul described it. He said it was only one cubit wide, about 18 inches. The corridor is also twice as long as Arnoul described it; Michal measured it at 57 feet. The corridor is less than 3.5 feet high. The walls are lined with large, well-cut and well-fitted ashlars. The ceiling of the corridor is constructed of stone slabs. Arnoul did not describe the steps leading up from the corridor because they were probably installed after his initial exploration. They are there now, however. According to Dayan’s report, there are only 16 steps, not 70. At the top of the stairs, the iron pegs that secure the stone covering the opening (marked “B” on the plan) can be seen in the cavern’s ceiling. A shaft four feet high separates the top of the stairs from the floor of the mosque above. The upper level of this cave (at the top of the stairs) is blocked off by a stone wall.
But what about the rooms that Arnoul describes beyond the room big enough to hold 30 people—the room into which Michal first descended
On the northwestern side of this room, Michal found three stone slabs, each about two feet wide, that may be tombstones. The middle one was six feet high and bore an Arabic inscription that Dayan says is a quotation from the Koran. It is only partially preserved. The words in brackets are not actually there:
“[There is no God but Allah, He is the Living, Eternal One.] Sleep seizes him not, nor slumber; all that [is on heaven and earth is his!] (Koran, Sura 2: verse 255).
The other two slabs, or tombstones, were smooth. From Michal’s report, Dayan could not tell whether these stone slabs were attached to the wall of the cave or whether they block the entrance to the grottoes described by Arnoul.
In any event, that is all Michal saw. No artifacts, other than the inscribed slab, were found. The masonry that lines the corridor and the cave at the end of the corridor appear to be Herodian, so this masonry was probably installed by Herod as part of the same project as the building of the enclosure wall.