:Abraham was from the city of Ur according to Genesis 11:31. The problem is that there are several places called Ur. It is identified as "Ur of the Chaldeans." The problem with "Chaldeans" is that it is a late word used in the Neo-Babylonian times. It is either anachronistic, or this part of Genesis was written after the Exile.
There is no debate over where Haran is located, 10 miles north of the Syrian border in Turkey along the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates River. Haran is an important Hurrian center, mentioned in the Nuzi tablets. The moon god, Sin was worshiped here. If Ur were located in Southern Iraq, why would Abraham travel 60 miles way out of his way to go to Haran?
There are two cities not far from Haran; Ura and Urfa. Local tradition says that Abraham was born in Urfa. Northern Ur is mentioned in tablets at Ugarit, Nuzi, and Ebla, which refers to Ur, URA, and Urau (See BAR January 2000, page 16).
The names of several of Abraham's relatives like Peleg, Serug, Nahor and Terah, appear as names of cities in the region of Haran (Harper's Bible Dictionary, page 373). Abraham sent his servant back to the region of Haran to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:10).
After working for Laban, Jacob fled across the Euphrates River back to Canaan (Genesis 31:21). If Ur were in Southern Mesopotamia, then Jacob would not need to cross the Euphrates. Laban is said to live in Paddan-Aram, which is in the region of Haran (Genesis 28:5-7), which seems to be the same area as Aram-Naharaim, Abraham's homeland (Genesis 24:10).
All this evidence taken together seems to indicate that the Ur of Abraham was in the same region as Haran in Northern Mesopotamia, and not the famous Ur in Southern Mesopotamia.
But, I still do not understand the apparent dogfight over Jerusalem and Jewish origins.
The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.
Apparently, I am not alone in my confusion. Found the following comment on the article at PaleoJudaica.com, a weblog on ancient Judaism and its context.
. . . we have plenty of evidence that Jerusalem was inhabited by Hebrew-speaking Judeans during the Iron Age II, especially the last century or so of it (e.g., references to biblical kings in the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, the Hezekiah's tunnel inscription, the Siloam tomb inscription, the Ophel ostracon, etc.). There is legitimate debate about the nature of David's and Solomon's supposed empires and how reliable the biblical sources are for the Iron Age II, but that is another issue and should not be conflated with the frequently bizarre claims of the Palestinians. I don't know exactly what "origins" means here and I don't want to get into the endlessly debatable topic of the political implications of what we do know about Iron Age-II Jerusalem.
The blogger is James "Jim" Davila, a lecturer in early Jewish studies at St. Mary's College, University of Fife, Scotland. If he's uncertain what is being claimed about origins, then I'm in fair company.
From the Jewish Virtual Library:
Ever since King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago, the city has played a central role in Jewish existence. . . . By contrast, Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab entity. In fact, it was a backwater for most of Arab history. Jerusalem never served as a provincial capital under Muslim rule nor was it ever a Muslim cultural center. For Jews, the entire city is sacred, but Muslims revere a site — the Dome of the Rock — not the city. "To a Muslim," observed British writer Christopher Sykes, "there is a profound difference between Jerusalem and Mecca or Medina. The latter are holy places containing holy sites." Besides the Dome of the Rock, he noted, Jerusalem has no major Islamic significance . . . Meanwhile, Jews have been living in Jerusalem continuously for nearly two millennia.
Nothing here to dispel the confusion inflicted by Erlanger's article.
Not surprising to me, the confusion is dispelled by Daniel Pipes in The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem published in The Middle East Quarterly.
"As during the era of the Crusaders," Lazarus-Yafeh points out, Muslim leaders "began again to emphasize the sanctity of Jerusalem in Islamic tradition." In the process, they even relied on some of the same arguments (e.g., rejecting the occupying power's religious connections to the city) and some of the same hadiths to back up those allegations. Muslims began echoing the Jewish devotion to Jerusalem: Arafat declared that "Al-Quds is in the innermost of our feeling, the feeling of our people and the feeling of all Arabs, Muslims, and Christians in the world." Extravagant statements became the norm (Jerusalem was now said to be "comparable in holiness" to Mecca and Medina; or even "our most sacred place").
According to Pipes, these are the Muslim claims concerning Jerusalem: