Page 4 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

follows, we will briefly summarize the location, government, religious thought, social, and economic
background that produced Abraham. We will start with the location. They wrote on many backgrounds,
but the surviving examples include Cuneiform tablets primarily. Here is an example of a Sumerian
1
Cuneiform tablet.

Location of Ancient Mesopotamia:

Mesopotamia was an
area roughly 600 miles
long and 300 miles wide
(at its largest points). It
was on the eastern edge
of the Fertile Crescent. It
was located between the
rivers. These rivers are
vital to the location as
they are fed by the
melting of snow in the
mountains they are
sourced from. This water
would melt each year and bring with its rich minerals and soil that kept the land fertile. As a result, it
produced crops and grass needed for animals. Because of this food supply, the owners of crops could
sustain large herds of animals. One could become very wealthy in ancient Mesopotamia.

The area of Mesopotamia is also known as ancient Sumer. There was north and a south Sumer that were
eventually united. The capital city of ancient Sumer during the time of Abraham was called Ur. This is the
same Ur that the Bible tells us that Abraham was called out of by God. Acts 7:2-3 says, “And Stephen
said: ‘Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in
Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred

and go into the land that I will show you.’” (ESV) In Genesis 11:28-31 we see Abraham, called Abram at
this point, coming from UR and leaving toward Haran “Haran died
in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur
of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of
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Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the
daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was
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barren; she had no child. Terah took Abram his son and Lot the
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son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son
Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the
Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to
Haran, they settled there.” (ESV)

As you can see, Ur was located just off the Euphrates River in the southwest corner of Sumer. If Howard
Vos is correct about the date of Abraham’s birth, 2166 BC, then Abraham experienced Ur in its greatest
period of prosperity. The land was particularly suited to the developments that happened there. If
2

1 Illustration used with permission from John Holmes from his Biblical Backgrounds course.
2 Howard Frederic Vos, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs: How the People of the Bible Really
Lived (Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 9.

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