Current Events Articles: All posts by Bryant G. Wood PhD

A royal Hittite city mentioned several times in the Bible (Jeremiah 46:2; 2 Chronicles 35:20), the site of Carchemish in southeastern Turkey is situated along the heavily-mined border zone that came to separate Turkey and Syria in the 1930s and 40s. But in recent years, Turkish authorities approved the de-mining of the site and now, with the removal of more than 1,200 landmines from the surface of the mound, Carchemish is again open for business. Archaeologists from Italy and Japan have already been granted permission to dig the site and excavations are expected to begin by the end of the year.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=0318114349461-2011-03-18

According to Biblical chronology, Abraham was born in 2166 BC, presumably in Ur of the Chaldeans in southern Iraq.  He spent his early years in Ur until he migrated to Haran (Turkey) with the rest of his family (Gn 11:26–31).  Scripture does not tell us when this migration took place, but it had to have been sometime prior to 2091 BC, the year Abraham left Haran at age 75 to answer God’s call to go to Canaan (Gn 12:4).  Abraham lived in Ur just prior to the historical period known as the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III), ca. 2100–2000 BC. 

Bertrand Lafont, Scientific Director of Archaeology and Ancient History at the French Institute of the Near East, has pulled together the available ancient texts that bear on military activities of the Ur III period, providing fascinating insights into the culture that Abraham came out of.  Go to http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2009/cdlj2009_005.html to read his article “The Army of the Kings of Ur: The Textual Evidence.” 

(For further background information on Abraham, see Stephen Caesar, “The Wealth and Power of the Biblical Patriarchs,” Bible and Spade 19 [2006], pp. 1–13.)