I'd especially like to see sir Stockton's thoughts on this.. The main point of confusion for me, as pointed out in the article, is Gen 13:1, where is is stated:
And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. - KJV
^This is perfectly consistent with indigenous Nile valley/ancient Egyptian concepts of the world. Since the Nile river flows south to north, "Upper Egypt" equates to Southern Egypt, while "Lower Egypt" alludes to where the Nile ends, in the delta of Northern Egypt, meeting the Mediterranean. Therefore, when one articulates that they've went "up" out of Egypt, it means that they went in a southern direction, as is indicated by the said passage. Here is more of an elaboration from an article from the Journal of Religious Thought..
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The Promised Land: In Canaan or in Nubia?
Avner Ramu. Journal of Religious Thought. Washington: 2001-2005. Vol.57/58, Iss. 2/1-2; pg. 83, 10 pgs
Abstract (Document Summary)
In spite of statements made by later scribes, authentic biblical references to the land of the patriarchs apparently do not claim that their land was in Canaan. Ramu proposes that the genuine biblical description of the land of the patriarchs refers to the western Nubian Desert. Ancient Egyptian inscriptions mention a few Nubian place names, some of those bear a similarity to the biblical place names associated with the lives of the patriarchs.
Full Text (4092 words)
Copyright Howard University 2001-2005
Introduction
According to the Bible, Abraham was the first follower of the Lord. The first revelation of the Lord occurred to Abraham in Haran: "And the Lord said to Abram: Go from your country, and your birthplace to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1). Shortly after arriving there, near a place called Shechem, the Lord said to Abraham, "To your offspring I will give this land" (Gen. 12:7). Later, Abraham settled in Alonei Mamre, where, apparently, the Lord promised him, "To your descendants I give this land" (Gen. 15:18). Up to this point in the biblical narrative about Abraham, the Lord's name in the Hebrew Bible was Yahweh, and he had not yet specified the name of the land promised to Abraham's descendants.
Noticeable changes occur in Genesis 17, where God is referred to by two new Hebrew names, El-Shadai and Elohim. Now we read for the first time: "I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land of your residence, all the land of Canaan, a holding forever" (Gen. 17:8). Julius Wellhausen indicated that although God is Elohim in two of the sources of the biblical material, it is the priestly source that emphasizes the need to obey the religious rituals and laws.1 The essence of the covenant in Genesis 17 is the law about circumcising every newborn male on the eighth day. Such content suggests that the chapter is of a priestly source, which generally is dated to the sixth or fifth century BCE. Therefore, the reference to Canaan in Genesis 17:8 is probably a late addition to the biblical text.
If the biblical Abraham is a historical person, he most probably lived in the first part of the second millennium BCE. However, there is no extra biblical evidence that Shechem, Alonei Mamre, or any other place name that is associated with Abraham existed in Abraham's era in Canaan. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that although the biblical description of the land of the patriarchs is not compatible with Canaan, it could be located in the western Nubian Desert.
Is Hurran the Biblical Haran?
If Haran was indeed the birthplace of Abraham (Gen. 12:1), then verses 11:31 and 15:7, which mention "Ur of the Chaldees," could not be genuine. In addition to the book of Genesis, forty-one other biblical verses refer to Abraham. The only other verse that tells us he came from "Ur of the Chaldees" is in the book of Nehemiah (9:7). Because that book was written in the Persian period (538-333 BCE), the credibility of its information about an event that occurred many centuries earlier may be doubted. The town of Ur (150 miles southwest of Susa) is mentioned in the records of the Persian King Artaxerxes II.
Nehemiah, as a high court official in Susa (Neh. 2:1-9), was probably aware of the impressive remains of the great Ziggurat of Ur. That structure had been built many centuries earlier when Ur was the capital of Sumer. Because the first biblical account about Abraham appears immediately after the narrative about the tower built in Shinar (corresponds to the region of Sumer), it is not improbable that Nehemiah-or a contemporary scribe-assumed that Abraham was from Ur. In the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian period, Sumer was referred to as Chaldea, and the expression "Ur of the Chaldees" is a further indication that some material was added to the text in this late period.
However, if the scribe's assumption is incorrect and if the journey of Abraham did not begin in the land of the Chaldees, one has to wonder where Haran was located. It is generally assumed that the ancient ruins near Hurran, a town situated on the river Belikh in southeast Turkey, is the biblical Haran.2 In the early second millennium BCE, Hurran was controlled by the Hurrians, whose heartland was northern Mesopotamia. The Hurrians had a well-developed culture (as is evident from the remains of the towns of Mari and Nuzi) and a written language. The Hurrian language, which is not Semitic, includes Indo-Iranian names and shows the influence of languages of the Caucasus region. In the biblical accounts that relate to the birthplace of Abraham, one finds no clue that suggests a connection to the Hurrian culture or that language. On the contrary, the patriarchs are clearly Semitic; therefore, it is unlikely that the Hurran is the biblical Haran. The location of the biblical Haran remains unknown.
In Search of the Promised Land
As indicated above, in Genesis 12, the Lord sent Abraham to an unnamed country, yet we read that "they set forth to go to the land of Canaan, and they had come to the land of Canaan.... At that time, the Canaanites were in the land" (Gen. 12:5-6). From the beginning of the Bible until the end of the book of Joshua, the word "Canaan" appears in sixty biblical verses (excluding the mention of men named Canaan). In fifty-nine of those verses, we find the expression "land of Canaan." In the remaining part of the Bible, the phrase "land of Canaan" appears in only five verses. Besides Genesis 12:5, there is one other verse in which the land of Canaan appears twice. In an awkwardly constructed verse, we read that "As you are coming to the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you for an inheritance, the land of Canaan by its borders" (Num. 34:2). In a manner similar to that found in Genesis 12:5, the writer of Numbers 34:2 appears to make the utmost effort to inform the reader that the Hebrews are about to take possession of Canaan and not of any other place.
The geographical name "Canaan" appears in Tell el-Amarna's letters (written between 1400 and 1300 BCE). Although the borders of the Egyptian province of Canaan shifted from one period to the next, the name "Canaan" generally referred to an area along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, the biblical "land of Canaan" is roughly between the town of Gaza in the south and Syria in the north (Gen. 10:19). The writer of Genesis 12:5-6 apparently knew the location of Canaan, but it is not clear whether he indeed knew, or just assumed, that Abraham came from Haran to the land of Canaan. In fact, there are a number of reasons to conclude that the land reached by Abraham was not Canaan.
We read that shortly after Abraham's arrival "There was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there ... for the famine was severe in the land" (Gen. 12:10). Famine was not an unusual event in the patriarchs' land, and the severe famine that occurred during Isaac's time nearly compelled him to go to Egypt. Later, because of yet another extended famine, Jacob had to order his sons-twice in fact-to go to Egypt and buy food. Finally, the famine forced Jacob and his household to pack up all their belongings and immigrate to Egypt.
James Hoffmeier believes that from time immemorial hunger and thirst drove the pastoral nomads of Canaan and the Sinai with their flocks to Egypt's lush Nile Delta. Hoffmeier's belief relies on his interpretation of lines 91-93 of the Merikare.3 However, in those lines, the speaker explains the causes for the nomadic lifestyle of the miserable Asiatic, but not necessarily the reasons for the immigration of some of them to Egypt. Undoubtedly, in various historic periods, Asiatic people have immigrated to the Nile Delta and have settled as farmers or have raised cattle. But it is highly improbable that the delta's farmers would let pastoral nomads tend their flocks in the Egyptians' cultivated fields. In fact, the Bible tells us "all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians" (Gen. 47:34).
Water as a Clue
Although not "a land flowing with milk and honey," Canaan had water resources that could always sustain a population much larger than the patriarchs' families. The climatic history of the Middle East indicates that, although no major changes have occurred in the last five millennia, the region is somewhat more arid today than it was in the past. Throughout history, people left (willingly or not) the land of Canaan for a variety of reasons. However, with the exception of Genesis, no biblical account provides any evidence that people of Canaan moved to Egypt as a result of a famine or lack of water. It is thus unlikely that the land of the biblical patriarchs was in Canaan.
Water wells and the scarcity of water play a pivotal role in biblical descriptions of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet rainfall is not mentioned even once. Although the annual rainfall in the land of Canaan varies considerably from one year to the next, I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that there was ever a year with no rain at all. In Canaan, the rainy season begins in the fall and ends in the spring. Rain clouds arrive from the west and release most of their content over the western slopes of the mountain ranges extending in a north-south direction in the center of the country. The eastern slopes of the Samaria and Judea mountains experience much less precipitation than do the western slopes. The north-south distribution of rain is not even, and the southern regions receive much less rainfall than the north of Canaan.
Before the completion of the National Water Carrier Project some years ago, farming was limited primarily to the northern half of Israel, and the relatively arid south was the domain of pastoral nomads (e.g., Bedouins). In years with exceptionally low rainfall, a migration of the Bedouins with their herds to the north, where grass was more abundant, was a common practice. In such dry years, even the most ignorant herdsman in Palestine would not have contemplated the idea of driving his flock southwest through the dry and barren deserts of the Negeb and the Sinai Peninsula (which are even more arid than southern Canaan) to Egypt.
Thus, if the pastoral biblical patriarchs were forced by famine in their land to go down to Egypt, it is very unlikely that their land was in Canaan. In Genesis 41:54-57, we are told about a period of seven years of famine in Egypt. During most, or all, of that period, there was also a famine in the land of the biblical patriarchs (Gen. 42:1-2, 45:6-11). Because the climatic systems responsible for the weather in Canaan are independent of the systems causing the monsoon rains in the Ethiopian highland (which determine the annual water flow rate in the Nile), it is unlikely that such an extended famine would occur in Canaan and Egypt at the same time. We, therefore, need to search for the land of the biblical patriarchs in a region that is influenced by the same climatic systems that affect Egypt. One such area is located south of Egypt.
"Going Down" as a Clue
Whenever the Bible describes the movements of the pastoral patriarchs from one region of their land to another, the following expressions are used: "passed through the land to the place of," "he removed from there to a mountain," and "he went on his journey from," but the phrases "going up" or "going down" are not once used. However, when Abraham was forced by the famine to leave his land and go to Egypt, the Bible states that "There was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt" (Gen. 12:10), and "So Abram went up from Egypt ... Hanegba" (Gen. 13:1).
The repeated biblical use of the term "going down" to describe a journey taken from the land of the patriarchs to Egypt was not missed by the renovators of the modern Hebrew language. The contemporary Hebrew word for an immigrant to Israel literally means "one who goes up," and a person who emigrates from Israel is called "one who goes down." Viewing the Middle East on a map usually does not raise questions regarding the use of "going down" to describe a southwestward voyage from Canaan to Egypt, but the experience on the ground is totally different. A journey from the Beer-Sheba region in the land of Canaan through the northern Sinai Peninsula to Egypt does not give the perception of "going down."
One biblical figure who took part in a journey from Canaan to Egypt was the prophet Jeremiah. Although Jeremiah referred multiple times to such journeys from Canaan to Egypt, or from Egypt to Canaan, at no time did he use the expression "going down to Egypt" or "going up from Egypt" (Jer. 2:18, 26:21, 37:5, 37:7, 41:17, 42:15, 42:17, 42:19, 43:2). If the biblical patriarchs indeed "went down" from their land to Egypt and were "going up" on their return, we should seek the location of their land somewhere other than Canaan.
The Bible tells us where we should look: "So Abram went up from Egypt ... Hanegba" (Gen. 13:1). The Hebrew word Hanegba means "southward." Coming out of Egypt, one may experience the sensation of "going up" only when following a southward direction. If one uses no other mean, watching the flow of the Nile river may give such an impression. Incidentally, the ancient Egyptians referred to the southern part of their land as Upper Egypt, which suggests the possibility that the land of the biblical patriarchs was somewhere in northern Sudan. That area is very arid, and the local rainfall is so scant and infrequent that it has almost no effect on the water supply. Furthermore, throughout history, the pastorals of Nubia (the desert regions of northern Sudan) in a similar manner to the biblical patriarchs had to migrate far and wide to maintain their herds. They also frequently reached the areas controlled by Egypt.
East and West as a Clue
To locate a land in northern Sudan more precisely for the biblical patriarchs, we may rely on a verse that relates to Jacob's dream. We read that the Lord promised Jacob that "your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abmadyama va-kedma, and to the north and to the south" (Gen. 28:14). The Hebrew words yama va-kedma are generally understood as "westward and eastward." In every culture, probably because of the universal knowledge about the daily path of the sun through the sky, the natural sequence would be "east and west" and not "west and east." Another Hebrew word that means "east" is mizrach. When mizrach is used in biblical verses with terms describing "west," the natural order is indeed preserved, and mizrach always precedes "west" (Josh. 11:3; Isa. 45:6; Zech, 8:7, 14:4; Mal. 1:11; Ps. 50:1, 103:12, 107:3, 113:3; 1 Chron. 7:28, 12:15). The unusual phrase "westward and eastward" suggests that our current understanding of the Hebrew yama va-kedma in Genesis 28:14 may be erroneous.
Comprehending the Hebrew word kedma as "eastward" poses other problems. In Moses' outline of the southern border of the land that the Hebrews were about to possess, we read: "Your southern boundary shall begin from the end of the Salt Sea kedma" (Num. 34:3). If we accept the Hebrew kedma as "eastward," then the description of the southern border of the land to be inherited by the Hebrews makes no sense at all because the promised land would then be east of the Salt Sea rather than on its western side in Canaan.
The Hebrew word kedem has the same root as kadim, which means "hot winds" (Ezek. 17:10, 19:12). In Pharaoh's second dream, we read of the "seven ears of grain that were blighted by kadim winds" (Gen. 41:6, 23, 27). Colin Buckle indicates that the Saharan hot winds (Khamsin in Arabic) do not blow into northern Egypt from the east, but rather from the west or the southwest.4 In the biblical description of the eighth plague inflicted on the Egyptians, we read that "the kadim wind had brought the locusts" (Exod. 10:13). McKillop and Gough (1916) have determined that the great invasion of locusts in Egypt in 1915 came from the east and from the west. The invasion from the east was carried out from the locusts' breeding grounds in the Sinai Peninsula by the northeasterly breezes.5 However, Ballard, Mistikawi, and El-Zoheiry pointed out that Egypt is usually protected against the locusts' invasion from the east by the arid Sinai Peninsula and that only rarely are the rainfalls there strong enough to support a vegetation that is necessary to feed a large swarm of locusts.6 The locusts coming from the west are swarms caught by the cyclone systems that swirl around the barometric depressions proceeding from the west.7
Unlike the cool easterlies, the cyclones that blow into Egypt from the west are dusty and hot (Khamsin in Arabic). If, as the Bible tells us, the plague of locusts was brought to Egypt by a hot wind (kadim), it must have come from the west. Therefore, it appears that in the context of Egypt the Hebrew kedem means "west." The Hebrew word kad, which means "bow down" (Gen. 24:26), may be related to the setting of the sun in the west. It probably has the same source as kedem.
The Hebrew word yam means "a large body of water." When the prophet Jeremiah refers to Babylon by saying, "I will dry up her yam, and make her fountain dry" (Jer. 51:36), he is almost certainly referring to the rivers of Babylon as yam. In addition, at least one biblical verse refers to the Nile River as the "yam of Egypt" (Isa. 11:15). Theyam or the Nile River is the eastern border of the western Nubian Desert of Sudan. Therefore, in the western Nubian Desert, the phrase yama. va-kedma, or "eastward and westward," retains the natural order of directions. Thus, one can assume that the land of the biblical patriarchs was south of Egypt, in the western desert of northern Sudan.
Certain biblical scribes apparently felt that the biblical word kedem might indeed be understood as "west," which would mean that the biblical description of the land of the patriarchs would be incompatible with Canaan (where the Mediterranean Sea is in the west and the hot winds blow from the east). They, therefore, inserted into several verses that contained the word kedem another Hebrew term meaning "east": mizrach (Exod. 27:13, 38:13; Num. 2:3, 34:15; Josh. 19:13). As a result of their effort, those verses now contain the odd phrase "eastward eastward."
Location of Hebron and Shechem
In Genesis 37:14, we read about the "valley of Hebron," yet the current town of Hebron in Canaan is on a hilltop. Furthermore, the most ancient structure that was excavated in that location was dated back to the first century BCE and not to the patriarchs' era (early second millennium BCE). In the first biblical mention of Kiriath-Arba, we read: "Kiriath-Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 23:2). Seventeen verses later, we find "Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 23:19). Genesis has three additional verses that tell us that Mamre, Kiriath-Harba, and Hebron were in Canaan (35:27, 49:30, 50:13). It appears odd that the writer of Genesis felt compelled to inform the reader repeatedly that those places were in Canaan, yet he does not explain why Kiriath-Arba and Mamre were renamed with a single new name: Hebron.
We also read, "And Abram passed through the land up to Shechem's place, up to Alon-Moreh, and at that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Gen. 12:6), and "Jacob came [to] Shalem, Shechem's town, which is in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 33:18). The traditional understanding of those verses is that they refer to a place named Shechem,8 but the grammatical structure of the Hebrew mekom Shechem and Shalem ir Shechem indicates that they should be understood as the place and town, respectively, that belong to Shechem (see similar grammatical usage in 1 Sam. 20:25, 20:27, 21:3; Isa. 18:7; and in Gen. 24:10; Num. 21:27, 22:36; Josh. 18:14; 1 Sam. 15:5; 2 Chron. 25:28). In the narrative in Genesis 34, Shechem is clearly the name of a person, and one can reasonably assume that the Bible refers to his place or to his town.
Furthermore, the description of Shechem's place is not compatible with that of the current town of Shechem in Canaan. We are told that Jacob sent his son Joseph to visit his other sons who were pasturing Jacob's flock at Shechem. Joseph met his brothers in Dothan, near Shechem, and they lowered him into a dry well that "is in the desert" (Gen. 37:22). However, the region where the current Dothan and Shechem are located could not be described as an arid and barren area. Therefore, even if Shechem was a place name, it should be located in another region.
We may also suspect, on the one hand, that all those references to Canaan are not genuine and that the biblical place names associated with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not necessarily in Canaan. On the other hand, the silence of the biblical narrative of the patriarchs about large ancient Canaanite cities such as Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Jericho, or Lachish is almost inconceivable. If the land of the patriarchs was indeed in Canaan, one may wonder how the narrator of the patriarchs' lives could have ignored those places.
Conclusion
In spite of statements made by later scribes, authentic biblical references to the land of the patriarchs apparently do not claim that their land was in Canaan. I propose that the genuine biblical description of the land of the patriarchs refers to the western Nubian Desert. Bruce Trigger described Nubia and its people in the era of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the second Intermediate Period (from the twentieth to the seventeenth centuries BCE).9 Trigger's description of the culture of the C-Group people is not unlike of the biblical patriarchs' families. Those pastoral nomads lived in an arid desert in small communities and had humble dwellings and a minimal subsistence. From time to time, they were even forced to import food from Egypt. In contrast to the previous inhabitants of this area (Agroup people) or their neighbors (the Kerma culture people in the south and the Medjay/Pan-group people of the eastern Nubian Desert), no evidence of retainer sacrifice was ever found in their burial sites.10
Ancient Egyptian inscriptions mention only a few Nubian place names. Some of those place names, as well as those found in maps of the region, bear a similarity to the biblical place names associated with the lives of the patriarchs (e.g., Wadi es-Sebua = Beer-Sheba?). However, it is naive at best to assume that "Handed down by tradition, much as sacred texts are, place names also tend to remain unchanged, at least in fundamental structure, no matter how long the passage of time."11 Therefore, unlike Kamal Salibi, I did not attempt to use a toponymic analysis of biblical place names for locating the biblical promised land.
[Footnote]
1 Ernest W. Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (New York, Clarendon Press, 1998).
2 J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1959).
3 James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
4 Colin Buckle, Weather and Climate in Africa (Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1996).
5 A. T. McKillop and L. H. Cough, "Report on the Great Invasion of Locusts in Egypt in 1915," Bulletin of Egypt Ministry of Agriculture 1 ( 1916) : 1 -82.
6 E. Ballard, A. M. Mistikawi, and M. S. El-Zoheiry, "The Desert Locust, Schistocerca Grcgaria Forsk, in Egypt," Bulletin of Egypt Ministry of Agriculture 1 !O (1932):1-149.
7 McKillop and Cough, "Report of the Great Invasion."
8 Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts.
9 Brucc G. Trigger, Nubia under the Pharaohs (Boulder, CO: Wesrview Press, 1976).
10 Ibid.
11 Kamal Salibi, The Bible Came from Arabia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985).
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Is this nonsense/distortion of the biblical text, or a compelling case?
And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. - KJV
^This is perfectly consistent with indigenous Nile valley/ancient Egyptian concepts of the world. Since the Nile river flows south to north, "Upper Egypt" equates to Southern Egypt, while "Lower Egypt" alludes to where the Nile ends, in the delta of Northern Egypt, meeting the Mediterranean. Therefore, when one articulates that they've went "up" out of Egypt, it means that they went in a southern direction, as is indicated by the said passage. Here is more of an elaboration from an article from the Journal of Religious Thought..
.................................................................................................
The Promised Land: In Canaan or in Nubia?
Avner Ramu. Journal of Religious Thought. Washington: 2001-2005. Vol.57/58, Iss. 2/1-2; pg. 83, 10 pgs
Abstract (Document Summary)
In spite of statements made by later scribes, authentic biblical references to the land of the patriarchs apparently do not claim that their land was in Canaan. Ramu proposes that the genuine biblical description of the land of the patriarchs refers to the western Nubian Desert. Ancient Egyptian inscriptions mention a few Nubian place names, some of those bear a similarity to the biblical place names associated with the lives of the patriarchs.
Full Text (4092 words)
Copyright Howard University 2001-2005
Introduction
According to the Bible, Abraham was the first follower of the Lord. The first revelation of the Lord occurred to Abraham in Haran: "And the Lord said to Abram: Go from your country, and your birthplace to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1). Shortly after arriving there, near a place called Shechem, the Lord said to Abraham, "To your offspring I will give this land" (Gen. 12:7). Later, Abraham settled in Alonei Mamre, where, apparently, the Lord promised him, "To your descendants I give this land" (Gen. 15:18). Up to this point in the biblical narrative about Abraham, the Lord's name in the Hebrew Bible was Yahweh, and he had not yet specified the name of the land promised to Abraham's descendants.
Noticeable changes occur in Genesis 17, where God is referred to by two new Hebrew names, El-Shadai and Elohim. Now we read for the first time: "I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land of your residence, all the land of Canaan, a holding forever" (Gen. 17:8). Julius Wellhausen indicated that although God is Elohim in two of the sources of the biblical material, it is the priestly source that emphasizes the need to obey the religious rituals and laws.1 The essence of the covenant in Genesis 17 is the law about circumcising every newborn male on the eighth day. Such content suggests that the chapter is of a priestly source, which generally is dated to the sixth or fifth century BCE. Therefore, the reference to Canaan in Genesis 17:8 is probably a late addition to the biblical text.
If the biblical Abraham is a historical person, he most probably lived in the first part of the second millennium BCE. However, there is no extra biblical evidence that Shechem, Alonei Mamre, or any other place name that is associated with Abraham existed in Abraham's era in Canaan. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that although the biblical description of the land of the patriarchs is not compatible with Canaan, it could be located in the western Nubian Desert.
Is Hurran the Biblical Haran?
If Haran was indeed the birthplace of Abraham (Gen. 12:1), then verses 11:31 and 15:7, which mention "Ur of the Chaldees," could not be genuine. In addition to the book of Genesis, forty-one other biblical verses refer to Abraham. The only other verse that tells us he came from "Ur of the Chaldees" is in the book of Nehemiah (9:7). Because that book was written in the Persian period (538-333 BCE), the credibility of its information about an event that occurred many centuries earlier may be doubted. The town of Ur (150 miles southwest of Susa) is mentioned in the records of the Persian King Artaxerxes II.
Nehemiah, as a high court official in Susa (Neh. 2:1-9), was probably aware of the impressive remains of the great Ziggurat of Ur. That structure had been built many centuries earlier when Ur was the capital of Sumer. Because the first biblical account about Abraham appears immediately after the narrative about the tower built in Shinar (corresponds to the region of Sumer), it is not improbable that Nehemiah-or a contemporary scribe-assumed that Abraham was from Ur. In the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian period, Sumer was referred to as Chaldea, and the expression "Ur of the Chaldees" is a further indication that some material was added to the text in this late period.
However, if the scribe's assumption is incorrect and if the journey of Abraham did not begin in the land of the Chaldees, one has to wonder where Haran was located. It is generally assumed that the ancient ruins near Hurran, a town situated on the river Belikh in southeast Turkey, is the biblical Haran.2 In the early second millennium BCE, Hurran was controlled by the Hurrians, whose heartland was northern Mesopotamia. The Hurrians had a well-developed culture (as is evident from the remains of the towns of Mari and Nuzi) and a written language. The Hurrian language, which is not Semitic, includes Indo-Iranian names and shows the influence of languages of the Caucasus region. In the biblical accounts that relate to the birthplace of Abraham, one finds no clue that suggests a connection to the Hurrian culture or that language. On the contrary, the patriarchs are clearly Semitic; therefore, it is unlikely that the Hurran is the biblical Haran. The location of the biblical Haran remains unknown.
In Search of the Promised Land
As indicated above, in Genesis 12, the Lord sent Abraham to an unnamed country, yet we read that "they set forth to go to the land of Canaan, and they had come to the land of Canaan.... At that time, the Canaanites were in the land" (Gen. 12:5-6). From the beginning of the Bible until the end of the book of Joshua, the word "Canaan" appears in sixty biblical verses (excluding the mention of men named Canaan). In fifty-nine of those verses, we find the expression "land of Canaan." In the remaining part of the Bible, the phrase "land of Canaan" appears in only five verses. Besides Genesis 12:5, there is one other verse in which the land of Canaan appears twice. In an awkwardly constructed verse, we read that "As you are coming to the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you for an inheritance, the land of Canaan by its borders" (Num. 34:2). In a manner similar to that found in Genesis 12:5, the writer of Numbers 34:2 appears to make the utmost effort to inform the reader that the Hebrews are about to take possession of Canaan and not of any other place.
The geographical name "Canaan" appears in Tell el-Amarna's letters (written between 1400 and 1300 BCE). Although the borders of the Egyptian province of Canaan shifted from one period to the next, the name "Canaan" generally referred to an area along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, the biblical "land of Canaan" is roughly between the town of Gaza in the south and Syria in the north (Gen. 10:19). The writer of Genesis 12:5-6 apparently knew the location of Canaan, but it is not clear whether he indeed knew, or just assumed, that Abraham came from Haran to the land of Canaan. In fact, there are a number of reasons to conclude that the land reached by Abraham was not Canaan.
We read that shortly after Abraham's arrival "There was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there ... for the famine was severe in the land" (Gen. 12:10). Famine was not an unusual event in the patriarchs' land, and the severe famine that occurred during Isaac's time nearly compelled him to go to Egypt. Later, because of yet another extended famine, Jacob had to order his sons-twice in fact-to go to Egypt and buy food. Finally, the famine forced Jacob and his household to pack up all their belongings and immigrate to Egypt.
James Hoffmeier believes that from time immemorial hunger and thirst drove the pastoral nomads of Canaan and the Sinai with their flocks to Egypt's lush Nile Delta. Hoffmeier's belief relies on his interpretation of lines 91-93 of the Merikare.3 However, in those lines, the speaker explains the causes for the nomadic lifestyle of the miserable Asiatic, but not necessarily the reasons for the immigration of some of them to Egypt. Undoubtedly, in various historic periods, Asiatic people have immigrated to the Nile Delta and have settled as farmers or have raised cattle. But it is highly improbable that the delta's farmers would let pastoral nomads tend their flocks in the Egyptians' cultivated fields. In fact, the Bible tells us "all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians" (Gen. 47:34).
Water as a Clue
Although not "a land flowing with milk and honey," Canaan had water resources that could always sustain a population much larger than the patriarchs' families. The climatic history of the Middle East indicates that, although no major changes have occurred in the last five millennia, the region is somewhat more arid today than it was in the past. Throughout history, people left (willingly or not) the land of Canaan for a variety of reasons. However, with the exception of Genesis, no biblical account provides any evidence that people of Canaan moved to Egypt as a result of a famine or lack of water. It is thus unlikely that the land of the biblical patriarchs was in Canaan.
Water wells and the scarcity of water play a pivotal role in biblical descriptions of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet rainfall is not mentioned even once. Although the annual rainfall in the land of Canaan varies considerably from one year to the next, I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that there was ever a year with no rain at all. In Canaan, the rainy season begins in the fall and ends in the spring. Rain clouds arrive from the west and release most of their content over the western slopes of the mountain ranges extending in a north-south direction in the center of the country. The eastern slopes of the Samaria and Judea mountains experience much less precipitation than do the western slopes. The north-south distribution of rain is not even, and the southern regions receive much less rainfall than the north of Canaan.
Before the completion of the National Water Carrier Project some years ago, farming was limited primarily to the northern half of Israel, and the relatively arid south was the domain of pastoral nomads (e.g., Bedouins). In years with exceptionally low rainfall, a migration of the Bedouins with their herds to the north, where grass was more abundant, was a common practice. In such dry years, even the most ignorant herdsman in Palestine would not have contemplated the idea of driving his flock southwest through the dry and barren deserts of the Negeb and the Sinai Peninsula (which are even more arid than southern Canaan) to Egypt.
Thus, if the pastoral biblical patriarchs were forced by famine in their land to go down to Egypt, it is very unlikely that their land was in Canaan. In Genesis 41:54-57, we are told about a period of seven years of famine in Egypt. During most, or all, of that period, there was also a famine in the land of the biblical patriarchs (Gen. 42:1-2, 45:6-11). Because the climatic systems responsible for the weather in Canaan are independent of the systems causing the monsoon rains in the Ethiopian highland (which determine the annual water flow rate in the Nile), it is unlikely that such an extended famine would occur in Canaan and Egypt at the same time. We, therefore, need to search for the land of the biblical patriarchs in a region that is influenced by the same climatic systems that affect Egypt. One such area is located south of Egypt.
"Going Down" as a Clue
Whenever the Bible describes the movements of the pastoral patriarchs from one region of their land to another, the following expressions are used: "passed through the land to the place of," "he removed from there to a mountain," and "he went on his journey from," but the phrases "going up" or "going down" are not once used. However, when Abraham was forced by the famine to leave his land and go to Egypt, the Bible states that "There was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt" (Gen. 12:10), and "So Abram went up from Egypt ... Hanegba" (Gen. 13:1).
The repeated biblical use of the term "going down" to describe a journey taken from the land of the patriarchs to Egypt was not missed by the renovators of the modern Hebrew language. The contemporary Hebrew word for an immigrant to Israel literally means "one who goes up," and a person who emigrates from Israel is called "one who goes down." Viewing the Middle East on a map usually does not raise questions regarding the use of "going down" to describe a southwestward voyage from Canaan to Egypt, but the experience on the ground is totally different. A journey from the Beer-Sheba region in the land of Canaan through the northern Sinai Peninsula to Egypt does not give the perception of "going down."
One biblical figure who took part in a journey from Canaan to Egypt was the prophet Jeremiah. Although Jeremiah referred multiple times to such journeys from Canaan to Egypt, or from Egypt to Canaan, at no time did he use the expression "going down to Egypt" or "going up from Egypt" (Jer. 2:18, 26:21, 37:5, 37:7, 41:17, 42:15, 42:17, 42:19, 43:2). If the biblical patriarchs indeed "went down" from their land to Egypt and were "going up" on their return, we should seek the location of their land somewhere other than Canaan.
The Bible tells us where we should look: "So Abram went up from Egypt ... Hanegba" (Gen. 13:1). The Hebrew word Hanegba means "southward." Coming out of Egypt, one may experience the sensation of "going up" only when following a southward direction. If one uses no other mean, watching the flow of the Nile river may give such an impression. Incidentally, the ancient Egyptians referred to the southern part of their land as Upper Egypt, which suggests the possibility that the land of the biblical patriarchs was somewhere in northern Sudan. That area is very arid, and the local rainfall is so scant and infrequent that it has almost no effect on the water supply. Furthermore, throughout history, the pastorals of Nubia (the desert regions of northern Sudan) in a similar manner to the biblical patriarchs had to migrate far and wide to maintain their herds. They also frequently reached the areas controlled by Egypt.
East and West as a Clue
To locate a land in northern Sudan more precisely for the biblical patriarchs, we may rely on a verse that relates to Jacob's dream. We read that the Lord promised Jacob that "your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abmadyama va-kedma, and to the north and to the south" (Gen. 28:14). The Hebrew words yama va-kedma are generally understood as "westward and eastward." In every culture, probably because of the universal knowledge about the daily path of the sun through the sky, the natural sequence would be "east and west" and not "west and east." Another Hebrew word that means "east" is mizrach. When mizrach is used in biblical verses with terms describing "west," the natural order is indeed preserved, and mizrach always precedes "west" (Josh. 11:3; Isa. 45:6; Zech, 8:7, 14:4; Mal. 1:11; Ps. 50:1, 103:12, 107:3, 113:3; 1 Chron. 7:28, 12:15). The unusual phrase "westward and eastward" suggests that our current understanding of the Hebrew yama va-kedma in Genesis 28:14 may be erroneous.
Comprehending the Hebrew word kedma as "eastward" poses other problems. In Moses' outline of the southern border of the land that the Hebrews were about to possess, we read: "Your southern boundary shall begin from the end of the Salt Sea kedma" (Num. 34:3). If we accept the Hebrew kedma as "eastward," then the description of the southern border of the land to be inherited by the Hebrews makes no sense at all because the promised land would then be east of the Salt Sea rather than on its western side in Canaan.
The Hebrew word kedem has the same root as kadim, which means "hot winds" (Ezek. 17:10, 19:12). In Pharaoh's second dream, we read of the "seven ears of grain that were blighted by kadim winds" (Gen. 41:6, 23, 27). Colin Buckle indicates that the Saharan hot winds (Khamsin in Arabic) do not blow into northern Egypt from the east, but rather from the west or the southwest.4 In the biblical description of the eighth plague inflicted on the Egyptians, we read that "the kadim wind had brought the locusts" (Exod. 10:13). McKillop and Gough (1916) have determined that the great invasion of locusts in Egypt in 1915 came from the east and from the west. The invasion from the east was carried out from the locusts' breeding grounds in the Sinai Peninsula by the northeasterly breezes.5 However, Ballard, Mistikawi, and El-Zoheiry pointed out that Egypt is usually protected against the locusts' invasion from the east by the arid Sinai Peninsula and that only rarely are the rainfalls there strong enough to support a vegetation that is necessary to feed a large swarm of locusts.6 The locusts coming from the west are swarms caught by the cyclone systems that swirl around the barometric depressions proceeding from the west.7
Unlike the cool easterlies, the cyclones that blow into Egypt from the west are dusty and hot (Khamsin in Arabic). If, as the Bible tells us, the plague of locusts was brought to Egypt by a hot wind (kadim), it must have come from the west. Therefore, it appears that in the context of Egypt the Hebrew kedem means "west." The Hebrew word kad, which means "bow down" (Gen. 24:26), may be related to the setting of the sun in the west. It probably has the same source as kedem.
The Hebrew word yam means "a large body of water." When the prophet Jeremiah refers to Babylon by saying, "I will dry up her yam, and make her fountain dry" (Jer. 51:36), he is almost certainly referring to the rivers of Babylon as yam. In addition, at least one biblical verse refers to the Nile River as the "yam of Egypt" (Isa. 11:15). Theyam or the Nile River is the eastern border of the western Nubian Desert of Sudan. Therefore, in the western Nubian Desert, the phrase yama. va-kedma, or "eastward and westward," retains the natural order of directions. Thus, one can assume that the land of the biblical patriarchs was south of Egypt, in the western desert of northern Sudan.
Certain biblical scribes apparently felt that the biblical word kedem might indeed be understood as "west," which would mean that the biblical description of the land of the patriarchs would be incompatible with Canaan (where the Mediterranean Sea is in the west and the hot winds blow from the east). They, therefore, inserted into several verses that contained the word kedem another Hebrew term meaning "east": mizrach (Exod. 27:13, 38:13; Num. 2:3, 34:15; Josh. 19:13). As a result of their effort, those verses now contain the odd phrase "eastward eastward."
Location of Hebron and Shechem
In Genesis 37:14, we read about the "valley of Hebron," yet the current town of Hebron in Canaan is on a hilltop. Furthermore, the most ancient structure that was excavated in that location was dated back to the first century BCE and not to the patriarchs' era (early second millennium BCE). In the first biblical mention of Kiriath-Arba, we read: "Kiriath-Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 23:2). Seventeen verses later, we find "Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 23:19). Genesis has three additional verses that tell us that Mamre, Kiriath-Harba, and Hebron were in Canaan (35:27, 49:30, 50:13). It appears odd that the writer of Genesis felt compelled to inform the reader repeatedly that those places were in Canaan, yet he does not explain why Kiriath-Arba and Mamre were renamed with a single new name: Hebron.
We also read, "And Abram passed through the land up to Shechem's place, up to Alon-Moreh, and at that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Gen. 12:6), and "Jacob came [to] Shalem, Shechem's town, which is in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 33:18). The traditional understanding of those verses is that they refer to a place named Shechem,8 but the grammatical structure of the Hebrew mekom Shechem and Shalem ir Shechem indicates that they should be understood as the place and town, respectively, that belong to Shechem (see similar grammatical usage in 1 Sam. 20:25, 20:27, 21:3; Isa. 18:7; and in Gen. 24:10; Num. 21:27, 22:36; Josh. 18:14; 1 Sam. 15:5; 2 Chron. 25:28). In the narrative in Genesis 34, Shechem is clearly the name of a person, and one can reasonably assume that the Bible refers to his place or to his town.
Furthermore, the description of Shechem's place is not compatible with that of the current town of Shechem in Canaan. We are told that Jacob sent his son Joseph to visit his other sons who were pasturing Jacob's flock at Shechem. Joseph met his brothers in Dothan, near Shechem, and they lowered him into a dry well that "is in the desert" (Gen. 37:22). However, the region where the current Dothan and Shechem are located could not be described as an arid and barren area. Therefore, even if Shechem was a place name, it should be located in another region.
We may also suspect, on the one hand, that all those references to Canaan are not genuine and that the biblical place names associated with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not necessarily in Canaan. On the other hand, the silence of the biblical narrative of the patriarchs about large ancient Canaanite cities such as Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Jericho, or Lachish is almost inconceivable. If the land of the patriarchs was indeed in Canaan, one may wonder how the narrator of the patriarchs' lives could have ignored those places.
Conclusion
In spite of statements made by later scribes, authentic biblical references to the land of the patriarchs apparently do not claim that their land was in Canaan. I propose that the genuine biblical description of the land of the patriarchs refers to the western Nubian Desert. Bruce Trigger described Nubia and its people in the era of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the second Intermediate Period (from the twentieth to the seventeenth centuries BCE).9 Trigger's description of the culture of the C-Group people is not unlike of the biblical patriarchs' families. Those pastoral nomads lived in an arid desert in small communities and had humble dwellings and a minimal subsistence. From time to time, they were even forced to import food from Egypt. In contrast to the previous inhabitants of this area (Agroup people) or their neighbors (the Kerma culture people in the south and the Medjay/Pan-group people of the eastern Nubian Desert), no evidence of retainer sacrifice was ever found in their burial sites.10
Ancient Egyptian inscriptions mention only a few Nubian place names. Some of those place names, as well as those found in maps of the region, bear a similarity to the biblical place names associated with the lives of the patriarchs (e.g., Wadi es-Sebua = Beer-Sheba?). However, it is naive at best to assume that "Handed down by tradition, much as sacred texts are, place names also tend to remain unchanged, at least in fundamental structure, no matter how long the passage of time."11 Therefore, unlike Kamal Salibi, I did not attempt to use a toponymic analysis of biblical place names for locating the biblical promised land.
[Footnote]
1 Ernest W. Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (New York, Clarendon Press, 1998).
2 J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1959).
3 James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
4 Colin Buckle, Weather and Climate in Africa (Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1996).
5 A. T. McKillop and L. H. Cough, "Report on the Great Invasion of Locusts in Egypt in 1915," Bulletin of Egypt Ministry of Agriculture 1 ( 1916) : 1 -82.
6 E. Ballard, A. M. Mistikawi, and M. S. El-Zoheiry, "The Desert Locust, Schistocerca Grcgaria Forsk, in Egypt," Bulletin of Egypt Ministry of Agriculture 1 !O (1932):1-149.
7 McKillop and Cough, "Report of the Great Invasion."
8 Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts.
9 Brucc G. Trigger, Nubia under the Pharaohs (Boulder, CO: Wesrview Press, 1976).
10 Ibid.
11 Kamal Salibi, The Bible Came from Arabia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985).
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Is this nonsense/distortion of the biblical text, or a compelling case?
