241 
a Gentile historian, on the authority of Josephus, that Abra- 
ham came from the land of the Chaldeans, above Babylon .* 
Then, when Abraham commissioned his servant, Eliezar, of 
Damascus, to go to Mesopotamia to bring a wife unto Isaac, 
his son, he told him that he was not to take unto his son a wife 
of the daughters of the Canaanites, but to go to his country 
and to his kindred .f It must be remembered that when Eliezar 
was sent to the city of Nahor, Abraham's niece, Bebekah, was 
living with her brother, Laban, in Northern Mesopotamia, 
about 300 miles above Babylon ; and if Abraham had come 
originally with his family from Southern Babylon, he would 
not have said to his servant, “ go into my country ." J 
Mr. Pinches, who, I am sorry to say, has not been able to 
attend my lecture this evening, coincides with me regarding 
the country of Abraham, and in support of my view he has 
supplied me with the following remarks : — 
“ There is certainly nothing to prove that the city of Uri, 
now represented by Mugayi, is identical with the Ur Kasdirn 
of the Bible. It is well known that Babylonia bears, in the 
inscriptions, the names of Sumer and Akkad. Although it 
may not yet be quite proved, nevertheless it is very likely that 
(as is contended by several scholars) Sumer was the south, and 
Akkad the north, of Babylonia. Now the Akkadians, as 
Professor Friederich Delitzsch rightly conjectured some time 
ago, did not call their country Akkad, but Ura or Uri, and it 
is not unlikely that it is this district, and not the city of Uri, 
that we are to regard as the Ur-Kasdim of the Bible. The 
country called by the Assyrians and Babylonians Kaldu 
(Chaldea), and which is regarded as the same as the Kasdirn 
of the Bible, by the common chauge of s into l before a 
dental, seems also to have been a district in the north of Baby- 
lonia (probably the country around Babylon itself), afterwards 
extended to embrace a larger tract. The compound Ur- 
Kasdim would, therefore, be very naturally used to distinguish 
Abraham's original home both from the northern Ura or 
Akkad, part of Armenia, and from the city of Uri or Mugayi 
in South Babylonia." 
I have no doubt that most of you are aware that a good deal 
of discussion and disputes have taken place about the mention 
in the second chapter of Genesis of one of the four rivers of 
the Garden of Eden, called Gihon, wherein it states that it 
* Joseplius, Antiquity of the Jews , i. 7. 
t Genesis xxiv. 4. 
t It is also related in the fifth chapter of Judith that on Holofernes, the 
chief captain of the Assyrian army, asking the Moabite and Ammonite 
chieftains who the Israelites were, he was answered by Achior , the captain 
of all the sons of Ammon , that they were descended of the Chaldeans. 
