The name “Hebron” (or Chevron-pronounced with a hard “ch”) is derived from the Hebrew word “chaver,” or “friend.” In Arabic, Hebron is called “Al Khalil,” which also means “friend.” Both Arabic and Hebrew are shortened forms of the phrase, “Friend of God,” meaning Abraham. Abraham is the eponym of the Abrahamic...
Harram, or Harran was the name of a man, and a place, related to Abraham. Haran, the man, was the son of Terah, brother of Abraham and Nahor, and father of Lot. Haran, the place, was a city in northwestern Mesopotamia (today Iraq) just east of the Euphrates River. It is now in SE Asian Turkey, 24 mi (39 km) SE of Sanlurfa. It is the place Abraham lived after leaving his birthplace, Ur Of The...
The origin of the term “Eden”, which in Hebrew means “delight”, may lie with the Akkadian word edinu, which itself derives from the Sumerian term E.DIN. The Sumerian term means “plain” or “steppe”, so the connection between the words may be coincidental, although this word is known to have been used by the Sumerians to refer to Mesopotamia as the...
Dilmun is associated with ancient sites on the islands of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, the Cradle of Civilization. Dilmun (sometimes transliterated Telmun) is associated with ancient sites on the islands of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. Because of its location along the sea trade routes linking Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization, Dilmun developed in the Bronze Age, from ca. 3000 BC...
Damascus, Syria is located in a desert oasis east of Lebanon and northwest of Mt Hermon. It is situated on a plateau 680 metres above sea level, bordered by the Anti-Lebanon Mountains to the west, and the desert to the east. It is at the northern end of the King’s Highway and is the connection to the Near East. Damascus is situated at the Ghouta Oasis, fed by the waters of the Baruda River...
A cylinder seal is a cylinder engraved with a ‘picture story’, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary site of Susa in south-western Iran and at the early site of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. They are linked to the invention of the latter...
Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. In the course of the 3rd millennium BC the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. The number of characters in use also grew...
Legal System Among the inventions of the Sumerians, the most persistent and far-reaching was their invention of law. While all cultures have some system of social regulation and conflict resolution, law is a distinct phenomenon. Law is written and administered retribution and conflict resolution. It is distinct from other forms of retribution and conflict resolution by the following...
The Chaldeans of ancient Mesopotamia – which today is Iraq, east Syria, and south east Turkey – are a live continuation of all the indigenous people of Mesopotamia whether their tribal names were Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Aramaeans. The language of the Chaldean people is Aramaic, a different dialect than that spoken by Jesus. Tribes of...
Capernaum (Kfar Nahum) was a settlement on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The site is a ruin today, but was inhabited from 150 BC to about AD 750. Josephus refers to Capernaum as a fertile spring. He stayed the night there after spraining his ankle. It is located in northwestern shore of the Kinneret. A church near Capernaum is said to be the home of Peter himself. Recent excavations have...