came from “Ur of the Chaldeans” (Gen. 15:7). Ur is actually a city of Sumerian origin, a culture even older than the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures we have looked at. The Mesopotamian world from which Abraham came was one whose own stories of origins had been expressed in mythic categories for a considerable length of time. Moreover, the land Abraham was going to enter, the land of the Canaanites, was likewise rich in its own myths. Keeping in the forefront of our minds the biblical portrait of