The Bible calls the ancestors of Abraham wandering Arameans and refers to Abraham himself as a Hebrew and claims that he came from Ur of the Chaldees.It doesn't say that Abraham was a Chaldean, although He may have been. Bible critics claim that the Chaldeans did not enter the picture until the 7th century bce, as the Babylonians, which archeologists have proven to be false. The Chaldeans were in Mesopotamia and Syria long before the Babylonians, who founded their first empire around 2000 bce. That time line would have made it possible for Abraham to have been a Babylonian, although He probably wasn’t. He was most likely a Syrian. The cuneiform tablets of Ebla mention a city designated "Ur in the territory of Haran", which is probably the birthplace of Abraham. The kingdom of Ebla had contact with Most of Northern Mesopotamia and Canaan, but there is no mention in their records of central or southern Mesopotamia. The Bible also indicates that Abraham's homeland was near Padan-Aram in Syria. The Biblical Chaldees were not originally Mesopotamians. It is a mistake to believe that the Biblical Chaldees are the Babylonian Chaldean The mention of Ur of the Chaldees may have been an attempt to avoid the same confusion that modern Scholars are now making, that is to distinguish Ur of the Chaldees from Ur of the Sumerians. The Babylonia we are most familiar with is known by archeologists as the second Babylonian Empire.
The first inhabitants of central and eastern Turkey and Armenia are recognized as being Chaldees. They were the Hurrians and Urartian, from which came the name Ararat. Inscriptions show that the Urartuans had at least 79 different gods and this conglomeration of gods was called "Khaldis" (Chaldees).The inscription of Argistis near Van, states:
"This is the spoil of the cities which I obtained for the people of the Khaldis in one year. To Khaldis,the giver,to the Khaidises,the supreme givers,the children of Khaldis the mighty..."
Interestingly, these were the people who years later still lived in the region near and around where the ark came to rest. And one thing noted later about the Chaldeans was their great knowledge, especially in astrology. There is a great deal of logic in assuming that the people who remained closest to Noah and his immediate family would have had access to the greatest amount of knowledge. It was the Chaldeans that gave the knowledge of astrology to the Babylonians. The Babylonians were the late comers and a splinter group of the Chaldees, who came down from Armenia and settled in Northern Mesopotamia and Syria. They were from the same ancient group of people as the "Arameans". They belonged to a group known as the Nairi tribal union, dating back at least as far as 6,000 BCE. The Assyrians called them "People of the Nairi." The Khaldis were one of the groups that divided from the main group of Nairi. The united Nairi broke up around 1700 BCE, at which time different groups began calling themselves by their gods. The god name Arm also shows the possibility of Aram being in Canaan during the time of Moses, as the Bible claims, and makes the reference to “wandering Aramean” correct. An inscription from Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria, from around 1300 bce, is evidence of the Aramians being in Syria long before critics say they existed:
"I crossed the Euphrates twenty eight times...in pursuit of the Arameans."
The Chaldeans, and Syrians of Iraq ethnically belong to the same nationality, but the Chaldeans came after what scholars call Proto Chaldee of the ancient Kaldea or "Mat-Kaldu" from 5300 BC. Inhabitants of Armenia still include in their Christian celebration songs of the solstice, which includes the chant, "kaladu, kaladu,"
Finkelstein wrote on page 39 if His book: “Let us start with the Arameans, who dominate the stories of Jacob's marriage with Leah and Rachel and his relationship with his uncle Laban. The Arameans are not mentioned as a distinct ethnic group in ancient Near Eastern texts before c. 1100 BCE. They became a dominant factor on the northern borders of the Israelites in the early ninth century BCE.”
Historians place the rise of the Arameans around 1400 BCE. They were considered powerful enough by the Hittites to be a problem. Even if they could be traced no farther back than 1400 be, that is quite some time prior to the 9th century BCE. They were a separate nationality recognized by the nations of Mesopotamia and Anatolia 400 hundred years prior to the critical date. There's no reason to believe they could not have been a separate nationality at the time of Abraham. There is no doubt that the Aramaic language existed much earlier and according to linguists, that's one of the things that define different people. The name ibri is Aramaic for Eber the father of the Hebrews. The Assyrians associated Ibri with the "People of the Nairi," who gave their name to Naran, Aram ,and the Syrian area of Padan-Aram, mentioned in the Bible, The biography of Amenemhab, written in the the 15th century BCE claims:
"Asiatics, three men as prisoners, alive. When his majesty reached Naharain 5 I brought thither the three men as booty, whom I placed before thy majesty, as living prisoners Another time I captured (it was in the expedition to the country of mount Uan, to the west of Aleppo), and I brought back 7 (certain) captured Asiatics, as living prisoners 13 men, 70 asses alive, 13 basons of iron /// basons of worked gold ////// " The Aramaic area of Naharain was known to the Egyptian by at least the time of Thutmose III. Naharain apparently stretched to the Euphrates river:
8 "////// Another time I captured (it was in an expedition to the country of Carchemish) and brought away . . . 9 ////// as living prisoners. I traversed the water of Naharain without letting them escape, 10 [and] I [set] them before my master. Behold, therefore, he rewarded me with a great reward, namely 11 ////// I saw the victory of the king, the king of the south and of the north, even Ra-men-kheper, the life-giver, in the country of Senzar. He made ////// 12 ////// them."
