The register keeps a checked passage distinct from a located book. IDs remain stable as the research expands. All entries below were assembled or refreshed on 20 October 2026; they do not represent exhaustive source coverage.
29 source groups
Tanakh: origins, departure & ancestral identity
Genesis 11:27–32; 12:1–5; 14:13; 15:7; 24:4–10; Joshua 24:2–3; Nehemiah 9:7. Hebrew: Miqra according to the Masorah, via Sefaria; CC-BY-SA.
Hebrew preserved with version metadata. Birth, residence and departure remain distinct. No modern-site identification follows from a name alone.
Mishnah Avot 5:3
Torat Emet 357, Hebrew via Sefaria; reported Public Domain.
Abraham’s ten trials; they are not enumerated in this mishnah. Later lists require their own citations.
Bereshit Rabbah 38:13
Midrash Rabbah — TE via Sefaria, Hebrew/Aramaic; digital license unspecified.
Idol shop, Nimrod, coercion, rescue and Haran’s death. A selected public clause is compared with Wikisource contributors, CC-BY-SA 4.0, with editorial vowels. Full aligned presentation and critical parallels remain open; no wholesale embedding of the TE edition.
Bereshit Rabbah 42:8
TE via Sefaria, checked locally; public selected clauses compared with Wikisource contributors, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Preserves R. Yehuda’s countercultural explanation, R. Nehemya’s ancestry explanation and the Rabbis’ river/language explanation of ivri. Public excerpt retains source wording; displayed vocalization is newly editorial.
Bavli Bava Batra 91a
Local comparison: William Davidson vocalized Aramaic, CC-BY-NC. Public short excerpt: Wikisource contributors, CC-BY-SA 4.0, with newly editorial pointing.
Kutha/Kardu imprisonment, variant allocation of years, and Rav Hisda’s Ur Kasdim statement. The noncommercial digital vocalization is not republished here. Ancient/modern geography and critical collation remain open.
Ramban on Genesis 11:28
Vocalized Edition via Sefaria; CC0.
Argues for birth in Aram, a later move into the Chaldean land, and Haran’s birth there. His reconstruction and regional reports require evaluation; it does not establish Urfa.
Samuel Bochart, Phaleg I.10
Geographiae sacrae pars prior, first published Caen, 1646. Supplied chapter opening and printed p. 43; exact screenshot edition unresolved.
Original printed text is public domain. Selected Latin sentence newly transcribed and translated. Full transcription, title-page match, surrounding chapters and Ammianus comparison remain open.
Al-Tabari, History, vol. 2
Recovered English translation lead, printed pp. 48–49; translator and Arabic source edition to verify.
Earlier discussion identified competing reports. Exact Arabic, translation, transmission chains and relation to Urfa remain to check before restating those reports as findings.
Jacob Bryant & George Bush
Bryant, A New System, vol. 3 (1776), p. 277 onward. Bush, Genesis commentary (1839), p. 189, locator via Rendsburg.
Recovered route critique and local-tradition leads need checking in original editions. Later characterization of Bochart cannot substitute for his page.
Rawlinson & Taylor: the inscriptional transition
Primary publications and excavation/inscription reports still to acquire. Saggs points to J.R.A.S. XII, p. 481, for an 1850 intervention; Frolov discusses an 1862 argument.
Distinguish first identification, public argument and later restatement. No single turning-point date or motive has been established.
C. Leonard Woolley, “Excavations at Ur, 1929–30”
Museum Journal (1930), Penn Museum digitization; opening expedition account and Plate VI caption.
Supports a bounded account of expedition organization and biblical framing. Full printed pagination and the relevant books remain to acquire. A map framed by Abraham’s period does not establish an individual residence.
Penn Museum: accounts of the Ur expedition
William B. Hafford, “City of the Moon” (2017); Hafford and Richard L. Zettler, “The Thrill of Discovery” (2018).
Retrospective institutional accounts of the AH designation, expedition partners, permits and division of finds. Seek contemporary records for causal explanations; these are not proof of Abraham’s house.
Cyrus H. Gordon & H. W. F. Saggs
Gordon, “Abraham and the Merchants of Ura,” JNES 17 (1958), 28–31; Saggs, “Ur of the Chaldees: A Problem of Identification,” Iraq 22 (1960), 200–209.
Full main articles and the reported Gordon reply remain to read. Saggs reports a then-prevailing identification; that is not a survey of present opinion. His notes on Woolley’s river-course argument and Gordon’s Ura location require original-source comparison.
Gary A. Rendsburg & Serge Frolov
“Ur Kasdim: Where Is Abraham’s Birthplace?” (2019); “In Search of Abraham’s Birthplace: Between Urfa and Ur” (2024), TheTorah.com.
Rendsburg defends Urfa; Frolov disputes it and offers a compositional explanation. Their arguments need matched source-by-source evaluation. Disagreement does not measure consensus.
Thomas L. Thompson & John Van Seters
Thompson’s 1974 study; Van Seters’s 1975 book. Full edition records and relevant chapters to verify.
Books, exact scope of conclusions, contemporary reviews and strong responses remain to read. A late-composition argument is not automatically denial of every event narrated.
Philip R. Davies, “Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?”
Bible and Interpretation, April 2010.
Evidence for Davies’s framing of the controversy and cultural authority. His claims about disciplinary agreement do not independently establish consensus, opponents’ motives or institutional selection mechanisms.
José Faur: the founder’s stated frame
The Naked Crowd: The Jewish Alternative to Cunning Humanity (Derusha Publishing, 2009); The Horizontal Society: Understanding the Covenant and Alphabetic Judaism, publisher record for a 2010 edition.
Brad gives The Naked Crowd priority. Relevant original passages, his consulted edition and exact formulations remain to locate. No paraphrase about cunning is presented as a Faur quotation.
Michel Foucault: methodological reading
“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”; “The Subject and Power”; “What Is Enlightenment?” Exact consulted editions and translators remain to verify.
The programme’s checklist is its own adaptation. Primary texts remain to reread before attributing a particular formulation.
Rashi: origins, furnace & departure
Genesis 24:7; 11:28; comment beginning מארצך on the departure command. Rosenbaum–Silbermann, 1929–1934, Hebrew via Sefaria; reported Public Domain.
24:7 distinguishes father’s house in Haran from native land in Ur Kasdim. 11:28 includes midrash and Menahem’s lexical alternative. The departure incipit is digitally stored at 12:2:4 in the consulted edition; cite the incipit, not only a verse search.
Bavli: furnace, Nimrod & exile
Eruvin 53a:7; Pesachim 118a:20; Pesachim 87b:21. Hebrew/Aramaic digital passages preserved; exact edition metadata held with each snapshot.
Narrative and exile analogy kept distinct from birthplace. Pesachim 87b’s clause does not explicitly name Abraham. No exhaustive Bavli or Yerushalmi survey claimed.
Tosefta: household origin & astronomy
Bava Kamma, Lieberman 7:3 / standard 7:2; Kiddushin, Lieberman 5:17 / standard 5:14. Lieberman text: codex Vienna, JTS, third augmented edition, 2001, via Sefaria, CC-BY.
94 overlapping base-title records, 7,628 digital segments, eight normalized search strings, 75 matching segments including false positives. The household clause is not an explicit birth-city statement. The displayed vocalization is newly editorial, not source pointing.
Philo, On Abraham & Migration of Abraham
On Abraham §§67–72: Leopold Cohn, Opera, vol. 4, Berlin: Reimer, 1902. Migration §§176–177: Paul Wendland, Opera, vol. 2, Berlin: Reimer, 1897. First1KGreek digital editions, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Greek XML preserved unchanged; running-text selections omit encoded notes/apparatus. Yonge is a comparison translation. Migration 177’s second clause does not repeat the Chaldean name in this Greek edition. Critical collation and Yonge’s base-text comparison remain open.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.151–160
Benedikt Niese, Flavii Iosephi opera, Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–1890, vols. 1–4; Perseus Digital Library, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Greek 1.151, 152, 154, 159 inspected; fuller context compared initially in Whiston. Named city, region and people-name differ. Berossus’s unnamed figure and the Nicolaus quotation are different kinds of transmitted evidence; critical predecessor assessment remains open.
Jubilees 11–12
R. H. Charles translation: 11:3, 7–15; 12:12–15. Modern Hebrew translation in Sefaria preserved separately.
Idol-house fire and Haran’s death. Modern Hebrew numbering differs and is not an original-language witness. Ancient surviving witnesses, critical text and concordance remain to examine.
Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.16–17
E. H. Gifford English translation, checked for transmitted Josephus and Polyhistor/Eupolemus material; original Greek still to examine.
Camarina/Uria birthplace report requires attribution and textual work. A compiler’s repetition of Josephus is not an independent witness.
Targumim & Bereshit Rabbah 39:8
Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 11:28; Bereshit Rabbah 39:8. Original-language snapshots preserved with their separate edition/license metadata.
Onkelos retains the name; Pseudo-Jonathan expands the furnace account. Online “Targum Jonathan” on Torah should not automatically be assigned to Jonathan ben Uzziel. Fuller aligned publication, chronology and parallels remain open.
Greek Genesis: the country wording
H. B. Swete, The Old Testament in Greek, vol. 1, Cambridge: University Press, 1901; First1KGreek encoding, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Preserved XML has transcription defects elsewhere, especially consequential words in 11:31 and 15:7. The publication uses the corroborated 11:28 clause and independently checks 11:31 through Tov. Full manuscript/scan comparison remains open.
Emanuel Tov, “Terah’s Journey—Genesis 11:31”
TheTorah.com, 24 August 2023; consulted 20 October 2026. Comparison table and note 2.
Proposes an inner-Greek development of chōras from a misunderstood transliteration Ωρ reflecting Hebrew אור. An attributed reconstruction, not an early manuscript reading established by this edition.
George J. Brooke, “Some Remarks on 4Q252 and the Text of Genesis”
Textus 19 (1998), 1–25; section on fragment 1, column 2, line 9. Leads: J. W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (1993), p. 158; R. S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11.
Official bibliography located; search-indexed passage reports competing explanations. Full PDF could not be retrieved for page inspection. Wevers/Hendel not read directly here. 4Q252 is a commentary, not a biblical Genesis manuscript.
Editions, translations & reuse.
Source-language text here means the named digital or printed witness. It does not mean an autograph or a complete manuscript collation. Source cards preserve supplied diacritics and identify any editorial vocalization, normalization or omitted markup.
Greek excerpt transcriptions derive from the named Cohn/Wendland, Niese and Swete editions through First1KGreek and Perseus. Credit those editions and digital projects. Adapted excerpt data and the accompanying working translations are provided under CC-BY-SA 4.0, except unmodified public-domain or CC0 material, which retains that status. Individual source notices remain attached.
Hebrew Tanakh excerpts credit Miqra according to the Masorah via Sefaria, CC-BY-SA. Rashi’s consulted Hebrew is reported public domain; Ramban’s vocalized edition is CC0. The Tosefta excerpt credits the JTS codex Vienna edition via Sefaria, CC-BY; its displayed vowels are newly supplied. Public Bavli and midrash excerpts credit Wikisource contributors, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
New working translations are not copied from modern Sefaria English. The Bochart printed text is public domain; the exact scan edition remains unresolved. Restricted or uncertain-license local research copies are linked where suitable rather than republished in full.
Edition history.
01 · 20 October 2026. First integrated programme overview, Abraham source dossier, Greek-wording study, Bochart notebook and 29 source groups. Replaced the earlier Wellhausen-first proposal with Abraham as the immediate source foundation. Added the Greek transmission hypothesis as an attributed alternative, and made the difference between Yonge’s English and the consulted Philo Greek visible.
The index records gaps instead of filling them from inherited summaries. Fuller source readings, independent translation review and Brad’s editorial feedback can revise the next edition.
First research edition, 20 October 2026. Selected passages have been checked in the named editions; translations are newly drafted working translations unless attributed otherwise. Critical collation and independent translation review remain open. How to read the source notes.