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The Book of Genesis says that Abraham was from Ur Kasdim. Usually English translations renders it "Ur of the Chaldees/Chaldeans". It is impossible for Kasdim to mean Chaldeans if the Torah was written by Moses since the Chaldeans only came to Mesopotamia around 8th century BCE. And Abraham cannot be Sumerian (Ur was a Sumerian city) since Sumerians were not semetic people. So what was Abraham's ethnicity?

mil
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    Sumer was the name of that area. Maybe Abraham was a part of the group who lived there before Sumer? Also, who says that Abraham was of the same ethnicity as his neighbors; perhaps they were Hamitic and Abraham's family was Semitic? – DonielF Nov 11 '19 at 16:54
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    @DonielF Sumerian civilization (the 1st civilization) started in the 4th millenia BCE while Abraham lived around 1800 BCE, but that's not an issue. As you said his family may be Semitic (maybe Akkadian? ) living in a Sumerian non Semitic city, but he was definitly not Chaldean. – mil Nov 11 '19 at 16:58
  • Are you asking how the Torah is reconciled with our modern understanding of history? Because the Torah says that Abraham was from Ur Kasdim, which makes him de-facto Ur Kasdim-ese. – Salmononius2 Nov 11 '19 at 17:05
  • @Salmononius2 yes that's what I am asking. – mil Nov 11 '19 at 17:07
  • In that case, I think this is a duplicate of https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/28441/how-are-pre-creation-4000-bce-human-civilization-and-pre-flood-2300-bce-civili (or one of the myriad related Torah/science contradiction questions). – Salmononius2 Nov 11 '19 at 17:09
  • Jewish tradition has Abraham as an "Aramean" (hence his birth name, "Avram = Av Aram (father of the nation of Aram)" – יהושע ק Nov 11 '19 at 17:22
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    Doesn't this beg a definition of "ethnicity"? Are you asking about his geographical label (we talk about Native Americans even though they lived on a continent before it was named "America")? Are you asking about is family culture? – rosends Nov 11 '19 at 17:59
  • Why not say the Chaldeans were in Ur, just culturally under Sumaritan influence? – Mordechai Nov 11 '19 at 19:39
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    It occurred to me that Kesed, the forebear of Chaldea, was Abraham’s nephew (Genesis 22), so he couldn’t have been Chaldean. And @Josh Aram was still a Semite (Genesis 10). – DonielF Nov 11 '19 at 19:40
  • @Mordechai because as I mentionned in my question, the Chaldeans arrived to Mesopotamia around 8th century BCE, a millenia before Abraham. Therefore it was impossible for Abraham to be a Chaldean. – mil Nov 11 '19 at 20:02
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    How do you know that? – Mordechai Nov 11 '19 at 20:02
  • @Mordechai that's a well known historical fact. – mil Nov 11 '19 at 20:05
  • Avraham was not originally from Ur Kasdim, according to many commentators he was born in Charan and moved with his father to Ur Kasdim some time after – Dan Weisberg Nov 11 '19 at 22:05
  • Also, where does Torah say he was from Ur Kasdim originally? From what I know he only resided there with his father, where does it say he was born there? – Dan Weisberg Nov 11 '19 at 22:09
  • As @rosends wrote, this question would benefit from a definition of one’s ethnicity. 2) “Chaldeans” comes from the Septuagint written around ~250 BCE. Maybe the Greeks translated the Hebrew according to their then current knowledge; i.e. they wrote Chaldeans but meant “the land which was inhabited by the Chaldeans” (i.e. Ur).
    • – Lee Nov 16 '19 at 20:16
  • Not Hispanic or Latino – Heshy Mar 23 '21 at 21:10
  • I think he was Iraqi or Persian. – Shmuel Jun 23 '23 at 23:14
  • @Heshy Maybe he was Latino. How do you know? – Shmuel Jun 23 '23 at 23:15