Does the Book of Abraham term Chaldean Refer to Sumerian?
Several points of evidence suggest that “Chaldean” of the Book of Abraham account may refer to the Sumerian people and language. The Sumerians inhabited the Persian Gulf region of southern Mesopotamia later referred to geographically as Chaldea, and in later times identified by the Hebrews as Kaśdim. Second, knowledge of the Sumerian civilization was totally lost to the later Hebrews and Greeks, and no mention of Sumeria is ever made in classical literature with the likely exception of the term “Shinar” referring to this region as a later dialectical variant of “Sumer” in the discussion of the first postdiluvian kingdom in Genesis 10.[38] The term Sumerian was unknown in Joseph Smith’s day, and the Sumerian civilization was discovered only by the explorer Rawlinson in the 1870s. We should therefore not expect to encounter the term “Sumer” to be encountered in scripture, but would expect Sumerians to be referenced in other ways. Innovations previously attributed to classical civilizatio
