Arpachshad or Arphaxad or Arphacsad ( ISO 259-3

ISO 259-3

ISO 259-3 is a standard for the phonemic conversion/representation of Hebrew in the Latin script. It is aimed on delivering the common structure of the Hebrew word throughout the different dialects or pronunciation styles of Hebrew, in a way that it can be reconstructed into the original Hebrew...

ʔarpakšad; ; "healer," "releaser") was one of the five sons of Shem

Shem

Shem was one of the sons of Noah in the Hebrew Bible as well as in Islamic literature. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each...

, the son of Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

 (Genesis 10:22, 24; 11:10-13; 1 Chron. 1:17-18). His brothers were Elam, Asshur, Lud

Lud son of Shem

Lud was a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, according to Genesis 10 . Lud should not be confused with the Ludim, said there to be descended from Mizraim....

 and Aram

Aram

-Bible:* Aram, son of Shem, according to the "Table of Nations" in Genesis 10* Aram-Naharaim , the land in which the city of Haran lay* Aram , an ancient region containing the state of Aram Damascus...

; he is an ancestor of Abraham

Abraham

Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...

. He is said by Gen. 11:10 to have been born two years after the Flood, when Shem was 100.

Arpachshad's son is called Salah

Salah (Biblical figure)

Salah is an ancestor of the Israelites according to the Table of Nations in . He is thus one of the table's "seventy names". He is called Shelah in and Sala in the Septuagint and ....

, except in the Septuagint, where his son is Cainan

Cainan

Cainan can refer to either:*A variant of the name Kenan in the generations of Adam, the lists of antediluvian patriarchs given in the Torah;*Cainan, the son of the Arpachshad mentioned in most manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke 3:36...

 (קינן), Salah being Arpachshad's grandson. Cainan is also identified as Arpachshad's son in Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

 3:36 and Jubilees

Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees , sometimes called Lesser Genesis , is an ancient Jewish religious work, considered one of the pseudepigrapha by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Churches...

 8:1.

Other ancient Jewish sources, particularly the Book of Jubilees, point to Arpachshad as the immediate progenitor of Ura and Kesed, who allegedly founded the city of Ur Kesdim

Ur Kasdim

Ur Kaśdim or Ur of the Chaldees is a biblical place mentioned in the Book of Genesis that refers to a location that the Patriarch Abraham may have been from...

(Ur of the Chaldees) on the west bank of the Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...

 (Jub. 9:4; 11:1-7) — the same bank where Ur

Ur

Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate...

, identified by Leonard Woolley

Leonard Woolley

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia...

 in 1927 as Ur of the Chaldees, is located.

Donald B. Redford has asserted that Arpachshad is to be identified with Babylon

Babylon

Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...

.
Until Woolley's identification of Ur, Arpachshad was understood by many Jewish and Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 scholars to be an area in northern Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

, Urfa of the Yazidi

Yazidi

The Yazidi are members of a Kurdish religion with ancient Indo-Iranian roots. They are primarily a Kurdish-speaking people living in the Mosul region of northern Iraq, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Turkey, and Syria in decline since the 1990s – their members emigrating to...

s. This led to the identification of Arpachshad with Urfa-Kasid (due to similarities in the names ארפ־כשד and כשדים) - a land associated with the Khaldis

Khaldis

The Khaldis was a conglomeration of at least 79 different gods known to the Urartians and Hurrians. The inscription of Argistis near Lake Van states:...

, whom Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

 confused with the Chaldea

Chaldea

Chaldea or Chaldaea , from Greek , Chaldaia; Akkadian ; Hebrew כשדים, Kaśdim; Aramaic: ܟܐܠܕܘ, Kaldo) was a marshy land located in modern-day southern Iraq which came to briefly rule Babylon...

n.

Another Arpachshad is referenced in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith as being the "king of the Medes

Medes

The MedesThe Medes...

" contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar II, but this is thought to be a corruption of the historical name Cyaxares

Cyaxares

Cyaxares, Cyaxares the Great or Hvakhshathra , the son of King Phraortes, was the first king of Media. According to Herodotus, Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces, had a far greater military reputation than his father or grandfather, therefore he is often being described as the first official Median...

(Hvakhshathra).