Islam and Christianity

It didn't matter which period in Sumero-Babylonian history he lived.  From some of the earliest records, we know that many peoples of different backgrounds inhabited the land.  According to one Sumerian poem, Sumer is described as "many-tongued", hence Abraham (Abram) could still be a Semite (his name is perfectly Semitic).  A study of names indicated that in northern Sumer the majority of names were Semitic with a Sumerian minority, but in southern Sumer the majoity of names were Sumerian with a Semitic minority.  They also identified other names as being "Subarian".   Abram as a Semite would not be out of place in southern Sumer where Ur was located.

Ummm, no.  Abraham was a "wandering Aramaean" (according to the Book), not because he was Aramaean but because after his family left Ur they settled in Harran.  The region of Harran was known anachronistically as either Padan Aram or Aram Naharaim, hence his relatives and himself became Aramaeans.  When Abraham migrated to Canaan, he and his descendants adopted the Canaanite language.  I speak of the region of Harran as being anachronistically "Aram" because the Aramaeans did not even colonize the region until about the 11th century BC.  In the time of Abraham, the nomads of the region were known as Amorites, of which we know several tribal names, including of all peoples the habiru which some equate with Hebrews.  By the time the earliest part of the Bible was written, the Aramaeans were already in the land, hence the writer or writers only knew that part of Mesopotamia as "Aram". 

Which book are we talking about?

AV, Genesis 11: 31

And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

(At that time Abram had not yet adopted the name Abraham.)

You mean when I came to live in Luxembourg I stopped being British and became a Luxembourger?

Viewing Abraham at least as a character in a book, the earliest mention of him has him coming from where the Chaldees lived. Now he could have been an alien invader from Alpha Centauri, but the minimal assumption has to be that he was supposed at least to be Chaldean.

In the old time religon people used to think there was no people after the great flood of Noah , so I can see where they connected the desendants of Ham( Canaanites) to the desendants of Shem  ,Abraham, and that every person on earth was of  the line of  Abraham. however we know today there was no world wide flood , and the flood was only a local flood, and there were many many peoples.

Deuteronomy 26:5.   Abrahams relatives in Aram Naharaim (or Padan Aram) were likewise called Aramaean (Genesis 25:20; cf. Genesis 22:20-24).

Living in Ur did not make one automatically a Chaldaean.  Ur was a cosmopolitan city attracting people from all over the Middle East and beyond.  Ur eventually became the possession of the Chaldaeans which inhabited the southernmost marshlands, but the population of Ur (and the other great cities of Babylonia was "Babylonian" (i.e. the Akkadian-speaking population of the south). 

Not the same concept.  "British" and "Luxembourger" are nationalities (self-identities based on the nation-state).  "Chaldaean" and "Aramaean" were tribal identities.   Today, just as in the past, a person's tribal identity can change, because the tribe allows for such absorption, and thus tribal identities or loyalties are quite fluid.  A case and point are the Bakhtiari and the Pashtuns.  The Pashtuns are loosing members to the Bakhtiari because the Bakhtiari welcome newcomers.  Former Pashtuns now identify themselves as Bakhtiari.

The problem is that he is never given that identity.  The only other ethnic identity Abraham (Abram) is given is that of "Hebrew" (Genesis, 14:13).  Since Ur (regardless of the anachronistic use of "Chaldaean") was part of a land that was "many-tongued" any inhabitant of Ur may have been from any number of ethnic origins, not just "Chaldaean").  The term itself is not attested until about 850 BC, far too late to be an ethnic identification for Abram.

The AV in all these references has 'Syrian' not 'Aramaean' but I guess we can take them as equivalent.

However Deuteronomy 26:5 does not refer to Abram/Abraham, but, from the context, to Israel himself. "...A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation great, mighty and populous."

Now both Abraham and Israel 'went down into Egypt'. However the last clause quite obviously applies not to Abraham, but to his grandson Israel, founder of the nation of the "children of Israel." Israel therefore, native-born and livig in Canaan, was considered 'Syrian'.

From Genesis 37:1 however we know that Isaac, Israel's father, was a 'stranger' in Canaan, even though he was born there: yet more so must Abraham have been. As 'strangers' still, neither can therefore have qualified as 'Syrian' the way Israel does.

The other two quotations are somewhat confusing. Gen 22: 20-24 presents us with Abraham's brother and his descendants with no indication of nationality or residence or whatever (they are not listed among the people who left Ur with Abraham in the first place). Gen 25:20 describes some of the same family, including Isaac's father-in-law and brother-in-law as Syrians. Presumably therefore they and Isaac's wife Rebekkah are not 'strangers' in Canaan; all this only clears itself up is one accepts that affiliation is through the maternal line (not surprisingly as it still is in Judaism).

Jacob/Israel is therefore 'Syrian' because his mother was, not because his father was, nor of course because his grandfather Abraham was.

Depends very much on the tribe. Our main surviving relic of practices in those times and places is Judaism, in which, as I mentioned, is through the mother. Assimilation during later life is rare.

Abraham therefore would not have been able to become 'Syrian'. In his family that had to wait until Jacob was born to Rebekkah.

Despite what you said above, I understand that Ur was conquered by the Akkadian Sargon c. 2300BC. But anyway, we are talking about a book here. In saying Abraham came from a city of the Chaldees, obviously 'Chaldees' is being used in whatever sense the author of the text meant. I gather the Hebrew is Khasdim, or something, although that's probably only a back translation from whatever the Greek was in the septuagint.

When a Shakespearean character is washed up on the shore of Bohemia, there is little point in questioning whether the 'real' Bohemia had a 'real' coastline or not.  It's the meaning within the text that matters.