Question about biblical history. The Patriarch Abraham was originally from Ur of the Chaldees, which IINW was in Mesopotamia. But since he is regarded as the Father of the Israelites, I assume the Hebrew language came into existence after him. What is the general consensus about this? Does the Hebrew language originate from Mesopotamian language as well?
There are a couple of items in your question that need to be addressed.
The Chaldeans were five tribes from the Levant that migrated to Mesopotamia roughly around 900 BCE. Starting with Chaldean king Nabopolassar, they established an independent kingdom from the Assyrians in the 600s, and this became known as the Chaldean or Neo-Babylonian Empire. Now, the inner-biblical dating of Abraham would put him more than a thousand years earlier, around 2150 BCE, when no “Ur of the Chaldeans” existed, so this is quite a major anachronism. The story of Abraham growing up in Ur was quite possibly invented by the author(s) of Genesis. Suggested reading: Bill T. Arnold, “What has Nebuchadnezzar to do with David?”, in Mesopotamia and the Bible, 2002, pp. 331ff.
The anachronism aside, modern Bible scholars and historians do not regard Abraham — or indeed any of the Genesis patriarchs — to have been historical individuals in the first place. Abraham is really a figure of folklore and legend, and his family members — Terah, Nahor, and Haran — are all the names of ancient cities in Syria, which Abraham was associated with in cultural memory. The name “Abraham” can be interpreted as “Abu-Raham”, that is, “father of Raham”, with Raham being a Canaanite tribe mentioned in an Egyptian inscription. In other words, he is probably a personified representation of Israelite/Canaanite ancestry. This is, in fact, true of most biblical patriarchs, particularly those that are named after a tribe or nation. See Mario Liverani, Israel’s History and the History of Israel, 2007, p. 25.
The Israelites were essentially just an offshoot of the Canaanites that emerged in the hill country of Israel following the Bronze Age collapse, which was a time marked by climate upheavals, migrations, the end of Egyptian hegemony, and the collapse of the Bronze Age city state structure. The Iron Age Israelites spoke a Northwest Semitic language related to Phoenician and the surrounding Canaanite nations (the Moabites and so on). The Hebrew language did not really exist in the time of Abraham, any more than modern English existed in the time of Julius Caesar. Although it’s not really relevant, the Chaldeans spoke a dialect of Aramaic. Aramaic and Hebrew are both languages of the Semitic language family, along with Akkadian, the language of the earlier Babylonian Empire, and the Egyptian language. Suggested reading: Eric Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, 2014; and Seth L. Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew, 2009.