From mesos (middle) and potamos (river). Literally 'between the rivers' — the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern-day Iraq. The ancestral homeland of Abraham and the setting for some of the earliest biblical history.
Stephen's speech in Acts 7 begins with God's call to Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2). This is significant because it shows that God's initiative precedes human response — God reached into pagan territory to call one man through whom all nations would be blessed. Mesopotamia also features at Pentecost, when residents of Mesopotamia heard the gospel in their own language (Acts 2:9). God brings the story full circle: from Abraham's departure from Mesopotamia to the gospel's arrival there.