Patriarchal age

The patriarchal age is the era of the three biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, according to the narratives of Genesis 12–50. (These chapters also contain the history of Joseph, although Joseph is not one of the patriarchs.) It is preceded in the Bible by the primeval history and followed by The Exodus.

Jewish tradition

The Bible contains an intricate pattern of chronologies from the creation of Adam, the first man, to the reigns of the later kings of ancient Israel and Judah. Based on this chronology and the Rabbinic tradition, ancient Jewish sources such as Seder Olam Rabbah date the birth of Abraham to 1948 AM (c. 1813 BCE)[1] and place the death of Jacob in 2255 AM (c. 1506 BCE).

Biblical criticism

Further information: Biblical criticism and Documentary hypothesis

Independent, datable historical confirmation of Biblical events begins during the era of the first Jewish kings. With the advent of biblical criticism in the 19th century, the events before this period came to be disputed. Little interest in questioning the biblical chronology existed before then, but came with the development of the documentary hypothesis – the theory that the Pentateuch, including the Book of Genesis, was composed not by Moses but by unknown authors living at various times between 950 and 450 BCE.

Early biblical archaeology

Out of this heated debate between the various theories of biblical criticism and traditional, religious interpretations was born biblical archaeology, a form of archaeology different from others in that it sought not to discover and interpret mute evidence, but to validate or invalidate the historicity of the patriarchs and the events surrounding their lives, as described within the Bible.

The most eminent of early biblical archaeologists was William F. Albright, who believed that he had identified the patriarchal age in the period 2100–1800 BC, the Intermediate Bronze Age, the interval between two periods of highly developed urban culture in ancient Canaan. Albright argued that he had found evidence of the sudden collapse of the previous Early Bronze Age culture, and ascribed this to the invasion of migratory pastoral nomads from the northeast whom he identified with the Amorites mentioned in Mesopotamian texts. According to Albright, Abraham was a wandering Amorite who migrated from the north into the central highlands of Canaan and the Negev with his flocks and followers as the Canaanite city-states collapsed. Albright, E. A. Speiser and Cyrus Gordon argued that although the texts described by the documentary hypothesis were written centuries after the patriarchal age, archaeology had shown that they were nevertheless an accurate reflection of the conditions of the 2nd millennium BC. According to John Bright "We can assert with full confidence that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were actual historical individuals."[2]

Modern biblical archaeology

Albright's interpretation came under fierce criticism as archaeology unearthed obvious anachronisms in the biblical accounts of the patriarchal age, indicating that the texts were written later than the traditional dates. For example, in Genesis 26:1, Isaac encounters the king of the Philistines, who actually did not settle in the Middle East until the 12th century BCE.

Excavations in the Timna Valley from 2014 discovered what may be the earliest domesticated camel bones found in Israel or even anywhere outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This has been described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.[3][4] Albright himself saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism.[5] However, earlier excavations from elsewhere in the Middle East have uncovered domesticated camel bones in a house dating from ca. 2400 BCE, and that there exist written records and pictorial depictions of camels as pack animals much before 930 BCE, even from prior to ca. 1700 BCE, and again on a cylinder seal dating stylistically from ca. 1400 BCE or earlier.[6][7] Although these older findings were not in Israel itself, they remain suggestive, coming from Bahrain, Minoa, Babylonia and even as close as Syria.

See also

• Nuzi Texts
• Prehistory

References

1. Jewish Virtual Library: Abraham
2. John Bright, "History of Israel", 1972, p.91.
3. Hasson, Nir (Jan 17, 2014). "Hump stump solved: Camels arrived in region much later than biblical reference". Haaretz. Retrieved 30 January 2014.
4. Sapir-Hen, Lidar; Erez Ben-Yosef (2013). "The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley" (PDF). Tel Aviv. 40: 277–285. doi:10.1179/033443513x13753505864089. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
5. Heide, Martin. 2011 "The Domestication of the Camel: Biological, Archaeological and Inscriptional Evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel and Arabia, and Literary Evidence from the Hebrew Bible." Ugarit-Forschungen 42: 368.
6. Bromiley, ed. Geoffrey W. (1982). The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 2 (E - J) (Fully revised ed.). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. p. 442. ISBN 978-0802837820.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
7. Bulliet, Richard W. (1990). The camel and the wheel (Morningside ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 63, 64. ISBN 978-0231072342.