News outlets are abuzz with the story that recent archaeological discoveries have shown the Bible to be totally wrong about camels. You can read sample stories in Haaretz, Fox News, Time, The Guardian, or the
New York Times.
Tel Aviv University announced the findings of two of its own professors here, which summarizes this Tel Aviv journal article written by Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen.
Many news agencies appear to have derived most of their information from the Haaretz story.
There is a significant difference in emphasis between the scholarly article and the press release, but what is most eye-catching is the press release's emphasis that archaeological evidence demonstrates that domesticated camels did not appear in Bible lands until after 1000 B.C. Yet the Bible seems to present Abraham and other patriarchs using camels much earlier.
We asked Dr. K. Martin Heide, of Philipps University Marburg, an expert on Semitic languages and cultures, to comment. Concerning the article in the journal Tel Aviv. Heide notes:
This article points to the fact that large scale exploitation of the dromedary (single-humped camel) started in Israel in the 10th century BC. The article does not exclude minor appearances of the dromedary (which left no traces in the archaeological record) in Israel earlier. The authors’ only reference to the patriarchs is, "This [i.e. the introduction of the dromedary in the southern Levant] together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant" (p. 277).
Heide continues:
Absence of evidence (of camel bones) is not evidence of absence (of the camel) in Israel in the 2nd millennium. Proving that something did not exist at some time and place in the past can only be done on certain premises because proof of its existence may be unearthed at some future date.
The Genesis narrator does not claim that the camel was in wide use in the 2nd millennium BC. To the contrary, while Abraham and Jacob had camels (probably Bactrian, or double-humped, camels that were available in Mesopotamia), Isaac, who stayed in Canaan most of his time, seems to have used no camels. In addition, the final retreat of Jacob with his family to Egypt was all done on donkeys.
All this points to a more complex history of the use of pack animals in the 2nd millennium BC.
Neither do we have to assume that they (some families only!) or the few people who may have used camels at that time buried their camels or deposited their bones at some special place for them to be found in our times. Only later, in the first millennium BC, when camels came to be exploited in the well-organized infrastructure of an established kingdom, can we expect to find archaeological footprints of their use.
For more information, readers can read Heide’s 62-page technical essay on camels here.
