News outlets have been reporting the paper, published in January, which appeared to prove that archaeological discoveries have shown the Bible to be totally wrong about camels.
Commenting on the widely reported Tel Aviv University document, Dr K. Martin Heide of Philipps University Marburg, an expert on Semitic languages and cultures, has made some interesting statements in support of the biblical narrative.
‘Large-scale exploitation of the dromedary started in Israel in the 10th century BC. Minor appearances of the dromedary (which left no traces in the archaeological record) in Israel earlier, were not excluded.
‘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.
What Genesis says
‘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.
‘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-organised infrastructure of an established kingdom, can we expect to find archaeological footprints of their use.’
