Camel Bones and Jerusalem: Archeology Shows Bible Written Late, Full of Errors

[Judi Lynn]

Camel Bones and Jerusalem: Archeology Shows Bible Written Late, Full of Errors
Posted on Feb 8, 2014
By Juan Cole

A new paper by Israeli archeologists Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, (pdf) posted at the University of Tel Aviv web site, is bad news for biblical literalists and far right wing Israeli nationalists who use the Bible for support.

The Hebrew Bible’s oldest chapters– Genesis, Exodus, and even Judges purport to discuss events thousands of years ago. The custom in Western biblical scholarship is to date Abraham to e.g. 2000 B.C. This dating is based on nothing more than counting generations (“begats”) backward and assigning an arbitrary number of years to each generation. In fact, Genesis is replete with myths and assertions of people living hundreds of years, and was only historicized in this way by 19th century positivists.

But here is proof that the Bible was written late and projects later developments into the distant past: it alleges that people had domesticated camels four millennia ago in what is now Israel. And that assertion, folks, is simply not true. That is the finding of Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef.

E.g. Genesis 24: 64 says, “Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel.” If this encounter happened circa 2026 BC, it was happening a thousand years before anyone was riding camels.

More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/camel_bones_and_jerusalem_archeology_shows_bible_full_of_errors_20140208

[Turbineguy]

1. Camels,

dinosaurs, what does it matter?

[Shrike47]

2. How can they be sure? I'd rather ride than walk and I'm not unique.

Humans have probably been trying to ride things for millennia.

[DetlefK]

6. Well, how about you try riding a mile on a cow?

Camels and horses are wild beasts: They had to be domesticated first and bred for specific roles.
e.g. The horses the egyptians used were simply too small for riding long distances and were used for chariots instead.

The point of this discovery is: There were no camels at that time in Israel and Egypt, only farther to the east in Persia and what later became the arab countries.

Quote from article:
"Although it was likely based on previous oral tales, the Bible probably wasn’t written down in something like its present form until the Babylonian exile, 586-539 B.C. When those scribes reworked the folk tales of the Canaanites, they projected sixth-century BC realities back into the past. Thus, they had characters riding camels before they were domesticated. Riding a camel was taken for granted in 580 BC."

Likewise, the earliest Jews weren't monotheistic but worshipped the canaanite goddess Ashera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah beside Jehovah. That phase was also lost when they rewrote their history.

[thesquanderer]

7. According to the link, there is other evidence of when camels were domesticated

so it's basically that the timelines don't jibe, indicating that the bible was written later than people say it was. It would be finding Volkswagens in paintings purported to be created by Da Vinici, it would indicate that the paintings weren't drawn when people claimed they were.

[wolfie001]

3. It's pretty much all bullshit......

.....when you come to the conclusion that the aboriginals in Australia slept through the "Great Flood".

[Shrike47]

4. Australia is way far away, full of weird critters, and doesn't count.

[Demeter]

5. I always wondered if

a translation error, changing months to years, accounted for the longevity numbers for Methuselah and such. After all, they were using the moon cycles. The climate in the Middle East may not have varied as dramatically as it does further north, where solar years are much more identifiable and star patterns much more variable....

[JDPriestly]

8. Interesting information based on DNA analysis.

There appears to be DNA evidence that Jews and Palestinians are related.
This article reviews various studies of Jewish DNA origins.

Palestinians
Further information: Palestinian people#DNA and genetic studies

Many genetic studies have demonstrated that most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians and other Levantines, like the Druze[11][12][16][38] and Bedouin,[11][12] are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians or European Jews are to non-Jewish Europeans or Africans.[11][12][87] One DNA study by Nebel and colleagues found genetic evidence in support of historical records that "part, or perhaps the majority" of Muslim Palestinians descend from "local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD".[87] They also found substantial genetic overlap between Muslim Palestinians and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, though with some significant differences that might be explainable by the geographical isolation of the Jews and by immigration of Arab tribes in the first millennium.[87]

. . . .

Inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula

According to a 2008 study by Adams[90] the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula have an average of 20% of Sephardi Jewish ancestry with significant geographical variations ranging from 0% on Minorca to 36.3% in southern Portugal (the term Sephardi is used here in its strict sense to mean the Jews settled in the Iberian peninsula before the expulsions in and after 1492). Part of this admixture might also, according to the authors, be of Neolithic origin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews

The article provides summaries of many studies done on descendants of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. There definitely are certain DNA strains that tend to be present in people who identify themselves as Jewish (and people who do not so identify themselves).

Some of the studies suggest that the Jewish people may have originated in the area where the Kurds and Armenians are from. The studies frequently suggest similarities between Jewish DNA and that of people in the Mediterranean area and in parts of the Middle East as well, and especially with regard to the mitochondria (DNA from the mother) of European Ashkenazi Jews, of Europe.

I have very little knowledge of genetics so I hope that, if I have misunderstood the Wikipedia article, someone will correct me. I tried to summarize the article simply because it is very long, but I suspect that due to my ignorance on this topic, I may have botched up my summary. If so, I apologize and hope someone will correct any errors in my post.

[Vashta Nerada]

9. The bible is bogus and I'm glad my field, archaeology, is showing that.