![]() A February 10 report in the New York Times was entitled “Camels Had No Business in Genesis.” The report cites the claim of Tel Aviv University archaeologists Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen that “camels probably had little or no role in the lives of such early Jewish patriarchs as Abraham, Jacob and Joseph.” The view is based on a lack of camel bones dating to that period. This is the old discredited argument from silence. You won't find the bones of bison in the American West either though millions of them lived there in the past. In fact, there is archaeological evidence for camels in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria dating to before the time of Abraham. (See K.A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament, Chicago: InterVarsity, 1966, pp. 79-80) Since Abraham was from Mesopotamia (Ur and Haran), it is not difficult to see that he brought the camels with him when he relocated to Canaan. Further, the Bible doesn't say that camels were used widely in Canaan. It doesn't say that the Philistines used them, for example. The word “camel” appears 25 times in Genesis, and in each case it refers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Dr. Andrew Steinmann, professor of Hebrew at Concordia University-Chicago, points out that the error is on the part of the Tel Aviv University archaeologists in misreading the Bible. They are assuming that the Bible is saying that camel use was widespread in Canaan during the days of Abraham, but it doesn't say that (“Does the Camel Study Really Prove,” Breitbart.com, Feb. 17, 2014). Skeptical archaeologists have often tried to discredit the Bible on the basis of silence from archaeological digs and extra-biblical sources. This was a prominent method used by liberals in the early part of the 19th century. Since, for example, they had no extra-biblical evidence then of writing prior to about 1000 B.C., they claimed that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch, and since there was then no extra-biblical evidence for the Hittites or Ur or the Philistines or King David, they must not have existed. In these cases and countless others, archaeology has subsequently provided extra-biblical evidence and the argument from silence has fallen apart. Yet silence is still trotted out to discredit the Bible. One must give the skeptics credit for persistence. It reminds me of what a positive-minded woman once replied when challenged as to what good thing could be said for the devil. She said, “He’s always on the job.” (Friday Church News Notes, February 21, 2014, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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