Israeli archeologists’ discovery suggests the Bible is wrong about camels

EndrTimes:

Here's a scoop.  Yet, another attempt (in a long sequence by so-called experts and scholars) to diminish the authenticity and veracity of the Holy Bible.  In vain, they will continue to challenge the Word of God; but will fail in convincing the faithful to abandon their Faith.

Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University claim camels came to biblical lands centuries after the time of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph; scholars debate impact on historical accuracy of the Bible

 By Carol Kuruvilla / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 1:25 PM



FoggyImages/Getty Images/Flickr Open
Archeologists analyzed camel bones found in the Aravah Valley in Israel and in the Wadi Finan in Jordan.


New archeological evidence is throwing cold water on the biblical image of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph riding camels through the desert.

A team of Israeli archaeologists has studied the oldest-known camel bones from this ancient period and the results are in — camels reportedly started plodding around the eastern Mediterranean region centuries after the Bible tells us they did.

RELATED: DEAD SEA SCROLLS PUBLISHED ONLINE

After analyzing the facts from radioactive-carbon dating, Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University claim the domesticated animal arrived on the biblical scene near the 10th century B.C. Scholars believe Abraham lived at least six centuries before that, Time reports.

Still, stories about the Jewish patriarchs contain more than 20 references to the domesticated camel, according to The New York Times. In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant traveled on his master’s camels.


RELATED: BILL NYE ‘THE SCIENCE GUY’ DEBATES CREATION MUSEUM FOUNDER

Some scholars took these anachronisms as proof that the Bible was written centuries after the events that they talk about.



Frans Lemmens/Getty Images
Camels are mentioned numerous times in the early chapters of the Bible.

Stories about camels in the Bible “do not encapsulate memories from the second millennium,” said Noam Mizrahi, an Israeli biblical scholar, “but should be viewed as back-projections from a much later period.”

RELATED: ANCIENT HEBREW TABLET ON DISPLAY IN JERUSALEM

For the study, Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef dug through the remains of an ancient copper smelting camp in Israel’s Aravah Valley and in Jordan’s Wadi Finan. The bones they found deep under the ground belonged to wild animals that the ancients used to hunt for meat. The domesticated camels could be identified by signs in their leg bones that indicated they carried heavy packages.

The research suggests that camels were introduced to the region suddenly, perhaps as Egyptians traveled along the Mediterranean trade routes.

RELATED: EXPERTS REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF 'NOAH'S ARK' CLAIM

But Bible defenders claim that even though the findings challenge the ancient text’s time line, they do not detract from the overall spiritual message.

“If the biblical writers are not interested in the facts, but rather in getting a message across, then people of faith can concentrate, instead of trying to verify every last item in the Bible, on what the overall message of the story is, not whether it is historically true,” said Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.


Source
.