You are the one who cited the Bible so I assume you meant it as evidence.

I do accept the Bible as evidence. It is a collection of ancient documents. If you reject the Bible because of bias you have to reject ALL ancient documents because they are all, without exception, biased. Do you accept Egyptian history as recorded by the Egyptians? Really?

Pointing out the the bible mentions pack animals isn't evidence of anything except that..... the bible mentions pack animals, and since we've agreed that pack animals are domesticated, then the bible must be wrong about mentioning domesticated camels before they were actually domesticated.

You brought up the issue of the difference between use and domestication, if you recall. Even a brain dead rock could see the contradiction you created here.

Claiming the use of domesticated animals hundreds of years before they were domesticated isn't bias notready, it's error.

Could other ancient documents contain errors? Sure. Probably that's a big part of why I don't base something like a belief in a universe creating, all powerful deity on them.

My post was about archeological evidence - you are the one who cited the Bible as if it was evidence which I didn't understand because the thread is supposed to be about how archeological evidence shows Bible error. But my post was about that - a.e. of domestication doesn't prove first use. So the point is some camel bones found in the 9th century B.C. says nothing even about whether Abraham had camels that were domesticated in Palestine, and even less about whether he could have got them through trade or domesticated them himself. Do you really think the camel bones they found are the first ever domesticated camels? And the Bible nowhere, AFAIK, says anything about who domesticated what.

He didn't do this.

Christianity Today responds:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...tic-camel.html

Also, the published paper mentioned:

http://www.academia.edu/2065314/_The...g_2011_331-384

The first two paragraphs of his "tentative conclusion":

"The archaeological evidence points to the fact that the Bactrian camel was domesticated before the dromedary and was put into use by the middle of the 3rd millennium or earlier. The gradual spread of the Bactrian camel from the areas east of the Zagros Mountains to the west seems to have reached the Mesopotamian civilization sporadically by the middle of the 3rd millennium and more frequently at the end of the 3rd / beginning of the 2nd millennium.

"The “camel” (ָּג ָמל gāmāl) in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel. Abram is seen as having employed camels for long-distance journeys in north-south direction, very probably commencing in upper Mesopotamia. From there, he migrated to Canaan and moved further down to Egypt (Gen 12:5.9.16). The same can be said for the opposite direction, from Canaan to upper Mesopotamia and back again (Gen 24:10–64). His son Isaac, who dwelt all his life in Canaan, is not portrayed as having used any camels. His grandson Jacob, however, who spent a considerable time of his life in upper Mesopotamia, did not only use, but bred a small herd of camels (Gen 30:43; 31:17; 32:7.15). After he had settled down in Canaan again, camels are not seen as belonging to his moveable property any more. Albright’s dictum that “any mention of camels in the period of Abraham is a blatant anachronism” (Albright, 1942, 96) is questionable. The archaeological and inscriptional evidence allows at least the domesticated Bactrian camel to have existed at Abraham’s time. In the daily life of the patriarchs, however, the camel played a minor role. The later Hebrews never adopted it and regarded it as unclean (Lev 11:4)."

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post...t.aspx#Article

http://www.reasons.org/articles/q-a-...tion-of-camels

Q&A: Does the Bible Misrepresent the Domestication of Camels?
August 10, 2015
By Dr. Fazale Rana

A Facebook friend named Oliver recently asked for help addressing an unusual challenge to biblical inerrancy. A skeptical friend of Oliver’s claimed that the Bible misrepresents the timing of camel domestication. He wrote, “If the Bible can’t even get that right, how can I believe the rest of what it says?”

I admit I had not heard of this particular objection until Oliver brought it to my attention.
It turns out to be a relatively recent challenge. In late 2013, two researchers from Tel Aviv University reported that domesticated camels first appeared in Israel around 930 BC.1 Yet Genesis mentions domesticated camels several times. For example, in Genesis 12, Pharaoh gifts Abraham (then Abram) with camels and later, in Genesis 24, Rebekah offers to draw water for a camel caravan. The camel use described in Genesis would have taken place around 2000 to 1500 BC.

Skeptics have been quick to note that the mention of camels in Genesis is a significant discrepancy. It indicates, they say, that this portion of Scripture was written at a much later date than previously thought and not by Moses, as tradition has it. According to Israeli biblical scholar Noam Mizrahi, the camel stories in Genesis “should be viewed as back-projections from a much later period.”2 Mizrahi continued, “These traditions were indeed reformulated in relatively late periods after camels had been integrated into the Near Eastern economic system.”3

The Israeli archeologists didn’t undertake their work on camel domestication in order to test the Bible’s reliability. They simply wanted to determine when dromedary camels (the one-humped variety) were first domesticated in the Levant. The domestication of camels permitted long distance trade across the desert for the first time, connecting Arabia with India. This connectivity had huge social and economic impacts.

To determine when camels were first domesticated in Israel, the researchers focused their excavations on copper production sites in the Arabah Valley of Israel. They reasoned that the timing of camel domestication should be marked by evidence for major changes in the production practices in the region because the people would have had beasts of burden available to carry supplies and mined copper. They discovered the sudden appearance of camels at that site in layers that date to around 930 BC. The anatomical features of the camels’ leg bones show evidence that they were used to carry heavy loads. The researchers noted similar evidence from other archeological sites and concluded that this was the time camels became domesticated in the Levant. Camel remains have been recovered in layers earlier than 930 BC, but the researchers argued that these camels were most likely wild animals hunted as a food source.

From my vantage point, the researchers make a compelling case that camels were first domesticated in Israel several hundred years after the camel use recorded in Genesis. But does this mean that the Bible is unreliable? Hardly.

Archeological evidence indicates that dromedary camels were first domesticated in the southeastern Arabian Peninsula around 3000 BC. Genetic evidence indicates that Bactrian camels (the two-humped species) were domesticated in China and Mongolia around 4000 to 3000 BC.4 These dates mean that it is possible that the patriarchs counted camels amongst their livestock, even if these animals were not widely used throughout the Levant between 2000 and 1500 BC. This explanation becomes even more plausible when one considers that Abram acquired his camels from the Egyptians (Genesis 12:16). According to scholar Andrew Steinmann, all additional mentions of camels in Genesis refer to people related to Abraham or people who were associated with the Arabian Desert (the location of dromedary camel domestication).

The Bible never “claims” that domesticated camel use was widespread in the Levant at the time of the patriarchs, just that Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph possessed domesticated camels—again, most likely through their association with the Egyptians—completely consistent with the archeological and genetic data.

"The stories of the patriarchs are packed with camels, usually herds of camels; but as in the story of Joseph's sale by his brothers into slavery (Genesis 37:25), camels are also described as beasts of burden used in caravan trade. We now know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE. And an even more telling detail - the camel caravan carrying 'gum, balm, and myrrh,' in the Joseph story - reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyerian empire in the eight-seventh centuries BCE.
Indeed, excavations at the site of Tell Jemmeh in the southern coastal plain of Israel - a particularly important entrepot on the main caravan route between Arabia and the Mediterranean - reveal a dramatic increase in the number of camel bones in the seventh century. ... Indeed, precisely at this time, Assyrian sources describe camels being used as pack animals in caravans. It was only then that camels became a common enough feature of the landscape to be included as an incidental detail in a literary narrative."
...
"So the combination of camels, Arabian goods, Philistines, and Gerar - as well as other places and nations mentioned in the patriarchal stories in Genesis - are highly significant. All the clues point to a time of composition many centuries after the time in which the Bible reports the lives of the patriarchs took place. These and other anachronisms suggest an intensive period of writing the patriarchal narratives in the eight and seventh centuries BCE."

-- The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein and Silberman, pp. 37-38

If there is interest, maybe we could explore the other pieces of the puzzle, but to be sure, camels are just one piece of a puzzle that all together comes together to give the impression of a much later date than the text itself gives for the patriarch stories. Even on its face, the rebuttal by Rana above does not address the camels, particularly when taken together with the goods the camels were supposedly carrying, and the timeline when those items were actually traded on camels, as confirmed by other sources, including archaeology.

I am really not sure how posing these questions serves in your best interest. Any texts from ancient history are unreliable, by comparison.

In fact, the further back you go the more unreliable the text is going to be. Consider the unreliability as a direct function of time: much like predictions about the future increase in unreliability the further into the future one tries to predict.

I can also put forth the philosophical argument that the past and the future don't exist, and that there is only the present moment: in which case, any text from X long ago is only relevant to the extent that it enriches my present moment. It doesn't, so it's irrelevant.

This is a really stupid philosophical argument. Given that premise, every text is irrelevant, because as soon as it is relevant, it's in the past, which makes
it irrelevant.

No. Please re-read.

Under the philosophical lens it is relevant: only to the extent that it enriches my present moment.

Since it doesn't. It's not relevant (to me).

It isn't a philosophical argument. The fact that the bible is dubious as a source is not bolstered by the fact that other ancient sources are also dubious.

If you claim you are an honest person, and I claim you are actually a thief because of A, B, and C, you cannot clear your name by pointing out that loads of other people are thieves.

Not that I have any reason to think you are a thief, of course.

I'm sure the Bible has some historical inaccuracies but how would the camel critics explain this?





Third millenium BC Egyptian petroglyph of a man leading a dromedary camel.
The entire carving was dated to the 6th Dynasty of Egypt, ca. 2345-2181 BC, based on the inscription, the style, and the patina ( Ripinsky 1985).

I don't like the phrasing of the question:
Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?
1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,
2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process,
3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.
Human beings have not developed over millions of years--they've only been around for a few hundred thousand, so 1) and 2) are out. Obviously, 3) is wrong too.
The polling numbers are improving:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/be...n-origins.aspx

I am not remotely qualified to comment. I have unfortunately found it very difficult to wade through this stuff, because frankly "slam-dunk evidence" of one kind or another is constantly being produced by people who seem to have experience and credentials to back them up, but then the old guard point out that their evidence is tainted, or their reasoning is flawed, and that they are in fact tenured cranks who do nothing but churn out phony slam-dunk evidence in favor of the bible / Christianity.

So I guess attempting to wade into this particular issue, I would say that the fact that dromedaries had been domesticated somewhere at some time is not really relevant to the fact that there is a surprising lack of evidence for domesticated camels in the time/place where they are reported to have been in some bible stories. And it makes sense that later authors would overlook this, since by the time it looks like the old testament writing really was in its prime, they had been domesticated for hundreds of years in that place.

Scientists don't accept carbon dating as reliable

Which ones?

A better question: Over what range of dates and to what level of precision is the claim being made?