Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

 Just over 200 years ago a revolution took place in an unlikely corner of north-east England.  Until 1825 – humans either had to carry their loads themselves or using the wheel, pull them or push them up and down dale.  If they were relatively affluent they might have had use of animals, such as horses or donkeys.  On water things were different.  Ships and boats had used manpower or wind power for millennia, but on land, if you didn’t have a ‘beast of burden’ or some kind of cart or barrow, then you simply had to carry everything yourself.

But all that changed in September 1825 when The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) became the world’s first standard-gauge, steam-hauled public railway.  While coal wagons were hauled by steam locomotives from the start, passenger-coaches were introduced in 1833.

From this moment on, wrote Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens, people became obsessed with the idea that machines and engines could be harnessed to whatever need we had.  This was truly the beginning of the ‘machine age’ and in terms of transportation, these two hundred years have seen the development of machine-powered transport such as motor cars (1885), aeroplanes (1904) and space travel (1961).

Animals had been used for thousands of years – though not perhaps for as long as many would imagine.  It is likely that the horse was first domesticated approximately six thousand years ago.

All this brings me to this week’s sidra, in which we find a detailed description of Eliezer’s mission to find a wife for Isaac.  Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, went from Canaan to Aram-Naharaim (Syria), a journey of approximately 1000 kilometres.  The text does not make clear if he walked or rode on animals – but the text does say that he took with him ten camels.

וַיִקַח הָעֶבֶד עֲשָרָה גְמַלִים מִגְמַלֵי אֲדֹנָיו

 וַיֵלֶךְ וְכָל-טוּב אֲדֹנָיו בְיָדוֹ וַיָקָם וַיֵלֶךְ אֶל-אֲרַם נַהֲרַיִם אֶל-עִיר נָחוֹר.

Then the servant left, taking with him ten of his master’s camels loaded with all kinds of good things from his master.  He set out for Aram-Naharaim and made his way to the city of Nahor. (Genesis 24:10)

These animals clearly play a significant part in the story because they are mentioned eighteen times throughout Genesis 24, compared to Eliezer’s seventeen references and Rebekah’s thirteen.

What is clear is that on the return journey, Rebekah rode on a camel, since it says towards the end of the chapter that on seeing Isaac for the first time:

וַתִּפֹּל מֵעַל הַגָּמָל.

She alighted from the camel (Genesis 24:64).

For a creature to be mentioned so many times in a single chapter, one might imagine that the animal was regularly used in antiquity for the purpose of carrying loads or transporting people but this does not seem to be the case.  In fact the only reference to this animal before Parashat Chayyeh Sarah, is in regard to Abraham’s prosperity in the court of Pharaoh –

וּלְאַבְרָם הֵיטִיב בַּעֲבוּרָהּ וַיְהִי-לוֹ צֹאן-וּבָקָר

 וַחֲמֹרִים וַעֲבָדִים וּשְׁפָחֹת וַאֲתֹנֹת וּגְמַלִּים

 And Pharaoh dealt well with Abram for Sarah’s sake; and Abram acquired sheep, oxen and he-asses, men-servants and maid-servants, she-asses and camels.  (Genesis 12: 16)

None of the above seems at all controversial, but the truth is that books have been written on this subject by biblical scholars and archaeologists.  While the biblical text presents camels as a domesticated animal during the patriarchal age (roughly 2000–1500 BCE), the archaeological evidence suggests that they were not widely used by humans in this part of the world until centuries later.

A 2014 Tel Aviv University study, using radiocarbon dating on camel bones from the Aravah Valley, found that domesticated camels were not present in the southern Levant until the late 10th century BCE.  The study found a notable rise in camel bones in the region corresponding with changes in copper smelting operations during that period, indicating a major shift in trade and transport practices.

This research supports critical scholars who believe that some sections of the Bible, including parts of Genesis, were composed around the time of the Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE) or even later.  By this time, according to these academics, the use of domesticated camels would have been exceedingly common, and so the camel as a domesticated beast of burden was written into the narrative.

Carol Meyers, professor of religious studies at Duke University, said that the inclusion of camels in these Genesis stories was simply to indicate to the reader that Abraham was a wealthy individual and she added, “It takes us away from asking is it factual and asking instead what does it mean?”

In a lengthy essay entitled The Domestication of the Camel written by Martin Heide in 2011, a similar hypothesis is put forward.

It is often referred to as a fact that camels were not domesticated until late in the 2nd millennium BCE, centuries after the Patriarchs were supposed to have lived.  Even the great William F. Albright, well known for his support of the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives, concluded that references to camel domestication in the book of Genesis are spurious: “Any mention of camels in the period of Abraham is a blatant anachronism, the product of later priestly tampering with the earlier texts in order to bring them more in line with altered social conditions”.  The Semites of the time of Abraham, he maintains, herded sheep, goats, and donkeys but not camels, for the latter had not yet been domesticated and did not really enter the orbit of Biblical history until about 1100–1000 BCE with the coming of the Midianites, the camel riding foes of Gideon.

Interestingly, by implication, the Book of Genesis appears to set camels apart from other animals owned by the patriarchs such as sheep, cattle and donkeys.  For example, Abraham receives camels as a personal gift from Pharaoh suggesting that they might have been particularly valuable and could not be acquired locally in Canaan.  Genesis also describes other journeys made by the patriarchs, for example when Jacob and his family left Mesopotamia and on that occasion too Rachel used a camel for her own personal transportation, just as Rebekah had done a generation earlier (Genesis 31:34).  Perhaps, the camel as a form of transport for humans was the Rolls-Royce of its day.  Someone with less status or less money could only afford a donkey as in the story of Balaam (Numbers 22:21).  In general it also appears that donkeys were the standard pack-animal used during the time of the patriarchs (see Genesis 34:28 and 42:26).

It should be said, that proving that something did not exist at some time and place in the past is every archaeologist’s nightmare because proof of its existence may, despite all claims to the contrary, be unearthed at some future date.  Nevertheless, as it stands, these findings contradict traditional Jewish theology – namely, that the entire Torah is of divine origin and was given in its entirety at Mt Sinai to the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu.

For those who see the Bible as historically reliable, the evidence of earlier domestication in other regions, together with how camels were employed in the Biblical narrative, fits within the broader understanding of trade and society at the time.  In general terms, this controversy highlights the complexity of using archaeology to confirm or challenge ancient texts.  Nonetheless, one is entitled to ask what response is offered by orthodox Jews when informed by scholars that it would have been impossible for Eliezer, Rebekah or Rachel to have used domesticated camels for the purpose of carrying goods or transporting humans.

Firstly, they would reject the entire premise.  They would argue that in spite of contradictory theories, there are more than enough records of working camels well before the time that it was supposed that Abraham lived (2000-1900 BCE).  For example, a rock carving from ancient Egypt depicts a camel being led by a man with a rope from the twenty third century BCE.

Secondly, it’s hard to make sweeping, grandiose arguments based on ancient camel bones.  Even if we haven’t found evidence of camel bones in Israel from the 19th century BCE, that doesn’t prove they weren’t there.  When it comes to the field of Biblical archaeology it’s important to point out that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  In truth, while camels appear in Genesis, they play a relatively small role in the early patriarchal history and whenever they are mentioned, they are listed last or near last among their possessions.

Archeological evidence indicates that dromedary camels were first domesticated in the south-eastern Arabian Peninsula around 3000 BCE.  Genetic evidence indicates that Bactrian camels (the two-humped species) were domesticated in China and Mongolia around 4000 to 3000 BCE.  (See R. Ji: Monophyletic Origin of Domestic Bactrian Camel and its Evolutionary Relationship with the Extant Wild Camel, August 2009.)

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 Abraham acquired his camels from the Egyptians.  Noting this, scholar Andrew Steinmann pointed out that those people mentioned in Genesis in relation to the use of camels were either descended from Abraham or people who were trading with the Egyptians.

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 and the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:25) possessed domesticated camels – again, most likely through their association with the Egyptians – completely consistent with the archaeological and genetic data.

 To support this position, archaeologist and biblical scholar David Spoede in a lengthy academic paper entitled, “Did Abraham Have Camels? (https://biblearchaeology.org/) wrote the following:

This article will review exactly what the Bible says about the camels of Abraham and the other patriarchs, examine the sceptics’ statements, and evaluate the archaeological evidence.  That evidence will show that the sceptics are decidedly wrong—that camels were domesticated thousands of years before Abraham.  Our evaluation of the archaeological evidence will start in the first millennium BC and look at each preceding millennium, region by region.

In support of this statement, the article provides detailed information where significant inscriptional and artefactual evidence has been found in Mesopotamia for the use of domesticated camels in the second millennium.

For example, a Sumerian love song from the 18th century BCE states, “O Dumuzi, make the milk of the camel yellow for me – the camel its milk is sweet etc.”  Additional linguistic evidence supports both domesticated Bactrian and dromedary camels in Sumer in the second millennium and old Babylonian texts (ca. 1894–1595 BCE) differentiate between the Bactrian camel and the dromedary, the latter being known as the “donkey of the sea-land” implying that it was domesticated like the donkey.

Domesticated camels in second-millennium Mesopotamia are also attested by numerous figurines of domesticated Bactrian camels and dromedaries found at Ur of the Chaldees – the birthplace of Abraham.  Similar figurines of both dromedaries and Bactrian camels were found at Nippur from the Kassite period (ca. 1595–1155 BCE).  These camels were almost certainly domesticated since wild camels were not native to Mesopotamia.

In summary, wrote Spoede, convincing evidence exists that domesticated Bactrian and dromedary camels existed in Mesopotamia in the second millennium during the time of Abraham.  Since neither species was native to Mesopotamia, their domestication must have occurred in their native regions some significant time earlier.

Let me conclude by quoting Nahum Sarna’s Understanding Genesis:

The fathers were essentially ass nomads, not camel nomads.  The true nomadic Bedouins are men of the desert, since the camel allows them to roam freely over vast distances.  The use of the ass allows no such freedom, and the ass was the regular beast of burden of the patriarchs according to the scriptural accounts.  Abraham set out for Mt Moriah on an ass, Shimon and Levi found asses but not camels, among the loot of Shechem, Joseph’s brothers mounted asses to go down to Egypt to buy food, it was not camels that Joseph sent to transport his father from Canaan, and there is no reference to camels among the animals that the hard pressed Egyptians sold to Joseph in return for food.  It is true that the camel is mentioned in connection with Abraham, Jacob and Joseph.  It is also true that camel bones have been found in the ruins of a house at Mari (Syria) which dates from about 2400 BCE, and that an eighteenth century tablet from the city of Alalakh includes the camel among a list of domesticated animals.

While Sarna also acknowledges that camels do not figure in Egyptian texts or art from the times of the Pharaohs, there seems nonetheless enough evidence that camels were used during the Patriarchal period either for carrying heavy loads or for human transportation.

For many orthodox Jews, these discussions, concerning the domestication of camels, are regarded as a total irrelevance with regard to their belief in Torah Mi-Sinai.  Nothing whatsoever could sway such people from their fundamental belief in the divine origin of the Torah and the veracity of every word, every sentence and every story.  This is particularly true of the Chareidi and Chasidic world.  But for modern-orthodox Jews, many of whom have had the opportunity to receive a university education and therefore have come to respect the processes of rigorous inquiry when undertaken by highly respected academics, would most certainly be troubled by scientific evidence which contradicts the Biblical text.  For this cohort, I would not say that their faith is dependent on academic research that supports the Biblical version of events, but it most certainly offers them an additional level of authentication for their belief in the integrity of the Torah as the foundation of all Jewish belief and practice.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi David Freedm