Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk>]

Peter wrote:
Joel, while I agree with you in looking to inspiration, I disagree with 
you that it is only on this basis that we can know any details about 
Abraham. Even if we leave inspiration, faith etc out of the equation, in 
Genesis (let's limit this discussion to chapter 12 and following) we 
still have a document which purports to be the ancient history of the 
people of Israel, from Abraham onwards. I agree that (apart from faith) 
we cannot know for certain how well this document corresponds to the 
actual facts about the past. But nothing significant in it has been 
shown to be wrong e.g. by archaeology, and indeed the general picture of 
life in Canaan and Egypt has been confirmed. The normal scholarly 
approach to ancient documents of this type, where the stories are not 
full of supernatural elements, is to accept them as probably based 
heavily on truth although also embellished. For example, in the 19th 
century it was fashionable to reject the Iliad as myth, but then 
Schliemann found Troy, and archaeology has confirmed that the general 
picture of the Aegean at that time; so now the Iliad is understood as 
generally historical, although embellished in its details. (With the 
Acts of the Apostles there has been a similar story.) If Genesis were 
considered on the same basis as other such documents, chapters 1-11 
would be understood as legends with little basis in truth, but chapters 
12-50 would be accepted as generally true, although no doubt such 
matters as Abraham's and Sarah's age when Isaac was born would be 
rejected as exaggeration. This is not speculation but sound historical 
method, in a context where are unconfirmed historical records. It seems 
to me that scholars only reject Genesis as totally unhistorical because 
they are overreacting to fundamentalist claims that every last word in 
it is infallibly true. But there really should be a middle way in which 
Genesis is treated like any other ancient document.
END QUOTE

I agree. There tends to be an overexaggerated criticism
towards biblical texts that is not shared with other
more dubious sources.

It is more than a little prejudiced to discount a text
outright just because it belongs to the hebrew cannon.

I see no scholarly reason to discount Genesis 12 onwards
outright and as a text it seems to me to be rich with
invaluable information about a multitude of nations.

One should also ask oneself why would the Arab world
have been so easily convinced by Mohammed that Abraham
was their ancient patriarch if they did not already
have this well established tradition? This would appear
to be a rather convincingly strong extra biblical
testimony to Abraham's existence.