The
Patriarchal Age is the era of the three biblical Patriarchs,
AbrahamAbraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomite peoples, as described in the book of Genesis. He is widely regarded as the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims....
,
IsaacIsaac or Ishak ) was the only child of Abraham and Sarah, and the father of Jacob and Esau, described in the Hebrew Bible. He is regarded as one of the three patriarchs of the Jewish people...
and
JacobJacob , also known as Israel , was the third Biblical patriarch and ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel, named after ten of his twelve sons, as well as the two sons of his son Joseph.The Bible says...
, according to the narratives of Genesis 12-50. (These chapters also contain the history of
JosephJoseph may refer to:People with the name Joseph:* Joseph , about the first name* Joseph , for people with the last name Joseph* Joe, shortened name* Joseph , the 11th son of Jacob...
, although Joseph is not one of the Covenantal Patriarchs).
The bible contains an intricate pattern of chronologies from the births of Adam, the first man, to the reigns of the kings of ancient
IsraelThe Kingdom of Israel ) was one of the successor states to the older United Monarchy . It existed roughly from the 930s BC until about the 720s BC, when the kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire...
and
JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
, at which point the bible makes contact with known and dateable history.
The
Patriarchal Age is the era of the three biblical Patriarchs,
AbrahamAbraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomite peoples, as described in the book of Genesis. He is widely regarded as the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims....
,
IsaacIsaac or Ishak ) was the only child of Abraham and Sarah, and the father of Jacob and Esau, described in the Hebrew Bible. He is regarded as one of the three patriarchs of the Jewish people...
and
JacobJacob , also known as Israel , was the third Biblical patriarch and ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel, named after ten of his twelve sons, as well as the two sons of his son Joseph.The Bible says...
, according to the narratives of Genesis 12-50. (These chapters also contain the history of
JosephJoseph may refer to:People with the name Joseph:* Joseph , about the first name* Joseph , for people with the last name Joseph* Joe, shortened name* Joseph , the 11th son of Jacob...
, although Joseph is not one of the Covenantal Patriarchs).
The bible contains an intricate pattern of chronologies from the births of Adam, the first man, to the reigns of the kings of ancient
IsraelThe Kingdom of Israel ) was one of the successor states to the older United Monarchy . It existed roughly from the 930s BC until about the 720s BC, when the kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian Empire...
and
JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
, at which point the bible makes contact with known and dateable history. From these it is possible to calculate that
AbrahamAbraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomite peoples, as described in the book of Genesis. He is widely regarded as the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims....
, the first of the Patriarchs, was born 1,948 years after the Creation, corresponding to 1812 BC.
Prior to the 19th century there was little interest in questioning the bibilical chronology, but with the growth of
biblical criticismBiblical criticism is "the study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning and discriminating judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were...
and the wide popularity of the
documentary hypothesisThe documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...
- the theory that the Pentateuch, including the Book of Genesis, was composed not by
MosesMoses was, according to biblical texts, a religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew Moses was, according to biblical texts, a...
but by unknown authors living at various times between 950 and 450 BC - it became increasingly urgent both to supporters of the traditional view (i.e., that Genesis was an accurate historical record written by Moses under the direct guidance of God) and the new (the documentary hypothesis) to find concrete arguments to support their respective views. Thus was born
biblical archaeologyFor the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see The Bible and history....
, a form of archaeology different from all others in that it sought, not to discover and interpret mute evidence, but to validate (or for some, invalidate) a written book.
The most eminent of early biblical archaeologists was
William F. AlbrightWilliam Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, linguist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...
, who believed that he had identified the Patriarchal age in the period 2100-1800 BC, the Intermediate Bronze Age, the interval between two periods of highly developed urban culture in ancient
CanaanCanaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt...
. Albright argued that he had found evidence of the sudden collapse of the previous Early Bronze Age culture, and ascribed this to the invasion of migratory pastoral nomads from the northeast whom he identified with the Amorites mentioned in Mesopotamian texts; according to Albright, Abraham was a wandering Amorite who migrated from the north into the central highlands of Canaan and the Negev with his flocks and followers as the Canaanite city-states collapsed. Albright, E. A. Speiser and Cyrus Gordon argued that although the texts described by the documentary hypothesis were written centuries after the Patriarchal age, archaeology had shown that they were nevertheless an accurate reflection of the conditions of the 2nd millennium BC: "We can assert with full confidence that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were actual historical individuals."
But in the last quarter of the 20th century Albright's interpretation became increasingly untenable. Archaeology, far from reinforcing the reliability of Genesis, has demonstrated that it is rife with anachronisms: for example, the Philistines whom Abraham encounters did not settle in the Middle East until the 12th century BC, camels were not in general use as beasts of burden until the 7th century BC, and the genealogies of the Patriarchs and the nations supposedly derived from them represent "a colorful human map of the ancient Near East from the unmistakable viewpoint of the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries BC". Contemporary archaeologists have given up the attempt to find a historical reality behind the Patriarchs as individuals, and it is now generally accepted that "it is not possible to demonstrate the historical existence of the figures in Genesis."