Does a Camel Bone Disprove the Bible?
Fox News, Yahoo News, Forbes, Duke University, and of course the New York Times have jumped on a story from Tel Aviv University that claims they have finally found evidence that the Bible made a mistake. Could be they think Bill Nye the Science Guy needs a little help. They have found camel bones in the ruins of an old copper mine that date back to Solomon's day about 1000 BC but none in strata older. They conclude that camels had not been domesticated in Israel before that time. Any bones found in earlier strata had to have been wild camels, or so they say. The Bible says that Abraham had camels centuries earlier. Should we trust them?
Before you throw your Bibles away, could we not consider some of the holes in their theories? First, notice how this evidence confirms the Bible account that Solomon in that very time mined copper to build the first temple. Second, real archaeologists have established that camels were tamed in Arabia after 3,000 BC and definitely by 2,000 BC. Camels were a food source, then for milking, then for plowing and hauling and finally for riding. What were the camel bones doing at the mining camps? Maybe the miners just liked camel steaks. Maybe there was no need for camels in that region until they began mining under Solomon's commission. Maybe the Arabian kept the camel technology to themselves before that time. Maybe the earlier bones had disintegrated before becoming fossils.
How about the other archaeology evidence: an Alalakh text (18th century BC) has a ration list including "one measure of fodder -- camel" which implies its use as a pack animal. Camel bones were excavated at Mari in an early house dating back to 2400 BC. An 18th century BC Byblos relief depicts a kneeling camel used as a beast of burden.
The truth is then that Abraham indeed was given camels while in Egypt and his children then naturally would have them also. Nothing dug up in the Arava valley that belongs to the 10th century BC can disprove that.
Our unbelieving journalists and Ivy League professors are losing their credibility really fast. They are so eager to find any reason to deny their righteous Almighty Creator, that they are gullible and foolish and will believe anything if it attacks the Bible or supports Darwinian evolution. They are selective instead of objective in their science because they have a vested interest in not believing: they prefer to live immoral lives without the fear of God. It is like a pharmaceutical company doing research on medicine that claims great curative powers. If all the schools doing the testing are funded by Big Pharma, we suspect that the results might be compromised. If all the schools doing the research on the age of the earth or the fossils of the dinosaurs, know that they will be funded better by an establishment that expects millions of years, and at the same time they believe there is no God to condemn them for lying about it, it is a no-brainer: find some way to justify millions of years! Why do we place so much faith in such reprobates or the degrees they place after their names?
