The stories of the patriarchs are the founding myths of Judaism. It’s the saga of four generations – Abraham, his son Isaac, grandson Jacob and Jacob’s twelve sons who founded the twelve tribes of Israel. Clues in the stories indicate that they are nowhere near as old as the events they claim to represent. They’re a national myth like the Iliad or Aeneid.
The patriarchs aren’t referenced in the parts of the Hebrew Bible that predate the Babylonian exile (with the possible exception of Hosea). The story of Abraham travelling to Canaan from Chaldea mirrored the return of the Israelites and Judeans from Babylonia in 539 BCE. Chaldea was the name for the land just south of Babylon.
Other early tales in the Bible were blatantly inserted to insult Israel and Judah’s neighbours in a churlish way. We are told that Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked, and is covered by his embarrassed sons. When he awakes he is angry and curses his youngest son and his grandson, who happens to be called Canaan, the name of the land the Israelites conquer in the Book of Joshua. Noah says, ‘Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers’ (Genesis 9.25).
The names ascribed to many of the descendants of Noah are just the names of the cities, lands and people of the ancient Near East – Israel and Judah’s neighbours like Sidon, Nimrod, Elam and Asshur. Similar insults appear in the biblical narrative aimed against other neighbouring states of Israel and Judah. Lot’s two daughters get him drunk and have sex with him. The children born from this incestuous union are named Ben-ammi and Moab, the originators of the neighbouring kingdoms of Ammon and Moab (Genesis 19.30-38).
The reverse is true of the two figures who represent the kingdoms of the biblical writers – Jacob / Israel and his son Judah. The Bible authors wrote of Jacob (Israel),
‘Peoples shall serve you,
nations bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers.’ (Genesis 27.29)
Judah is likewise described by the following,
‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from his descendants,
so long as tribute is brought to him
and the obedience of the nations is his.’ (Genesis 49.10)
A big ask for two small insignificant kingdoms. These lines show that the text was written many centuries later than the events portrayed, the kingdom of Judah was at its peak in the 7th century BCE.
Several details in the tales of the patriarchs indicate that they were written many centuries after the events described. Camels are mentioned numerous times, such as in the tale of Joseph’s sale by his brothers into slavery (Genesis 37.25). We’re also told that Abraham owned many camels (Genesis 24.35). We know from archaeology that camels weren’t domesticated as beasts of burden until late second millennium BCE and weren’t used widely in the Near East until well after 1000 BCE.
The story of Joseph relates that the camel caravan was carrying ‘gum, balm and myrrh’ which represents the Arabian trade that flourished under the Arabians in 8th-7th centuries BCE. The Bible also tells us that the Israelite patriarch Abraham originally came from ‘Ur of the Chaldeans’ (Genesis 11.31). Chaldea was a kingdom in southern Mesopotamia that existed between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE.
There is also several mentions of the patriarchs’ interaction with the Philistines, such as when Isaac meets their king. The Philistines were a group of people from the Aegean / eastern Mediterranean who first settled in Canaan sometime after 1200 BCE. Isaac visits the Philistine king in the city of Gerar (Genesis 26.1), which only became an important centre in 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
The stories also mention Aramaeans, Deuteronomy calls Jacob ‘a wandering Aramaean’ (Deuteronomy 26.5). Rachel, Jacob’s wife and Joseph’s mother, is the daughter of Laban the Aramaean (Genesis 29.9). Aramaeans aren’t mentioned as a distinct ethnic group in Near Eastern texts until 1100 BCE, they became an important political entity north of Israel in the 9th century BCE. Anomalies in the biblical narrative like these show the stories are nowhere near as old as they pretend to be.
The tale of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac was probably created to project the claim of centrality of the Jerusalem temple back into a mythical past. In the story Yahweh tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, but a ram is caught in a thicket nearby and Abraham sacrifices that instead. We’re told that all this happened on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22.2).
The only other place in the Bible where Mount Moriah appears is in 2 Chronicles, where we’re told that ‘Solomon began to build the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.’ (2 Chronicles 3.1). The story allowed the priests of the Jerusalem temple to claim that sacrifice to Yahweh at the site went all the way back to the time of Abraham.
The tales of the patriarchs also contain ‘predictions’ by Yahweh that relate to the story of the Exodus (Genesis 15.13-21). This suggests they were written no earlier than that story. The same basic message of Yahweh promising the land of Canaan to Abraham mirrors the story of the conquest under Joshua.
The stories of the patriarchs also contain references to monolatry, such as when Jacob tells his household to ‘rid themselves of the foreign gods’ (Genesis 35.2). This fits with the strict Yahwism of later times and the views of the priests who wrote the Bible, but is a million miles away from the reality of a polytheistic Canaan in the times when the myths of the patriarchs are set.
The Bible and Mythology 