Each of George Athas and Rob Acosta has asserted that my theory of the
Patriarchal narratives fails to take account of climate change, and that
greater
Canaan in the Patriarchal Age was much nicer than the same place is today
in terms of climate. True, tremendous deforestation was wrought by the hands
of man in Roman times (but that is not climate change). A much better
approach to this important topic is to examine Late Bronze Age burials in
Canaan, which are very helpful in checking out the geographical locales in the
Patriarchal narratives, since I view the Patriarchal Age as having been the
Late Bronze Age.
Per Genesis 13: 9, 11, we should rightly expect that wealthy Abraham
sojourned west of Bethel [the opposite direction from Bethel as Lot, who is
stated
to go east], in the northern Shephelah. If in fact there were wealthy
owners of huge flocks of sheep and goats in the northern Shephelah, then we
would expect to see some of that wealth in Late Bronze Age burials there.
Scholars, assuming that Abraham is fictionally portrayed as sojourning at the
mountainous city of Hebron [south, not west, of Bethel], don’t expect to see
any significant wealth in Late Bronze Age burials in rural areas of the
northern Shephelah. Note the total shock of the #1 expert on Late Bronze Age
burials, Rivka Gonen, as she reports with incredulity as to Late Bronze Age
burials at Khirbet Humra, immediately west of the Aijalon Valley:
“[A] cemetery of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages was found…. The rich
collection of vessels and objects of glass, faience, ivory, and gold is
exceptional in burials of the LB II period in Canaan. The objects point to a
high
standard of living, which enabled this population to come closer to the
model of Egyptian burial ensembles than was normally possible. We do not know
the source of this wealth, especially because no settlement was found nearby.”
“Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan”
(1992), at pp. 93-94.
On the other end of the spectrum, Biblical scholars try to tell us that
first Abraham, and then Isaac, sojourned for many years at or near Beersheba in
the Negev. No Late Bronze Age burials have been found at Beersheba in the
Negev, but they have been found at Tell el-Far(a[S], about 10 miles or so
southwest of Beersheba in the Negev, on the same wadi, the Wadi Besor.
Although Rivka Gonen presumably was not expecting too much in that very
marginal
locale, nevertheless she seems taken aback by the remarkable lack of wealth
there:
“The burial gifts were meager…. …sixty-six simple burials in this cemetery
…. The pottery ensemble in these simple burials was meager…. There were
only two imported vessels…. “ P. 97.
This is objective evidence that claims of dramatic climate change should be
taken with huge grains of salt. In fact, the Late Bronze Age burials
examined by Rivka Gonen all make perfect sense on the basis of there having
been
very little climate change at all in comparing the Late Bronze Age to the
present [although humans, not Mother Nature, have deforested most of Canaan
since Biblical times]. Indeed, if the Late Bronze Age is the time period of
the Patriarchal Age [my view], then we know from “historical precipitation
rates based on data from the Soreq Cave (Bar-Matthews, et al., 1998)” that the
Late Bronze Age was abnormally dry. A. Isaac, Mattanyah Zohar, “Climate
Change: Environment and Civilization in the Middle East” (2004), at p. 186.
So in the Late Bronze Age, there’s no way that the Patriarchs would choose
to sojourn near or in the southern wilderness on the southern edge of Canaan,
as today’s Biblical scholars would have it.
The point is that if the locales where the Patriarchs are said by today’s
Biblical scholars to be portrayed in the text as having sojourned make no
sense at all based on what those locales are like today, then these Late Bronze
Age burials throughout Canaan strongly suggest that Biblical scholars must
be looking at the wrong locales -- locales not in fact being referenced by
the text. True, huge forests have disappeared, leaving almost no modern
trace, such as the MDBR P)RN/dense forest of trees immediately southwest of
Beersheba of Galilee in the Late Bronze Age. But otherwise, the climate of
Canaan in the Late Bronze Age may not have been all that different from today’s
climate. The city of Hebron is no place for a huge flock of sheep and
goats, Beersheba in the Negev is no place to hunt big game, an unattested place
between Gaza and Beersheba in the Negev is no place to get rich growing
wheat, and no sensible Patriarch would choose to sojourn for 30 years in the
eastern Sinai Desert. That was true in the Patriarchal Age [which I see as
being the Late Bronze Age, being an abnormally dry time], just as it is true
today.
If scholars were right that the Patriarchal narratives were composed by
multiple authors living in the 1st millennium BCE, then when those multiple
scholars looked back to a prior age, they would logically have remembered the
dryer-than-normal Late Bronze Age. That is to say, the Negev Desert and the
Sinai Desert were more inhospitable in the Late Bronze Age than they were in
the first half of the 1st millennium BCE. In fact, there was more rain in
Canaan about the year 1000 BCE than there had been for a thousand years!
That is to say, to 1st millennium BCE authors, “old times” would presumably
have meant “dry times”, when the Negev in particular was much worse than it
was early in the 1st millennium BCE. Thus it does not make logical sense to
think that multiple 1st millennium BCE authors would all choose, on a
fictional basis, to portray Patriarchs as sojourning in areas which were
somewhat
desert-like in their own day, and which they presumably would have known
had been considerably worse during the previous 1000 years.
If the Patriarchal narratives either were composed in the Late Bronze Age
[my view], or more or less accurately manage to reflect the world of the Late
Bronze Age [a view that was a fairly respectable minority view among
Biblical scholars until about 1970], then the geographical locales where
today’s
Biblical scholars tell us that the Patriarchs are portrayed in the text as
having sojourned cannot possibly be right. The wealthy Patriarchs are not
marginal desert people. Rather, the Patriarchs sensibly chose to sojourn in
the two best places in Canaan for tending a huge flock of sheep and goats in
the dryer-than-normal Late Bronze Age: the Shephelah and Upper Galilee. Not
only is that logical, but it also fits what the Biblical text says, as
nicely confirmed by Late Bronze Age burials throughout Canaan.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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