This is not a new subject and has been disputed before:

"Perhaps the most convincing find in support of the early domestication of camels in Egypt is a rope made of camel’s hair found in the Fayum (an oasis area southwest of modern-day Cairo). The two-strand twist of hair, measuring a little over three feet long, was found in the late 1920s, and was sent to the Natural History Museum where it was analyzed and compared to the hair of several different animals. After considerable testing, it was determined to be camel hair, dated (by analyzing the layer in which it was found) to the Third or Fourth Egyptian Dynasty (2686-2498 B.C.). In his article, Free also listed several other discoveries from around 2,000 B.C. and later, which showed camels as domestic animals (pp. 189-190)."

-from https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article;=858

Their source:Free, Joseph P. (1944), “Abraham’s Camels,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 3:187-193, July.

And this is only one of any observations THAT HAVE BEEN DOCUMENTED, unlike the opposing side.

I researched to find this scientific report, reported by CNN and others, but could not find the actual report itself. I couldn't even find an abstract! My question is I have searched and searched to see what they did to get this data but find nothing, all I see is hype. I'm seeing two sides. On one side: THE BIBLES WRONG!!! On the other side: No the Bible is still affirmed to be true, and here's the evidence for it.

so is Harry Potter and Narnia,etc.. .

All hail Sir Pandy!

Heed the head debater of this site and his excellent execution of logical analysis!

One of the arguments for Atheists is that if God truly meant to say something else in the bible wouldn't he have done so? These inconsistencies simply denote that God doesn't mind the illogical constraints present within the bible.

You can conclude parts of the bible are not fictional. For instance Moby Dick has historical parts in it but the story is fictional.

Who do you trust more, a tribe in the middle east from 2,000 years ago, that has little grasp on science or technology, or the modern day scientist who has created the computer, the airplane, and many more amazing advances. Radiocarbon dating is more accurate than some tribes people in their hurts.

The problem is that the article makes some critical mistakes. First, it cites a study that is not at all about what the article discusses, rather it is a discussion of Environmental constraints on copper production at a specific mine in the Levant. http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1179/033443512X13424449373786

1) Initially, I was concerned with his dismissal of the earlier camel bones as "wild," but this turns out to be yet another example of terrible scientific reporting. Rather what the professor notes is that older examples of camel bones tend to be in midden (trash) mounds which suggests possible predation by humans, which is unlikely if this is a trade or pack animal (more on my objection to the pack animal assumption later). The NYT writer mistakes this phrase for suggesting they are wild.

2) His data is confined to just a few number of sites, with all the dating coming from a single site of habitual habitation (a copper mine). That site doesn't have any human habitation around the time of the patriarchs so it seems an odd evidence source for whether or not they had camels. If that was a valid conclusion, we could well argue that humans didn't exist in the levant around that time period either.

3) The patriarchs he takes issue with (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) lived in quite a few regions, and only in the levant itself during the times proceeding the famine in egypt (not exactly a bountiful time). Most of the Abraham story comes from a region near northern Iraq and so whether or not camels are present in the Levant is more of a side issue to whether or not Genesis is accurately depicting this story.

4) This copper mine site is a "high place," in Hebrew Har. The high places were where the Israelites tended to form settlements during the Judges and Kings period because of their defensibility. They are notoriously hard to live on and would not have been good locations for nomadic herders like Abraham or Isaac. Those peoples tended to live in the lower regions of canaan where grass was more abundant and water available.

5) As I just mentioned, most of the earliest patriarchs were nomadic herders. Nomads are infamous for not leaving large archeological footprints (especially if you are looking a place they probably didn't frequent like a Har in the Israeli wilderness) and so archeologists are usually very reluctant to make any definitive conclusions about them based on sparse archeological evidence. If we were to confine ourselves to archeology there would be virtually no record of the existence of Bedouins, however we can see them if you travel to the right regions.

6) Given the location objection noted above the timeline he proposes seems to hold no objection. Generally it agreed that Abraham was around sometime around 2100BC (he also proposes that time period in his paper). He was generally known to have lived in the vicinity of Ur (southern Iraq) and spent a lot of time near Ninevah (northern Iraq). Both of these cities are known to have extensive trade and cultural exchange with the Arabian Peninsula (where camels were domesticated no later than 3000BC). Now we can judge the spread of the camel by noting that it is present in Shar-i Sokhta in 2600BC. That city is in the eastern edge of present day Iran with Ur between it and Arabia. That means that camels must have been present in Ur prior to 2600BC, 500 years before Abraham is there.

7) The professor bases his levant timeline on the presence of trade routes. I have two objections to that. First, it seems to presume his conclusion since the trade routes could not have developed until after the Patriarchs had settlements large enough to warrant trade. Second, the use of camels far precedes their use as pack animals in trade. Camels were used in much the same manner as sheep (and still are) in nomadic groups nearly a millenia before their use in trade routes by the Egyptians. This second objection is critical to understanding why his evidence set is so odd. If I am looking for evidence of the domestication of dogs in America, I wouldn't go to an airport, find that dogs are first present in the 1990s as drug sniffing animals and then conclude dogs were first domesticated in the US in the 1990s.

I believe the bible to be on par with Aesop's fables. They are stories to tell people to get them to behave, yet nothing in them are actually true. I doubt the stories are real, I believe more so that a great fiction writer, wrote fictions and used his surroundings to sort of set the setting.

One of Aesop's most famous fables was the story of Icarus. Icarus was a boy trapped on an island with his genius inventor father. His father caught and killed some birds, then used their feathers to construct some giant wings to fly off the island. He told Icarus not to fly to low, or he'd get hit by the waves, and not to fly too high, or he'd melt the wax used to keep the feathers on. Obviously the kid flew to high, and died. Moral of the story, heed the warnings of your elders or something along those lines.

That is comparable to the bible in an account of the bible's exaggerations. Maybe two cities didn't actually get burned to the ground, maybe this was just a story saying you should listen to God because he's vengeful. maybe the entire earth didn't flood. maybe this is just a fable to say God is powerful.